Incredible, even after seeing up close what America has gone through because of laws like these passed in the wake of 9/11, Australia is going to pass the same sweeping type of surveillance laws? And Australia doesn't even have the excuse of a recent terror attack.
What is going on there, Aussies? How is there enough support to pass these kinds of laws? (or is there?)
I would have thought post-Snowden this would have been out of the question.
The public believes there has been a recent terror attack because the news have been reporting stories of the "home-grown terror threat" of local ISIS supporters planning to execute members of the public.
Over 800 police were involved on raids that ended up detaining 30, and only one individual has been arrested on any terrorism-related charge. The national security threat level was raised, and the general public seems to believe that there is something to fear.
I'm going a bit conspiratard here, but it looks an awful lot like the government just invented a terror threat to gain new powers...
The people who work for our government agencies by and large are looking to protect our country. They feel they need additional powers to better protect us against the threat of islamic extremists.
Given the numbers of people going to participate in terrorist acts in Syria, there may well be valid reasons to request these powers. What makes this hard is that the data to show whether these laws are needed or not is highly classified and is unlikely to be shared with the public.
We as Australians should clearly debate whether the liberties we will lose are acceptable, even if they are only temporary.
For my perspective, I am perfectly happy to reverse the onus of proof on people who travel to known hotspots to demonstrate that they were not involved in terrorist activities.
But hyperbole and conspiracy theories do nothing to improve the level of debate, or even help advance your cause
No power like this is temporary, it becomes normal in short order and eventually considered as foolish to no have had long before... All built on a foundation of lies "temporary" only in name.
From decades of comfortable living, Australia has one of the most politically apathetic populations of any country. Nobody cares. Or, rather, only a very small minority actually cares to think about this stuff.
I suspect this is pretty much the answer. Whether or not the reserve bank will move interest rates on people's mortgages a quarter of a point will get far more news coverage than this.
The average person doesn't care about government snooping. They have a million other worries in their life. Sure, they might watch the news and see a new report on a Snowden leak, but they probably don't feel very strongly about it one way or the other, and so they'll just ignore and go on with their daily life.
I think the average person hears "new terrorism laws", doesn't hear any other words, and is happy because they think it means the government is rounding up brown people and imprisoning them for being brown.
As far as I can tell from mainstream journalism here in Australia, that's the top priority for most people. It doesn't matter if the brown people are immigrants, refugees, terrorists or locals.
That's definitely my experience in attempting to deal with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (trying to get tourist visas for my brown de-facto partner); and also my experience when talking to Australians outside my immediate clique.
I'm an Australian who lives/works overseas but spends quite a bit of time in Australia, and it's quite sickening to return every 6 months to a more polarised, racist, and terrified public -- and it's sure as hell not Al Qaeda, Daesh or any other external group that's causing the problems, it's the mainstream media.
> The average person doesn't care about government snooping.
Last week New Zealand re-elected their head office just days after government spying came to light. The majority of voters don't care. To quote another reddit thread:
> The big reveal was actually that New Zealand was conducting mass surveillance of its population when it's PM and gov't promised it wasn't.[1]
Last year New Zealand was voted 'freest country.'[2]
Mr. Snowden and Mr. Greenwald released proof about plans for mass surveillance, but most voters were satisfied with Prime Minister Key's explanation that the plans were not implemented. If the mass surveillance system was implemented, there wasn't any evidence provided from Mr. Snowden's cache of documents.
And, like you said, the majority of voters didn't care.
Really? I watched the talk, I didn't see any evidence or concrete claim that it was actually implemented. I'm 100% against surveillance, BTW.
I don't think what Snowden and the PM were saying were so incompatible - it's a word game. Sir Bruce Ferguson (ex head of the GCSB) said on RNZ that surveillance is an agent actively looking at data, so "mass surveillance" would be agents actively looking at 4.4M peoples' data. Clearly that's not happening, so John Key can claim that there's no mass surveillance here with no conflict. Snowden said he routinely saw New Zealanders' data, but the Americans can collect all that data with impunity since we're all filthy foreigners to them - there was no evidence presented that it's the GCSB actually collecting it.
This is why surveillance, like tax, needs international laws these days - domestic law is mostly irrelevant unless you're the US. In our case the US can collect our data with no issues since basically all our internet goes through there, and we can just ask them for it if we want it. Everyone can say they're not doing any wrong with no fear of contradiction, and everyone is happy.
Except us, of course, because, you know, we're being constantly monitored.
"Key Activities in Progress: Access
...
New Zealand: Partner cable access program achieves phase 1"
"New Zealand: GCSB's cable access program SPEARGUN phase 1; awaiting new GCSB Act expected July 2013; first metadata probe mid 2013."
Yeah if you play word games the NSA isn't 'collecting' everything either. Since 'collecting' means a human inspecting the content.
Mass collection and permanent storage, automated reasoning and algorithmic processing for keywords/content/intentionality IS surveillance or at least that's a useful definition, anyway.
Surveillance aside, You do realize computers can aggregate data? It doesn't take 4 million agents to look at 4 million citizens (or 2 million, or 1 million...). The data can sit there and be deciphered any number of ways.
Of course I realise that - I'm just pointing out how John Key can probably say what he's saying and not be technically lying. Whether he's telling the whole truth is doubtful, of course.
But of course, it's another example of how the law lags way behind on tech matters - within 5 or 10 years an agent having to actually look at the data will be totally anachronistic. Algorithms can already find patterns more readily than humans can in many cases.
And when they watch the news, there might be a cursory story about the laws passing, but it's so bland and brief it doesn't stick. There's other news to watch like Grand Final preparations or Brownlow fashion aftermath!
Then even if you do care, what can you realistically do?
The big question is why: who gains from this, where is the money flow for enacting this law? Cynically, I can't believe it's just to allow Abbott and Co to sleep more soundly each night.
Rationality is not this government's strength, and they seem to be aligning themselves on the wrong side of many issues. When you have the Rockefeller family switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy and the collapse of coal demand, the Abbott government's stance makes no sense at all.
That's a great question, especially in light of the fact that these laws have unanimous support from Labor. My best guess is that intelligence officials are pushing for the laws to make their jobs easier, and the politicians are afraid of ignoring their advice.
I had considered that, which points to some serious issues with what dirt on they have on politicians to give them that leverage. I wish I could ignore traffic laws as it would make the morning commute shorter, but the laws on due process are there for a reason.
As for Labor, Bill Shorten may as well be a Liberal, though I would have thought Pilbesek would have been more vocal in questioning whether it was necessary. I suspect the Royal Commission into Union funding plays heavily on the level of Labor opposition.
The Greens at least opposed it, but this legislation is a bigger threat to them along with their supporters. It will be interesting if they start branding activists as terrorists and whether it has a chilling effect on groups with serious numbers like GetUp who are a major thorn in the government's side.
They portray this as being in response to the latest terrorism news, but I suspect its drafting began at least 12 months ago.
Yeah feels like it has been rammed through before there is any time for current situation that they have drummed up with the raids and terror level to die down.
Between this and zero debate on whether Australia should be committing forces to yet another Iraq war the major parties power really needs to be cut down. If they just rubber stamp each others policies in these areas and they don't rate highly enough among the public as voting issues it really makes for a scary future.
It's the old classic: liberals (right-wing) are tough on <something!> and are the only ones who can be.
And so Labor (left-wing) are cowed into silence because they're not sure they want to fight that one out in the media (which, isn't unfair - if anything happens it's political suicide).
What you do have to remember though is no one really expected the Abbott government to be this insane. A ton of people who voted "not labor" were expecting more along the lines of he tries not to rock the boat too much. Not the "dismantle social welfare, raise fees on everything, screw the healthcare system...what I'm unpopular now? TERRORISM! TERRORISTS EVERYWHERE!"
A prominent liberal economist (I believe Dean Baker) once portrayed the difference between "Conservative" and "Liberal" as being paternal vs maternal in regard to Government's relationship to tax payers. The maternal was more nurturing providing a base of services to enable opportunity, where the paternal way was basically "man up" and get out there and help yourself.
Is it just about corporate espionage? They seem to be doing just fine as it is with current powers.
This legislation is something else. On one hand the new term ASIO affiliate would appear to extend Australian legal coverage to anyone ASIO determines to be operating in a recognised role. This would allow for example five-eyes partners to legally spy on Australians while ASIO can deny involvement of its employees.
The other possibility is that they are scared. The world is changing and consumers are starting to feel the pinch of 40 years of eroding job security and stagnating real wages. These heightened powers would give them legal powers to monitor and disrupt any internal dissent before it has a chance to disrupt the corporate structures. Good luck to starting any grass roots campaign that seeks to change the system.
No, it's political as well. Imagine knowing the talking points and agendas of politicians before an international political gathering. The Cuban Twitter program is another example of non-corporate use. Sabotage and owning of infrastructure as a deterrent is also popular.
Corporate espionage is huge, though. China is involved with enormous amounts of industrial espionage and the NSA specifies the Bureau of Commerce as a primary customer.
You may remember online porn browsing habits are collected by the NSA to discredit and blackmail leaders. Furthermore MINERVA and sister programs are used to seed and quiet dissent by serving targeted online advertisements and content. Many study the concept of "social contagion" - the idea that influencing a few key people who are key social figures can influence the behavior and beliefs of groups. PHK does a great job describing how problematic technological and incendiary political discussions are derailed (http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org//2014/Janson/Sund...).
Glenn Greenwald, Snowden and Julian Assange spoke eloquently about how NZ made international promises to get surveillance bills passed years in advance of bringing it to a vote. When a country manipulates its people (like Australia is doing now) to get them to vote a certain way, you're seeing an awful lot of the "Republic" in the term "Republican Democracy".
Other readers, please see my other comment in this comment section about the Snowden Leaks and the NSA wrt terrorism and how the contents of the leaks combined with other sources unilaterally refute the idea that the intelligence apparatuses are being used for (or indeed are even useful weapons for) counterterroism.
Everyone I know is opposed to most of what's going on here; but the approval rating of the government is going up in response to a few hyperinflated terrorist threats - so that's pretty disturbing.
The funny thing is that the country is so safe and free from terrorism, that when we finally do have a couple of deaths from an attack, we're going to lose our collective marbles and demand even tougher laws.
What is going on there, Aussies? How is there enough support to pass these kinds of laws? (or is there?)
I would have thought post-Snowden this would have been out of the question.