Slashdot Mirror
Australian Journalist Arrested, Released After Detailing Facebook Flaws
CuteSteveJobs writes "Yesterday Australian journalist Ben Grubb was arrested by police at an IT Security Conference after an article Grubb wrote about vulnerabilities in Facebook's privacy controls was published on Fairfax media websites. Grubb was later released, but police have confiscated his iPad. Late last month police tried to force fellow Fairfax journalist Linton Besser into revealing who leaked information about corruption. At the time, Fairfax editor Peter Fray called it an unprecedented attack on the freedom of the press. Australia has no explicit right to free speech and lacks shield laws to protect investigative journalists from having to reveal sources."
We should invade Australia to help bring democracy to the region?
Australians defending their government against Americans talking about how crazy it is.
People applying their IANAL interpretation of laws... of other countries.
A frost pist that is off topic.
Several jokes about Foster's.
Retort that 'real IrishmenAustralians don't drink Foster's.
Jokes about 'Facebook police'.
Question about Men at Work.
Defense of vegemite.
Vegemite vs. marmite discussion.
Complaints about submission/slashdot in general.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
...was that he published a photo that the presenter obtained without permission from the private profile of the wife of another security researcher (that the presenter publicly acknowledges that he doesn't like). The vulnerability disclosure does seem to be very very childish and unethical. The re-publishing of the photo does seem to be unethical too, but not illegal, which i assume is why he hasn't been charged with any offence.
in the USA, Judith Miller was thrown in jail for refusing to reveal a source
James Risen has been subpoenad about the source for his book on the CIA
one of those suspected of being his source, Jeffrey Sterling, is under an Espionage Act prosecution, with possible 10 years jail time, for talking about CIA mistakes in the late 1990s.
Then there is Stephen Kim, another Espionage act case; his crime? telling a reporter North Korea might test a nuke.
Then there is Stephen Drake, espionage act case, for whistleblowing against the NSA ... several of his friends homes were raided by the FBI, guns drawn. one of them is a diabetic with one leg. as
One of the UK ambassadors to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, wrote 2 books about what he saw there; torture, rape, abuse, violence, mass slavery, murder, all committed by our 'ally' in the 'global war on terror'. oh and i forgot to mention the children being anally raped in front of their relatives to force confessions about being in league with al qaeda.
in the US, our ambassadors said nothing. when some kid, Bradley Manning, dumps a bunch of their emails, he gets thrown in solitary, naked, 23 hours a day, being asked every 5 minutes 'are you OK'.
so no, i personally find australia's laws and UK's laws to be ridiculous. but the US is kind of moving in the same direction. The Espionage Act in particular, is becoming a de-facto State Secrets Act by virtue of our past 2 presidents, our court system, our media, and our education system.
its bad all over.
who were sued by Sony, in part, for posting a number on a website.
Yep, that's right the police chief equated receiving a "stolen" (copied) photo without permission to receiving a stolen TV. This is one time that "Copyright infringement is not theft" is very appropriate. Apparently our police just don't get it.
That tells you how rational and well informed our Police are. If it involves IT or computers they're just maroons.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
He was later released without charge
So a person was bought in by police for questioning. Which as I understand it is legal in most western nations.
/. It must be required penance for having the better beaches and a working economy.
But it is very important to keep up the uninformed Australia bashing here on
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Couldn't these Australian Journalists use an American as an anonymous proxy of sorts? That is, when you find a good source of information, tell him/her to reveal the information to an American, and then use that person as your source. You can then freely name your source, but that source can't be compelled by the Australian courts to name the original source.
... or beer :)
Every problem can be solved by adding a layer of indirection
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
I know poking a stick at foreign jurisdictions is a popular past time on Slashdot (and this is sometimes with good reason) but it would be nice if blanket statements weren't thrown around quite so much about the state of laws in other countries. As usual with most things in life, the situations is generally more complex than can be summed up in a sentence or two.
From the summary:
"Australia has no explicit right to free speech and lacks shield laws to protect investigative journalists from having to reveal sources."
Though this isn't an inaccurate statement at a high level, it's not quite true...
Australia has no ~constitutional~ right to free speech, in that its Constitution does not contain a Bill of Rights like the American one. This is not unusual - most Westminster democracies have no such thing and generally have rights conferred by common law (case law) and/or statutory rights. And at least two jurisdictions DO have "explicit rights" to freedom of expression in Australia - the ACT and Victoria, which both have (statutory) 'Bills of Rights'.
Incidentally there have been proposals to introduce a constitutional Bill of Rights in the past. They have not been successful. There are as many arguments against an entrenched and absolute statement of rights, as there are for one - there are pros and cons in each case.
And as for shield laws - again, the jurisdiction matters. One state, NSW, does indeed have a shield law. The others don't, although I believe WA and a couple of others are working on one at the moment. However, as of March this year, a Federal shield law also passed both houses of the Federal Parliament in March this year and is currently awaiting Royal Assent.
So basically, Australia has some shield laws that may or may not apply depending on the case. In a NSW or Federal court, or a case regarding the NSW or Federal Police or a NSW or Federal law, yes, there are shield laws that apply. Otherwise, no, not at this point in time.
...again! Because if you don't read/hear/see any problems, then they can be safely ignored. <massive sarcasm>
When will governments/law enforcement around the world accept that reponsible leaking of information is in everyones best interests (except the corrupt)?
(I guess the answer to that is: When governments/law enforcement cease to be corrupt.)
But I guess I'm preaching to the converted.
"We've all seen it happen on TV a zillion times. But when a police officer recited to me those well-rehearsed words – 'you have the right to remain silent ' – I felt sick in the stomach."
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/grubbs-story-privacy-news-and-the-strong-arm-of-the-law-20110518-1esn9.html
The Policeman who confiscated Grubb's iPad was Detective Superintendent Errol Coultis. "When I questioned under what legislation they had the right to seize my iPad, Coultis told me I was under arrest in relation to receiving unlawfully obtained property." Head of the Queensland police fraud squad, Brian Hay said accessing a photo without permission was the same as stealing a TV.
Amusingly the "Queensland Police Media Service" are into twitter damage control: "Police can legally seize material which may be evidence of a crime. It will be returned as soon as we can do so."
Grubb said "I was told that forensics officers were going to make a complete copy of the information on my iPad, whether it related to this matter or not."
An absolutely disgraceful peformance by the Queensland Police involved.
I would show you where the weakspots are in your (home's | business' | network's | Facebook profile's) security systems that any malcontent may exploit, if only for the fact that it was made illegal to do so... In short: Good luck, you clearly need it.
If you outlaw exploits, only outlaws will have exploits.
(Note that I'm not blaming the victim here, just pointing out a fact people tend to forget)
This is why you never, ever talk to the police without a lawyer. A good lawyer would have asserted his client's full rights out of the bat, suggested him what to say and how to say it, and probably threatened to sue for harassment if they wanted to confiscate the iPad. At that point most policemen would have given up as "not worth the hassle".
Instead, they just saw a boy playing with toys, and made him frame himself. He completely missed the big picture here; when asked if he thought a crime had been committed, he basically said "it's for the hacker to define that" -- "crimes" are defined by criminals now? It's for the *police* to decide, and they did indeed decide, probably because they saw the boy being somehow ambivalent about it ("when in doubt, charge" is a common police attitude in many parts of the world). Again, a good lawyer would have stopped him from saying anything -- you don't debate the fine points of the law while under official questioning, because it doesn't matter and it can only hurt your case. Let the lawyers debate it for you, they'll do it better than you ever could.
"Anything you say can be used against you" is not really understood by the common folk until they have this sort of experience. It should be taught in school.
-- Let's go Viridian.