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New Leaks Threaten Human Smuggling Talks and Lead To Hack Attacks On Australia

Posted by Soulskill on from the because-why-continue-a-good-thing dept.

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."

26 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Not the leaks by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:Not the leaks by intermodal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's the clear strategy of the governments involved to blame the leaks for causing the problems. Failure to give the government a pass on the grounds that it "should have remained secret" makes you a terrorist.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    2. Re:Not the leaks by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not the leaks that threaten these talks. It's the espionage that threatens the talks.

      No shit; I mean, what kind of jingoist, fascist asshole blames the guy who risked his ass to bring the evil deeds of clandestine criminal groups into the sunlight?

      *looks at submitter name in summary*

      Ah, that kind.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    3. Re:Not the leaks by Desler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it's clearly the new of the leaks that did it. Last week there wasn't a diplomatic crisis, then the leaks came, and now there is a diplomatic crisis.

      Quiet diplomacy is only possible when confidentiality is possible.

      This just in: mass surveillance of your "allies" pisses them off!

      There will probably be more human smuggling and trafficking due to Snowden.

      Hahaha! Good old cold fjord. Yeah, it wasn't the fault of the people doing the spying it was Snowden's!! Yeah just like it was the fault of the woman being raped because she wasn't dressed in a burqa not that of the rapist, right?

    4. Re:Not the leaks by Desler · · Score: 3, Informative

      The person who submitted this propaganda piece.

    5. Re:Not the leaks by s.petry · · Score: 3, Insightful

      False dilemma trying to appeal to the emotions. Care to try again without the fallacies?

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    6. Re:Not the leaks by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it's clearly the new of the leaks that did it. Last week there wasn't a diplomatic crisis, then the leaks came, and now there is a diplomatic crisis.

      Yes, and when your wife finds out that you're cheating on her, it's not your fault for cheating but her fault for finding out. Do you really not see anything wrong with that reasoning?

      Quiet diplomacy is only possible when confidentiality is possible.

      Trust, but verify.

      There will probably be more human smuggling and trafficking due to Snowden.

      No, blame falls entirely on the bad behavior of the Australian Signals Directorate and their lack of trustworthyness.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    7. Re:Not the leaks by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I mean, what kind of jingoist, fascist asshole blames the guy who risked his ass to bring the evil deeds of clandestine criminal groups into the sunlight?

      So you disagree with my stand opposing human smuggling and trafficking, the hacking of hospitals, anti-slavery charities, and other NGOs, not to mention opposing the killing by the hundreds of innocent tourists having a nice vacation?

      That weak attempt to discredit someone by claiming they support policies that no rational person would ever support is the best response you can come up with? Shit, I know middle-schoolers with better game.

      And FTR, no, I disagree with your insistence to suck fed cock by laying the blame for their crimes one the one dude who had the fucking hojo's to call them out on it. A point which is likely glaringly obvious to everyone on the planet other than you.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    8. Re:Not the leaks by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your stand encourages human smuggling and trafficking. The less we know about espionage, the more of it will happen. The more espionage that happens, the less international cooperation there will be. The less international cooperation there is, the more human smuggling and trafficking there will be.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    9. Re:Not the leaks by Unordained · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, blame falls entirely on the bad behavior of the Australian Signals Directorate and their lack of trustworthyness.

      I don't think we should blame the intelligence agencies for this. You don't install sophisticated interception equipment hidden in architectural features of embassies all over the region, and operate them possibly for decades, without a fair amount of cooperation between branches of the government. The intelligence services did what they were told to do, and in that respect, were plenty trustworthy.

      Back home, we can't really argue that the NSA was out-of-bounds. We elected officials, they passed laws, they appointed secret judges, they signed secret executive orders, and the agencies did everything within their power to gather intelligence that would help us or protect us. Citizens allowed this to happen (in theory -- assumes civilians are in-the-know), and I see the logic that would lead someone to try to get civilian attention with vandalism on charities and whatnot.

    10. Re:Not the leaks by Wookact · · Score: 4, Informative

      Speech by Eisenhower warning of Military industrial complex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY Kennedy warns of shadow/world government: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utYcFf93Srs

    11. Re:Not the leaks by cffrost · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm curious why Snowden is doing this now. The domestic revelations were very important, and I thank him for them. These foreign revelations are another story. I doubt they do any harm, or at least no more than finding out that the sun rises in the east. But why? Does he think these are a big deal? Does he just want revenge? Or (one to be hoped for) he just wants to keep making noise about the NSA until something is done about the domestic situation. Inquiring minds want to know.

      I think it's worth remembering that ever since (or prior to) Russia granted Snowden's request for asylum, the press has been in control of the manner in which Snowden's material is published. No new leaks (by Snowden) was a condition of Russia's for granting his request for asylum.

      --
      Thank you, Edward Snowden.

      "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
    12. Re:Not the leaks by NicBenjamin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who told Indonesia they're a US ally? I'm quite serious here, every statement I've seen from Obama on the country where he grew up avoids that word very carefully.

      They're a friendly state, and "allied" in the sense that we help each-other achieve certain fairly important tactical goals, but we've got 42 actual Allies. These are countries we are treaty-bound to die for under certain circumstances. In simple practical terms releasing the information that we spy in Indonesia shouldn't surprise anyone. The entire point of having spies is that you use them to spy on people, and if you can't spy on the 3/4 of the world you aren't treaty-bound to protect it was pretty stupid of you to have spies.

      This is actually why the Snowden as traitor thing will simply never go away. No matter what. He could bring George Washington back to life to vouch for him, and nobody who serves the US Government (especially the military) would believe that shit. Some previous leaks advanced the Constitution by stopping mass surveillance. This leak is an attack on the entire practice of spying, and since combat troops find spy-data really useful in their jobs (particularly the bits of their jobs that involve not being killed), Sbnowden will never be able to live this down.

      I don't think that's fair to Snowden. Greenwald is the one making the decisions, and he's clearly decided to go for a) the scoop, and b) attacking the Five Eyes while he still can. I don't blame Greenwald for doing this, it's his job. I don't blame Snowden for being so naive that he wouldn't understand Greenwald's entire job is to out secrets with no regard of whether they should be kept secret.

      But this isn't High School, so fairness is irrelevent. Snowden leaked shit that he really really really should not have, therefore he will be hated everywhere but slashdot.

    13. Re: Not the leaks by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Spying on US citizens isn't a disease, it is merely a symptom of the disease. Spying on allied governments is another symptom. Spying on neutral governments is another symptom. Spying on citizens of other nations is yet another symptom.

      The actual disease is, the desire to know everything, and hence, to control everything.

      When you understand what the NSA's goals are, then you begin to understand how much is wrong. When a doctor learns that a patient has sneezes and sniffles, he doesn't stop there to treat the sneezes and the sniffles. He attempts to learn whether the patient has any more symptoms, then he attempts to make a diagnosis. Prism is just one of many symptoms that go into diagnosing the real problem.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    14. Re: Not the leaks by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Disease is the PATRIOT act. and none of you are demanding to your congress critter to repeal it. Or telling everyone you know how it's what allows them to do this and more and getting other riles up about PATRIOT.

      That is the answer to fix all of it. Yet everyone here wants to piss in the same bowl of cheerios instead of actually doing anything.

      Get off your asses, spread the word and start writing letters.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    15. Re:Not the leaks by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm pretty certain that neither the Australian Signals Directorate nor the NSA engages in any sort of rendition

      How exactly would you know, if everything is secret, and any potentially illegal activity such as rendition is only vetted by an internal secret court?

      As far as NSA goes, I think it's practically a certainty that they have engaged in such practices, since we know for sure that CIA does that. They might not be doing it themselves directly, but rather handing off the names to CIA to reuse the existing infrastructure. If you want to bicker about terminology, okay, so that would be aiding and abetting human trafficking, not human trafficking per se. Big fucking difference.

      In any case, you did not refer to NSA to ASD, but to "police and security agencies" in general. And the thing about this scandal is that, while NSA has been the main target so far, they all benefit from this cloud of secrecy to hide away any clear wrongdoings as well as generally questionable activity.

    16. Re: Not the leaks by iamwahoo2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think that they will need to repeal a lot more than just the Patriot Act at this point. Besides, it is not like operating outside the law has detered these organizations in the past. The only solution is to accept that no government office should be above scrutiny.

  2. Headline fail. by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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
    1. Re:Headline fail. by sd4f · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's basically why Indonesia isn't liking what's happening. The people smuggling trade brings a lot of money into Indonesia; buying boats, bribing police and officials. Cutting it off is going to annoy quite a lot of people.

    2. Re:Headline fail. by sd4f · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not slavery, it's basically illegal migration by claiming to be a refugee. Rather than engage in the orderly process of getting a visa by getting approval of refugee status from the UN, they decide to go to Indonesia, pay a "people smuggler" who will organise things to get them into Australian waters, then ring some government department to send the navy to go pick them up because their little dingy is probably going to sink soon. Before getting picked up, they discard all their identification papers. Once being processed, they claim they're refugees, escaping persecution, ignoring the fact that they would have passed through four or five different countries who aren't persecuting them.

      If they were neighbouring countries, it would be a different matter, but because they're travelling to Australia, I don't think a lot of them are genuine refugees, after all, they're not being persecuted in Indonesia. It's quite a terrible joke what the people smugglers do. If you look on a map to see where 'Christmas Island" is, in relation to Indonesia, you will see why they do it; because it's not ridiculously far from Indonesia and once in Australian waters, our government is compelled to do something. Unlike the US-Mexican border, where many people try to get into the USA and evade detection, in our case, there is absolutely no compulsion to avoid detection, they actually want to be picked up and processed, that way they can get legal entitlements (read: welfare).

      Australia is a well-to-do country, and, while some of the immigrants will be escaping some form of persecution worthy of resettlement, a lot of them are economic migrants who are arriving by boat to avoid having to go through the proper, overly bureaucratic procedures. This is unfair to the people who haven't got the money to pay a smuggler. Apparently it's in the vicinity of ~$AU10,000 that people smugglers charge. It's not an insignificant sum of money.

      With that brief background, my opinion is that the bribing, and general expenses around people smuggling, means that a lot of that cost is parked in the Indonesian economy. A few thousand Australian dollars is a huge amount in Indonesia, considering their largest currency denomination is worth about $AU10. I just get the feeling that the diplomatic problem is that they know it's happening, they know it's wrong, but they're on the beneficiary side to it, so they don't want it to change.

      The NSA has very little to do with this. It's a broader issue with two countries playing politics and politicians trying to win elections. There's that underlying sentiment of the public, and politicians will generally play to nationalistic tendencies, to appear strong. It happened here, and the Indonesians, with an impending election, are doing same.

  3. Scary headline is disingenuous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Indiustrial Espionage contributes to smuggling by FriendlyLurker · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Indiustrial Espionage contributes to smuggling by tdelaney · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is *not* illegal to enter Australia via any means to seek asylum, despite what so many of our politicians say. There are zero "illegal asylum seekers".

      Asylum seekers may well perform illegal acts or use illegal services to get to Australia, but the actual act of coming to Australia to seek asylum is not illegal, whether they come by boat, plane or walk across the ocean floor.

      They may be determined not to be asylum seekers, in which case their continued residence in Australia may be determined to be illegal, but that is separate from the act of coming to Australia to seek asylum.

    2. Re:Indiustrial Espionage contributes to smuggling by colinjl · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is *not* illegal to enter Australia via any means to seek asylum, despite what so many of our politicians say. There are zero "illegal asylum seekers".

      Asylum seekers may well perform illegal acts or use illegal services to get to Australia, but the actual act of coming to Australia to seek asylum is not illegal, whether they come by boat, plane or walk across the ocean floor.

      They may be determined not to be asylum seekers, in which case their continued residence in Australia may be determined to be illegal, but that is separate from the act of coming to Australia to seek asylum.

      Correct! And there are far more people illegally overstaying tourist and other visas than there are asylum seekers risking their lives in unsafe boats to legally flee persecution.

    3. Re:Indiustrial Espionage contributes to smuggling by Falconhell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In your case Cold Fjord, character assassination is not needed, you do it so well yourself by your posts, which are becoming an amusing cliche's to everyone these days.

  5. Re:Mod parent up, not down! by Desler · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.