The Identify and Disrupt Act: does it reach your phone?

This page is about a different kind of power than the rest of this section. The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act 2021 (Cth) is Commonwealth law that created new warrants for the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission to use against data and online accounts as part of an investigation. It is not a power that lets a police officer or a Border Force officer compel you to unlock your own phone at a stop or a checkpoint.

This site has not found anything in the Act that changes the position covered on the Border Force or s.3LA order pages — those remain the powers that can actually reach a traveller’s own device.

The Act received Royal Assent on 3 September 2021, and most of it commenced that day. Among the new powers it inserted into the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 is the data disruption warrant, defined in that Act as “a warrant issued under section 27KC or subsection 35B(2) or (3)”.

A data disruption warrant authorises action against data held on a computer as part of an investigation — it is aimed at agencies disrupting data connected to criminal activity, not at examining a traveller’s own device at a border or a roadside stop.

Parliament built an expiry into this power. Under s.27KAA of the Surveillance Devices Act 2004, the Division that creates the data disruption warrant “is repealed at the end of 4 September 2029” — unless Parliament acts to extend or replace it before then, this specific warrant power stops existing on that date.

If you are trying to work out what a police officer or Border Force officer can actually require of you and your phone, this page is not the one that answers that. See Border Force examination and the passcode question, the Commonwealth s.3LA order, and the state pages for New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria — or the cross-country comparison of when you must give police the code.