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> I honestly don't understand how these people can sleep at night. As a civil servant you're supposed to serve the people that employ you, not steal their work under cover of security statutes. And as for those "scientists" plagiarising (i.e. putting their own name on) ideas and inventions handed to them by state security ... words fail me.

These people are a very strange breed. They have a sense of self-entitlement, and because they are taxpayer funded there's no need to be efficient. If you don't meet your work targets, your boss complains he is underresourced and needs more of those sweet taxpayer dollars. And they're unaccountable.

Take the Australian Public Service Commissioner. His Minister claimed he had strong anti-corruption powers, but privately he claimed he didn't, and refused to take stop it. Yet despite the government knowing about this, he still has a job: http://victimsofdsto.com/psc

I've spent my life working in private enterprise, and I've never seen anything like this. Any company that acted like this would go broke.

> Plus that gem about that new Aussie law (the Defence Trade Controls Act) that seems so broad that it can criminalise you for innocuous acts like sending an email with an explanation or leaving a server open

It's startlingly bad law. They were supposed to draft it in consult with the universities, but they ignored them and treated them like crap. The public service was amazing arrogant, and remain so to this day.

> In all probability the Australian government just wanted to impress the US with its zeal and preparedness to go after proliferators.

One advocate I know said at the start of it a senior public servant told him it was because "We have to bring the universities under control."

> The only way to stay clear seems to be to either have a legal department vet each and every communication outside Australia (including accessible servers). Otherwise you put your head on the chopping block and all you can do is hope nobody will (with hindsight !) find cause to bring down the axe.

I think the best way to do business is to move offshore. Even in America, there are less restrictions and better access to talent, connections and venture capital too. Australia is already a bad place to do business (unless that's mining or farming). Like the DVCR at Sydney University warned, it will just drive high-tech research offshore.

> Now the US has got many things wrong, but this isn't one of them.

Yes, and as stuffed up as things are in America, it has a sound constitution. And even if SCOTUS takes too long and often lets its politics get in the way, the Constitution ultimately has the power to put things right. In Australia we don't have that. We have no Bill of Rights. When you get a bad law like this, you lump it or leave.

A very big problem in Australia is that we have no right to free speech like Americans do: http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4529/do-we-have-the-right-to-freedom-of-speech-in-austr.aspx

Under the Public Figure Doctrine US journalists can report corruption in a timely manner. In Australia we have nothing like that - not even a public interest test - so journalists must sit on stories for years. The Australian media couldn't even tell the people of New South Wales that their Premier (Governor) was manifestly-corrupt until the day after he died. http://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/Martin_def.html http://victimsofdsto.com/online/#freespeech

The right to free speech is so limited in Australia that this public servant was fired for anonymously tweeting her own opinion on her own equipment on her own time: http://www.psnews.com.au/Featurespsn3834.html In the US the Supreme Court holds that public servants (government workers) have the right to express their own opinions. In Australia, they don't.

This was the actual text from Clayton Utz, the law firm acting for the Australian Department of Defence: "“The reason we believe your claim will fail is because you allege that the Commonwealth owes innovators submitting products or technology for evaluation a duty of care to ensure that the evaluations are either fair, proper and accurate or that the confidential information is respected. There is no such duty of care in Australian law.”

They are very disingenuous: The DSTO publicly solicits businesses to submit inventions to Defence under the "DSTO CTD Capability and Technology Demonstrator Program", and then screw them over behind closed doors.

Here the Defence Science Minister Warren Snowdon announced a DSTO Probity Board "to protect against conflict of interest" http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/news/6648/, while here he sends a letter to an independent MP in which he falsely claims the whistleblower didn't want the thefts from other companies to be investigated(!): http://victimsofdsto.com/doc/2011-02-28%20Letter%20from%20Defence%20Science%20Minister%20with%20false%20information%20to%20Independent%20MP%20(NAMES%20BLACKED%20OUT).pdf

Australia's Federal Police force, the AFP, are systemically corrupt. They ignore public service crime http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service-keeps-fraud-cases-private-20110923-1kpdr.html and terrorise whistleblowers: http://pastebin.com/tD8Vd6Vd http://victimsofdsto.com/psc/#kessing

You can't use the civil courts: Under the Model Litigant Policy the Australian government has to keep legal costs to a minimum, must offer alternate dispute resolution, etc. But the government lawyers simply ignore it, run up huge legal bills and threaten to bankrupt you with a costs order if you dare step foot into court. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/gillard-government-lashed-for-ignoring-breaches-of-model-litigant-rules/story-e6frg97x-1226325228917 Another department did actually bankrupt a guy. Not mentioned in the article, the DSTO also stole IP from some big defence companies (including an American one).

It costs about $2M to litigate the gov. I don't know of a single company who has seen litigation through: SMEs can't afford it, and the large companies said litigating their biggest customer would lose future contracts. The only law firms capable of taking on the government pro bono in Australia are all on retainer to them! Here's a very good book "Our Corrupt Legal System" by an investigative crime journalist; Page 157- describes all the dirty tricks lawyers play: http://netk.net.au/Whitton/OCLS.pdf . play.

This was the actual text from Clayton Utz, the law firm acting for the Australian Department of Defence: "“The reason we believe your claim will fail is because you allege that the Commonwealth owes innovators submitting products or technology for evaluation a duty of care to ensure that the evaluations are either fair, proper and accurate or that the confidential information is respected. There is no such duty of care in Australian law.”

They are very disingenuous: The DSTO publicly solicits businesses to submit inventions to Defence under the "DSTO CTD Capability and Technology Demonstrator Program", and then screw them over behind closed doors.

Here the Defence Science Minister Warren Snowdon announced a DSTO Probity Board "to protect against conflict of interest" http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/news/6648/, while here he sends a letter to an independent MP in which he falsely claims the whistleblower didn't want the thefts from other companies to be investigated(!): http://victimsofdsto.com/doc/2011-02-28%20Letter%20from%20Defence%20Science%20Minister%20with%20false%20information%20to%20Independent%20MP%20(NAMES%20BLACKED%20OUT).pdf

Australia's Federal Police force, the AFP, are systemically corrupt. They ignore public service crime http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service-keeps-fraud-cases-private-20110923-1kpdr.html and terrorise whistleblowers: http://pastebin.com/tD8Vd6Vd http://victimsofdsto.com/psc/#kessing

You can't use the civil courts: Under the Model Litigant Policy the Australian government has to keep legal costs to a minimum, must offer alternate dispute resolution, etc. But the government lawyers simply ignore it, run up huge legal bills and threaten to bankrupt you with a costs order if you dare step foot into court. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/gillard-government-lashed-for-ignoring-breaches-of-model-litigant-rules/story-e6frg97x-1226325228917 Another department did actually bankrupt a guy. Not mentioned in the article, the DSTO also stole IP from some big defence companies (including an American one).

It costs about $2M to litigate the gov. I don't know of a single company who has seen litigation through: SMEs can't afford it, and the large companies said litigating their biggest customer would lose future contracts. The only law firms capable of taking on the government pro bono in Australia are all on retainer to them! Here's a very good book "Our Corrupt Legal System" by an investigative crime journalist; Page 157- describes all the dirty tricks lawyers play: http://netk.net.au/Whitton/OCLS.pdf . play.

Beware that whistleblowers are almost always retaliated against. If you approach the media take great care in picking a journalist:

http://victimsofdsto.com/guide/whistleblowers_guide_to_journalists.pdf

http://victimsofdsto.com/guide/whistleblowers_guide_to_journalists.html

Beware that whistleblowers are almost always retaliated against. If you approach the media take great care in picking a journalist:

http://victimsofdsto.com/guide/whistleblowers_guide_to_journalists.pdf

http://victimsofdsto.com/guide/whistleblowers_guide_to_journalists.html