Slashdot Mirror
New Leaks Threaten Human Smuggling Talks and Lead To Hack Attacks On Australia
cold fjord writes "Indonesia is threatening to cease cooperation with Australia on human smuggling as a result of further Snowden leaks published by the Guardian and other papers over the weekend. The leaks involve reported use of Australian embassies across Asia for signals intelligence as well as reports of intelligence operations by Australia and the U.S. in 2007 at the U.N. climate change conference in Bali. (In 2002 a terrorist attack at the Sari club in Bali killed 240 people, including 88 Australians.) As a result of the revelations, various groups are reportedly taking revenge, including claimed or alleged involvement of the Java Cyber Army, members of Anonymous in Indonesia, and possibly other hacker groups. They are attacking hundreds of Australian websites. Among the reported victims are Queensland hospital, a children's cancer association an anti-slavery charity, and many more."
It's not the leaks that threaten these talks. It's the espionage that threatens the talks.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Indonesia is threatening to cease cooperation with Australia on human smuggling as a result of further Snowden leaks
... Soo, Indonesia was previously helping Australia with their human smuggling operation? In either event, what does having your corrupt officials mismanaging things have to do with ceasing humanitarian endeavors? This is like saying "After we got busted doing evil things, we're going to just go all in on that whole evil thing, while insisting that you spying on us doing our evil things is wrong and you should stop."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
From TFA:
When he was questioned about what action Indonesia would take against Australia, the foreign minister [Dr. Marty Natalegawa] said: “One of them obviously is the agreement to exchange information, exchange even intelligence information, in fact, to address the issue of people smuggling."
Basically, Indonesia is leveraging the disclosures to force Australia to agree to exchange intelligence information to address the problem of human trafficking. Nowhere in the TFA says that Indonesia is going to cancel the talks with Australia over this. Australia broke the trust, its up to them to fix it.
The Java cyber army promised to smash the Australian internet. I doubt they would have to try too hard. It's already pretty terrible!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
It should be noted that 'people smuggling' isn't related to slavery; it's the politicised term for the people who help refugees get to Autralia. The efforts to stop people smugglers are about the current Australian government's (xenophobic) anti-refugee policies; they're the result of domestic politics, not a cooperative effort to stop human trafficking.
It's not actually xenophobia when you attempt to enforce your national borders.
The situation between Indonesia and Australia is similar to the situation between Mexico and the U.S., where the Mexican government in some cases actually busses illegals to the U.S. border in order to aid their illegal immigartion into the U.S.. While most illegals are economic refugees, the bussing mostly involved "undesirables" in Mexico, which included Mexican criminals, but more frequently were refugees from Guatamala and El Salvador, which Mexico preferred to make "not their problem". PBS did a documentary on this a while back:
http://www.pbs.org/itvs/beyondtheborder/immigration.html
The "cooperation" being negotiated in this case is primarily dealing with people using Indonesia as a transit point, and less so export of Indonesian "bad apples", just as with the U.S. (although Indonesia will happily export locally grown Al Qaeda to get rid of them). A significant number of these come from the Middle East, including a large portion of them from Iraq, and to a lesser extent, Lebanon. Here are some examples:
http://www.niqash.org/articles/?id=3308
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13920705000600
One of the agreements being negotiated has been buying unused boats which could be made sufficiently seaworthy to get from Indonesia to Australia:
http://qz.com/118198/australias-election-frontrunner-thinks-buying-broken-indonesian-boats-will-stave-off-asylum-seekers/ ...but it benefits Tony Abbot's opponents to find ways to undermine that plan as much as possible, and it benefits Indonesian politicians to be complicit in that, and seize on any excuse, lest the illegal immigrant refugees end up stuck in Indonesia instead (Indonesia doesn't want them either). So at this point, it's largely an argument between the mostly empty regions of Australia and the more densely populated regions (analogous to the red state/blue state U.S. division that had Arizona enforcing immigration laws that the U.S. federal government would not).
So basically, politics, not Snowden.
Lets also be clear what "human smuggling" means in this context: Illegal immigration. Indonesians (and others) trying to enter into Australia illegally by any means possible in search of a better life. The Snowden leaks have exposed how the spy apparatus is being used for industrial espionage. This includes and is not limited to being used to maintain political favor with corrupt Indonesian officials in order to maintain cheap access to resources by Australian and other foreign companies. There are already a few previous examples of such immoral exploitation to the detriment of the poorest classes in this region. Running the spy network being for economic advantage in the region only helps guarantee that people will be forced to immigrate illegally to find a better life.
No, what caused harm was the act that was committed not that it was exposed. Stop being an asshat. There would have been no harm at all if the spying had not been done in the first place.
When you can't disprove what someone says you simply assassinate their character by lumping them in with pedophiles, terrorists, smugglers, etc. and claim that the discredited person is providing them aid.
Ain't that the definition of Ad Hominem ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The leaks have created diplomatic problems that are likely to prevent effective intervention against the smuggling.
Dear Mr. Cold Fjord,
This is INDONESIA that we are talking about.
For years (actually, decades) Indonesia never took the issue human trafficking/smuggling seriously. Whether it be human trafficking/smuggling to Australia, to Singapore, to Malaysia, or to any other place in the world.
Indonesia is a nation which has too many people living on too many island, and the corrupt regime (whether or not it was under Suhartoe or the current one) never place that issue as a top priority.
Furthermore, Indonesia, as the world's MOST POPULOUS Muslim country, has the obligation to spread Islam to kafir countries such as Australia.
In other words, EVEN WITHOUT the leaks from Edward Snowden, the human trafficking/smuggling business would still go on, as usual.
All the so-called "cooperation" from the Indonesian side is utterly absurd from the beginning.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
There is no "fallout from the actions of Snowden and the Guardian". There is fallout from the actions of the Australian intelligence services. It is, indeed, pretty straightforward.