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

Right On!

[Bobzibub]

Our governments are finally beginning to listen to us!
; )

Procedural Minimum for Democracy

[sam_handelman]

many scholars argue that without effective guarantees of civil liberties, elections do not constitute democracy, and that a procedural minimum for defining democracy must include not only elections, but reasonably broad guarantees of basic civil rights-e.g., freedom of speech, assembly, and association.
-Democracy 'with Adjectives', by D. Collier and S. Levitsky

The paper I link to (which is academic but pretty accessible - I'm a biologist, not a political scientist) is about military juntas in south america, not Aussies.

I raise this point because I think John Howard (the prime minister of Australia) is Australian for Hitler. A modern Democracy can survive all matter of scuminess, but if this proposal goes through, Australia will need an adjective (such as crpyto or pseudo) to qualify their form of government.

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.

Re:Email is not and never was secure.

[meta-monkey]

What about regular mail? Would you be outraged if government agents were waiting curbside when you came to check your mailbox, sorting through your letters from granny?

"Hold on a minute sir, we're almost done. Gotta make sure 'Aunt Edna' and 'hip surgery' aren't terrorist codewords. Then you can have your mail. Oh, and we're keeping the detergent samples. My socks are dirty...errr...I mean...it's a dangerous chemical compound, and we don't know what your true motives are."

Would that outrage you? What makes email special, such that it's okay for the feds to read that?

Steve Irwin

[guttentag]

OK, it's time to call out the big guns. Who do we know Down Under? We need Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin to do an expose on the Australian government.

Irwin picks the prime minister up by the neck...

"Wow! Look at this beauty! What we have here is a rare Australian Brown-Nosed Prime Minister. Very valuable too, large corporations will pay big bucks for a fella like this one here."

The prime minister starts gagging and choking...

"You're all right, Mate. You're all right. You have to be careful when dealing with these buggers. I don't want to let go of the neck because then he could call his elite guard and then I'd be in a world of trouble. They'd come running and attack me with their projectile defense mechanisms. They wouldn't understand that I'm not trying to hurt the prime minister, I'm only trying to educate the public."

The PM is grasping for his computer, but Irwin holds him out of reach...

"Let's walk over to his computer and take a look at how he survives. Notice the program he uses to search his prey's email and telephone conversations. Very sneaky, but it's that survival instinct that allows him to maintain his dominance in the political jungle. That's why we call him the prime minister. Yeah? OK, I'm gonna let him down slowly, and hopefully he'll be too busy gasping for air to call for help and I can make my retreat."