Australian Government Censors Draft Snooping Laws

coolstoryhansel writes "Stating that release of the draft legislation is not in the public interest [PDF] because it would prejudice decision making processes already in train, the Attorney General's Department has denied the release of the draft laws that would see wide-scale dragnet surveillance implemented along with an expansion of law enforcement powers for the purposes of 'national security'. Serkowski, speaking for the Pirate Party who lodged the FOI request labelled the Department response as 'disgraceful and troubling' saying the decision is 'completely trashing any semblance or notion of transparency or participative democratic process of policy development.'"

Comments

And when passed,one more step to Police State

[FriendlyLurker]

Labor & Liberal yet again **voting together** to preserve and extend a _privatised_ police state in Australia, extend surveillance of Australian citizens without any oversight.

for example:

Flawed cybercrime Bill dodges national security inquiry
20 Aug 2012 | Scott Ludlam
Broadband, Communications & the Digital Economy

The Australian Government is pursuing a draconian cybercrime law scheduled for debate in the Senate tonight despite warnings from its own MPs and before an inquiry into national security legislation has taken evidence or reported, the Greens said today.

The Greens communications spokesperson, Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam, said Labor's cybercrime legislation would open the door to Australians' private data being shared with agencies overseas.

"This proposed law goes well beyond the already controversial European convention on which it is based, and no explanation has been provided as to why. The European Treaty doesn't require ongoing collection and retention of communications, but the Australian Bill does. It also leaves the door open for Australia to assist in prosecutions which could lead to the death penalty overseas. These flaws must be addressed before the Bill proceeds."

Senator Ludlam said the Government had addressed only one of a range of problems identified by a unanimous Parliamentary committee on the legislation.

"The Government ignored a series of recommendations from MPs on all sides of Parliament, and fixed one embarrassing drafting flaw that would have prevented accession to the European Convention and invalidated the whole point of the Bill.

"The Attorney General's Department did the bare minimum they thought necessary to acknowledge the existence of the critical and unanimous committee report. The Government was urged by its own MPs to fix this legislation but chose to leave it as is. The national security legislation review - which will be looking at a highly controversial data retention proposal - has barely begun, yet the Government has now brought a key piece of enabling legislation forward.

"We have recommended a number of improvements to the bill including fixing these flaws and clarifying the Ombudsman's powers to inspect and audit compliance with the preservation regime."

Re:They dream themselves your master.

[Sabriel]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri

Re:Aussies, now you know why...

[d3ac0n]

Ok, but none of these are western democracies

And SOMEONE does not know their Western history! (Not surprising given the utter lack of proper history teaching in the West for the last 30 years. Thanks for that, Baby Boomers!)

By 1776 the Magna Carta had been in force in England for over 100 years. England was then, as now, a monarchic Democracy, and certainly a Western state (Actually, they were THE Western State at that point in history.) This is, of course, what led to the American revolution. The colonists felt that they were being made serfs again by lack of representation in Parliament. After years of protests and complaints and a series of political, social and police assaults by the crown on the colonies (designed to suppress dissent) the colonies banded together and revolted. The large scale presence of arms in the colonies attributed in part to the success of the revolution.

Nazi Germany was a Western Democracy prior to Nazi takeover. Hitler's election to Chancellor was by popular vote. It wasn't until after his election to Chancellor and subsequent seizing of power through political subterfuge (like having the army swear allegiance to HIM rather than to Germany or the German Constitution) that the people began to get a sense that there was a problem.

Unfortunately for them, one of the first laws that Hitler passed even BEFORE seizing full Dictatorial power was to outlaw private gun ownership. He knew that an armed populace was a dangerous and uncontrollable populace, even when doped up on the Nazi propaganda that was inescapable in Germany at the time.

So yes, Having an armed and engaged populace is antithetical to anyone that would seek to rule them by force. This includes Australia.