Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens

sg_oneill writes "The Australian Electronic Frontiers foundation report that the Australian Government is looking at introducing changes to the Telecomunications Interception Act giving Government Agencies (NOT just police!) the power to intercept email, voice mail and SMS messages without a warrant. Considering the concurrent proposals to introduce legislation to allow banning of organisations suspected of terrorist links, am I the only one suspecting Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?" I think our most recent Australia spying story was about the Australian government spying to win elections.

Comments

Re:Procedural Minimum for Democracy

[kubrick]

I raise this point because I think John Howard (the prime minister of Australia) is Australian for Hitler.

As an Australian, I agree, in a qualified sense. In his mind it's OK to suspend or abolish democratic freedoms in order to ensure that people he doesn't agree with can't be heard or be politically active. (Another example from recent history is Nixon -- government "by any means necessary", legal or illegal).

For many years Queensland under Joh-Bjelke Petersen had a law, intended to stop street marches, that banned the public assembly of four or more people if such assembly had not been previously cleared by the police. It looks like we're moving back to those days... along with John Howard's racist issues on immigration (lock up the non-white illegal immigrants), we should soon be the new old South Africa, if you know what I mean.