Australia just became a National Security State

Warrigal

Warrigal

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Sydney, Australia
From the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...tralia-just-became-a-national-security-state/
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Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had some “regrettable” news. It was late last month, Australia had just thwarted an Islamic State plot to behead random Australians, and the prime minister’s tone was somber. “Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we’re used to, and more inconvenience than we would like,” he told the country’s parliament. “Regrettably for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift.”

Consider the balanced shifted. Since those remarks, Australia has endowed its nation’s intelligence agencies with their most significant expansion of powers in 35 years, legalized the surveillance of the entire Australian Internet with one warrant, threatened whistleblowers and journalists with 10-year prison terms if they publicize classified information, and is mulling a new law that makes it easier to detain Australians without charge and subject them to “coercive questioning.”

Taken together, these are sweeping changes in a nation generally considered one of the most liberal in the world — and mark a profound consequence of the emergence of the Islamic State, which has lured scores of Australians to its cause and threatened the country several times in recent weeks.

“It was about these violent random acts,” the Australian quoted the federal police chief saying following one threat. “It’s that random nature that had to prompt us to do something today. We could no longer be comfortable that we could protect the community.”

Times of panic have long driven countries to mortgage civil liberties for a broader sense of security. The United States passed the Espionage Act shortly after entering World War I, then interned more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, then passed the Patriot Act following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — and is now mired in a national debate on the National Security Agency’s sprawling surveillance.

Even by those standards, however, critics warn Australia is heading into unsure territory. While the United States engaged in a sweeping surveillance program to thwart terrorists and imprisoned detainees without charge, the Constitution enabled challenges to the system, many of which have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But “Australia does not have a written Bill of Rights in its Constitution, making its freedom-abridging laws even harder to challenge in court,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil-liberties advocate, said in a statement. It called the just-passed measures a “week in history when it became easier for the Australian government to surveil and manipulate the Internet at will.”

The nuts and bolts of the recently-passed bill: It allows authorities to access data from computers with a warrant, but expands the definition of “computer” to include “one or more computer networks.” This, analysts warned, means that Australian law enforcement agencies can now monitor the entire Internet with one warrant — because the Internet is really just one big computer network.

“The drafting of this is so vague that it really could be extended,” Jon Lawrence of Electronic Frontiers Australia, a nonprofit digital-rights advocate, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “A network can essentially be anything from three computers on a Wi-Fi modem to potentially an entire corporate network or an entire Internet service provider network or at the extreme end, the whole Internet.”

Then it granted criminal and civil immunity to law enforcement agents who may break the law in the course of the work as long as those prospective crimes don’t cause death, serious injury, sexual harm or significant property damage. The bill also made it an offense, punishable by 10 years in prison, for anyone — whistleblower, journalist or otherwise — to “disclose information” relating “to a special intelligence operation.”

Australia’s press corps just about went apoplectic over that one. Calling it an “unprecedented clause,” an alliance of Australian media companies released a joint statement, denouncing it. “The insertion of [the] proposed section … could potentially see journalists jailed for undertaking and discharging their legitimate role in a modern democratic society — reporting in the public interest,” the statement said. “Such an approach is untenable.”

And now, Australian authorities will consider a proposed national security law that will significantly increase authorities’ powers to detain people without charge. According to the Guardian, the law would hasten a complicated process so that “people can essentially be held without contact with the outside world, may lose the right to silence and may be subject to coercive questioning.”

Australian security agencies cheered the new strident law in a letter to Parliament: “There are realistic and credible circumstances in which it may be necessary to conduct coercive questioning of a person for the purpose of gathering intelligence about a terrorism offense.”

Not everyone is so enthused — with that law, or the others. Given the rise of the Islamic State, some critics, even while bemoaning the passage of the draconian measures, have expressed resignation.

“When will it all end?” a Sydney Morning Herald opinion column asked. “Will these national securities laws ever be repealed? Probably never. The ‘war on terrorism’ appears endless. … The national security state is empowered, cashed-up and here to stay.”


Terrence McCoy is a foreign affairs writer at the Washington Post. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Cambodia and studied international politics at Columbia University.
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Yep, I reckon I'm on the list.
Have been ever since I wrote a letter to PM John Howard urging him not to commit us to war in Iraq.
 

Love how the guy describes it as an "inconvenience" which is much softer way of saying you are screwed, we can do what we want.

It's ISIS today tomorrow it could be Disney characters. And right now all the intelligence and tactics are being to fight the big bad of ISIS but what becomes of those same tactics and intelligence stock pile of information when there is no ISIS. Don't think they'll be put on a shelf someone where. Even worse are the current crop of government types early in their career, these will be on the only tactics and policy they know, they literally won't know any better.
 
Ameriscot said:
Uh oh. My husband has a lot of relatives in Oz and none of them like Tony Abbott. Hope they don't get harassed.
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:rofl: Don't worry, Ameriscot.
Tony has a lot of people who don't like him but that's nothing unusual over here.
Pollie bashing is just another sport and no Aussie has ever been locked up for taking part in a national sport.

At the moment the people complaining most bitterly about the new legislation are the journalists and civil libertarians.
Muslims are worried but they have been for a long time. They really shouldn't be.

After all the raids that went on recently, just one man was charged with something, and it wasn't terrorism.
Storm in a teacup really although I still think the police had cause and probably did disrupt something.
 
We had some fairly draconian legislation passed after 911. It was never used.
I don't expect we will be feeling the jackboot on our necks any time soon.
 
Don't be too sure. Once Cheney gets get there to consult "the gloves" could be coming off and a Gitmo may be coming to OZ soon...
 
Shirt front is something that occurs in Aussie Rules football.
"Shirtfront" is an AFL term used to describe a collision between two players, where one player is hit "front-on" by another player coming from the opposite direction. It is usually performed in an aggressive manner, often with the aggressor leaping into the air to forcefully collide with an unsuspecting and unprotected victim.

Sometimes the victim will have his head down trying to gather the ball when he is suddenly hit.
The effects or injury of the illegal act can be significant for the victim, while the aggressor gives away a "free kick" during the game and also runs the risk of being suspended for multiple games by the AFL tribunal system.

The term "shirtfront" is now considered old-fashioned, with all collisions of that nature evolving into a general category called "the bump".


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...imir-putin-20141013-115hfz.html#ixzz3G7PDee8t


Tony Abbott is from NSW and knows little about AFL (or anything else for that matter). He probably thought that it meant grabbing Putin by the front of his shirt and glaring at him with menace.

Either way, it was a ridiculous thing to say. The Russian Ambassador over here is quite nonplussed and I gather he thinks Putin would put TA on the canvas quicksmart.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...hirtfront-vladimir-putin-20141014-115pp0.html
 
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