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Australia Spying On Its Own
AVIDLY INTERESTED writes: "Well well, the Australian government has been caught out spying on its own citizens, despite denying for years that they do this type of thing. This story at The Age shows that the Defence Signals Directorate listens to just about every bit of communications in Australia. The interesting thing about this story is the background to it. In this case the govt spied because they were trying to win an election, and needed evidence to demonise a ship that was docking in Australia carrying a bunch of refugees. National security be damned, this is echelon for political gain. Is it happening anywhere else?"
From the German government's Lauschangriff to Echelon to the NSA to my provider [Hi, guys! Keep up the good work!] to some company that routes my data to people I haven't even heard of, I would just assume that anybody who can listen in will listen in. Germany does have a constitutional Right to Privacy that the U.S. Bill of Rights doesn't, but I don't think that is going to impress too many of those people - what am I going to do, sue the people who run Echelon?
My suggestion: Live with it and use crypto where you can.
Of course, government monitoring of its citizens has been going on for as long as there have been governments. However, 9/11 has excellerated this trend considerably. Australia has had a massive backlash against what many there consider excessive immigration. Australians feel they are in danger of being overrun by immigrants and they also fear terrorism. I think they -- like a number of other countries -- feel that these two issues are closely linked.
The backlash against immigration started well before 9/11 but the terrorist attack intensified this backlash. I think that this is happening -- though to a lesser extent so far -- in both the U.S. and in Europe. Surveillance has increased dramatically and will continue to increase.
I think that this is going to lead to massive investment in surveillance by many countries all over the world not just in the West. Governments across the globe will engage in surveillance at levels way, way above anything we have ever seen in history.
Paleolithic
What is happening in Australia is a kind of sickness, a governmental sickness. There are people who like to sneak around, rather than have a real connection with others. If they can attach themselves to a government that believes in, or accepts, secrecy, they find that they have endless money, and they can do whatever they like. Given the nature of secrecy, and the nature of bureacracy, there is never true accountability in a secret bureacracy.
Angry people often like to cause trouble if they can avoid being held accountable. Secret troublemaking by government is a dream job for these people.
Secret agencies in the U.S. are much bigger troublemakers than those in Australia. The article, What should be the Response to Violence?, has links to about 600 pages from major news sources that tell the story. For example, there is a section about a secret agency of the U.S. government that trained Arabs to be terrorists. Also see the sections, To understand the present conflict, consider the past, and Understanding the CIA.
Bush's education improvements were
Have you ever considered that these two, and the rest of the government, might (a) know more about the situation than you...
I have to admit, I stop reading an article whenever I see a quote like this, and I see it all too often. Should government figures be invulnerable to criticism simply because they're part of the government, and because, at least under your reasoning, they must have not only better information, but better judgement than the rest of us? A quote like that smacks of thoughtless nationalistic bias.
Congratulations, you fit the profile for almost every negative Australian stereotype out there. Get violently drunk off your ass and you'll be the perfect poster boy for everything the world thinks is wrong with your country.
They were spying on phone conversations to a ship which was boarded by SAS troops!
So the SAS troops in and of themseleves weren't sufficient to neutralizae any security threate posed by the Tampa?
Funny, when I read the story, I didn't see that stated. I read a number of statements saying that the DSD's intelligence gathering was within Australian laws and supervised by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Not everything printed in the newspaper is true. Conversely, not everything that isn't printed isn't true. The DSD can and does intercept anything and everything it can, but according to whatever rule book it follows: any intercepted communication where one or more parties to the communicationa are Australian and the communication is not related to a serious criminal matter or one of national security is supposed to be deleted. Of course, we trust them to do this implicitly.
In addition, conversations between the captain of the Tampa and both the compnay that owned her and the Norwegian government (under whose flag the Tampa is registered) were passed on, all while the government was trying to negotiate a solution that served its own best interest. Needless to say, the edge this would have given the government in such negotiations could have been considerable.
The main point is that intelligence is not supposed to be used for the advantage of any Australian political party (under section 2A of the Intelligence Services Act, IIRC). The idea of spooks interfering in the political process by giving one side an advantage over another (either by the simple supply of information or by engineering a certain outcome to a politically sensitive situation through the supply of information) is quite frightening.
Puhleease !!
Spying on a foreign registry vessel in international waters which had been directed not to enter Australian territory, but which then did enter in some sort of Norwegian Invasion. If comm intercept ability does not exist for occasions such as this, then why does it exist at all?
Oh, BTW, of course this happens everywhere, but moreso. Especially in the US where people are "told" they are "free" and don't have the education system to question the fact. Try making a few phone calls or sending a few emails about how you're gonna sh**t the pr*s*dent, and see who comes knocking at your door. And that's without the external threat of a Norwegian ship invading your sovereign territory under duress from a bunch of Iraqi queue-jumpers with designer luggage stuffed full of cash (no exageration).
What is the best way to waste the time of government bodies who monitor email and/or telephone conversations? (Please point me to an faq..)
:) )
Just a few thought to be added to:
1/Encrypt with an easy to decypt password (I am not important enough for them to try very hard
2/Send lots of slightly altered binaries/gifs back and forth with your normal mail
3/Browse the hacking/conspiracy/revolutionary web sites
4/Use hushmail.com and/or PGP
5/Talk about unibomber/trade center type conspiracies on the phone
6/Use emacs spook command
7/Mention project echelon and Operation Vengefull
8/Try not to get too wrapped up in this stuff yourself as they are probably not watching you (much).
9/Send around this type of posting..
10/Make conversations over insecure channels based on previous secure channel eg face to face conversations that would not have been likely to be taped
11/Base insecure communication conversations on shared belief systems and/or shared knowledge (for example literary references) that would take some effort for the eavesdropper to resolve.
12/Make insecure communications ambiguous so that the other side of the conversation may work out the really meaning (or demand clarification), the eavesdropper cannot resolve ambiguity by cross examining..
13/Use an (Arabic or Irish) (accent or language), [though speaking Irish in an Arabic accent or speaking Arabic in an Irish accent might really confuse].
I thought encrypting everything too much might make it too hard for them to track you and not fire off enough warning signals in their (automated) monitoring center..
So basically I want to put a message [the president will be shot within the next month] inside a lightly encrypted message so when they
decrypt it [maybe automatically] they think they have some information of value, or that they have to act upon, if they act you know they have read your message. Alternatively put in a really good original joke (they are hard to come by [whats brown and sticky? -- a stick] [standards of humour may vary]) and see if it gets back to you through the government listener. These are the two standard cryptography 'red book' methods of seeing if your communication channel is compromised.
I am not a good shot so I'll have to get someone else to do it.
Turloch
'There is a place for everyone in this struggle no matter how big or how small. Let us increase our strength and the strength of our analysis by finding a place for them all.' Bobby Sands
PGP key follows
--
YeP I HaVe NOT BoTHereD To GEt PGp -- yet
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Have people forgotten Watergate? In the US, every political party has been spying on the other, and if they happened to be in power, they were using the powers of the state to do so. Now, do you really believe that that has stopped? I suspect it has just gotten more sophisticated (I mean, Nixon was just plain stupid). And there are so many more possibilities now: a lot of intelligence work has been "privatized" and therefore has been freed of many pesky government regulations, and the US government can always outsource to foreign intelligence services and say "the French did it".
Has it occurred to anyone that no gov or org has the capability to assimilate all this information? How many people monitoring, translating, prioritising and passing on would be required to handle all the communications from a country such as Afghanistan? That's before you go for your own subversives. And it will get a lot busier. Filtering is rubbish, since Sept 11 I must have received dozens of emails discussing terroroists bombing targets from friends, whereas terrorists are smart enough to use cover terms such as "visiting the library". It's such a waste of resource. If they spent the same money infiltration we'd stand a better chance. Sig: Hey CIA, I'm considering buying some stationary!
Australian Embassy
No 13, 23rd Street,
Khalid Islambuli Ave,
Tehran 15138
Iran
tel +98 (21) 872 4456
tel +98 (21) 872 0484
Australia does not have diplomatic posts in Iraq or Afghanistan but does in neighbouring countries. It is normal for small countries not to have an embassy in every country in the globe.
The fact remains that the illegal immigrants travel half way around the world to Indonesia - through many countries where they could seek asylum if they were that desperate, shred their personal documents so they can not be identified, and sail to Australia. If they were geniunely not economic refugees, they wouldn't take such a calculated move to get into Australia illegally. They could go to neighbouring Pakistan for example, where Australia does has an consulate and a high commission, and appeal to enter legally there.
Of course, you don't even need to apply to an Australian embassy. You only need apply to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for placement. They facilitate the legal placement of refugees to Australia.
Australia in recent years seems to have taken a turn for the worst. I'm a libertarian, but I can definitely say that Australia stinks of 'Liberalism' right now. Is the country run by a bunch of soccer moms who are scared their kids are going to be raped if everyone in the country isn't kept under constant surveillance? Probably.
Yes. His name is John Howard, and he lives in an imaginary utopian world circa 1950. His crowning achievement in this country is that he introduced a chronically confused goods and services tax, after stating categorically that he would never do so, which is slowly throttling small business in this country. Oh, and he lived with mummy until he was 31.
Unfortunately, he somehow won the Federal election late last year, largely on the back of his stance on illegal boat people post-September 11. Which is what the
And John, if the DSD passes this little missive on to you, I won't be voting for you next time either.
Doesn't anyone remember the statement made by someone at the NSA following the 9/11 attacks. This was probably a day or two later and someone from the NSA said that they were pouring over thousands and thousands of cell phone calls recorded in the Pennsylvania area looking for recordings of calls made from the plane that crashed there.
I thought "HUH?!?!?!? Did they just admit that they randomly record cell phone calls of private citizens without a warrant?" Sure as heck sounded like it to me. I remember there being a little bit of noise about the statement at the time it was made. I remember just how vile it sounded to me and surprised that the statement didn't get much attention. I suppose in those days following, the vast majority of Americans were more than willing to give up any amount of privacy if it meant the bad guys would get caught (and I'm not sure it's terribly different now... 5 months later).
I've been looking for an article or something referencing that statement from the NSA, but I can't put my finger on one. Can anyone help?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Zeus, you accept the (current) conservative view of "liberal", but then accept the conservatives' view of themselves. The conservatives in the US (and here I am primarily speaking of Republicans) believe in socialism, socialism for big business. They will moan about a million spent on some social welfare program and then turn around and give 5 million to a big corporation to subsidize it's operations. There is no such thing as a "free market". The transnats have so much influence that even governments bow to their wishes. Look to Rollerball for a vision of that future. I am more concerned with Big Brother from a transnat sense than I am from any government. After all, a government has to maintain SOME credibility with its citizens to stay in business. The corps (rhymes with corpse) do not, they've got the money to tell EVERYBODY to stuff it.