How Australia’s New ‘Anti-Terror’ Censorship Law Could Cover Up Botched Intelligence Operations
By Glyn Moody | Techdirt | October 13, 2014
As we reported a few weeks ago, Australia has passed a dreadful “anti-terror” law that not only allows the authorities to monitor the entire Internet in that country with a single warrant, but also threatens 10 years of jail time for anyone who “recklessly” discloses information that relates to a “special intelligence operation.” But what exactly will that mean in practice? Elizabeth Oshea, writing in the Overland journal, has put together a great article fleshing things out. Here’s her introduction:
The parliament has passed legislation that permits the Attorney General to authorise certain activities of ASIO and affiliates as ‘special intelligence operations’. We can only assume that ASIO will seek such authorisation when its operatives plan to break the criminal or civil law — the whole point of authorising an operation as a special intelligence operation is that participants will be immune from the consequences of their unlawfulness. It will also be a criminal act to disclose information about these operations.
So the Australian government can designate activities of its spy services as “special intelligence operations,” which may well be illegal, and then it becomes a criminal act to disclose anything about those operations, however bad they are. Indeed, that even seems to include operations that result in death, as Oshea explains in one of her examples of what could happen under the new law:
A botched operation is conducted that results in the death of an innocent bystander (credit this suggestion to the former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor). Note that if a person with three children dies as a result of a failure to take reasonable care, her family will be unable to make a claim for the cost of raising her dependents. If she is maimed but not killed, she will be unable to make a claim for the cost of her medical care, lost earnings, pain and suffering, and the cost of raising her dependents.
That’s a hypothetical case, but Oshea also lists a number of incidents that have already occurred, but which are likely to be covered by the new law — and would thus become impossible to write about. Here are a couple of them, with links to the real-life cases:
Agents and officers raid a couple in their home and hold them captive at gunpoint for an hour, only leaving when they discovered they were at the wrong address. The couple will have no entitlement to compensation for any property or personal damage arising from imprisonment, trespass and assault.
Agents kidnap and falsely imprison a young medical student. They attempt to coerce answers from him, making threats that go beyond what is permitted by the relevant search warrant.
There’s more of the same, listing previously-reported incidents that would probably be censored in future. The post also explores legislative proposals that are equally disturbing:
The parliament is considering laws that will punish people with life imprisonment for a range of new offences associated with ‘subverting society’ (which is a component of the new definition of ‘engaging in hostile activities’). The law contains a defence of advocacy, protest, dissent or industrial action, but it is very unclear how these would be applied.
Here’s the kind of thing that might get you life imprisonment in Australia in the future:
Leaking materials taken from government information systems that demonstrate serious wrongdoing (as per Manning or Snowden).
Organising and engaging in denial of service attacks – the online equivalent of a sit in – against government websites, such as that of the President, Prime Minister, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Stock Exchange.
There’s also an explanation of what data retention might mean for the public. All in all, it’s a valuable guide to some of the seriously bad stuff that Australia is doing. Let’s just hope that other countries don’t take it as a blueprint.
Follow @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Crackdown on freedoms? Australian Senate passes draconian anti-terror laws
RT | September 26, 2014
Australia’s senate has endorsed new anti-terror laws that will grant its intelligence agency the right to spy on any citizen with just a warrant, while journalists and whistleblowers “recklessly” exposing special ops can face up to 10 years in jail.
The anti-terror laws, which cleared the Australian Senate on Thursday – and will almost certainly pass the House of Representatives on Tuesday – grants extraordinary powers to the nation’s spying agency, ASIO, to effectively monitor the entire Australian internet.
The National Security Legislation Amendment Bill allows one warrant to give the ASIO access to a limitless number of computers on a computer network when attempting to monitor a target. It also allows for the content of communications to be stored – while ASIO agents will be allowed to copy, delete, or modify the data on any of the computers it has a warrant to spy on.
Critics of the law say it effectively allows the entire internet to be monitored as it is a ‘network of networks’ and the bill doesn’t define a computer network.
Moreover, under the new law, anyone identifying ASIO agents or disclosing the information related to a special intelligence operation faces up to 10 years in jail. To be found guilty one would only need to be proven to be “reckless as to whether the disclosure of the information will endanger the health or safety of any person or prejudice the effective conduct of an SIO.”
In addition, any operation can be declared “special” by an ASIO officer, and a person may never know which investigation he allegedly obstructed and being put on trial for – because it is a secret one.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance said the law could have a freezing effect on national security reporting, although Senator George Brandis and the government’s Attorney General, said the laws didn’t target journalists but instead went after people who leak classified information like the former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The new laws were introduced to target government whistleblowers, and over growing concerns about the Islamic State jihadists who threatened to directly target Westerners including Australians.
“Regrettably, for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a statement on Monday.
Voting against the measure in the 44-12 vote was Australian Green party Senator Scott Ludlam who added an amendment limiting the number of computers to 20 to be searched at any one time, which failed to gain support.
“What we’ve seen [tonight] is I think a scary, disproportionate and unnecessary expansion of coercive surveillance powers that will not make anybody any safer but that affect freedoms that have been quite hard fought for and hard won over a period of decades,” Senator Ludlam told Fairfax Media.
Jewish Lobby got journalist fired over a ‘Gaza Cartoon’
Rehmat’s World | August 7, 2014
![remote+control+bombing+of+Gaza[1]](https://rehmat1.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/remotecontrolbombingofgaza1.jpg)
Mike Carlton, 68, Australia’s veteran journalist and author, has resigned after his employer Sydney Morning Herald suspended him under pressure from country’s powerful Jewish Lobby.
Australian Jewish groups had slammed the newspaper over Carlton’s July 26 column in which he accused the Zionist entity of “waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population”. The column was accompanied by a cartoon (shown above), which was widely condemned as “anti-Jew” by leaders of country’s organized Jewry which also threatened to take legal action against the newspaper under country’s “Hate Law”.
Initially, the newspaper defended the cartoon, explaining that Le Lievre’s drawing was inspired by “news photographs of Israeli Jews seated in chairs and lounges, observing the Israeli shelling of Gaza.”
But then, as expected, the Jewish Lobby invoked the “Six Million Died” smoking gun to demonize the newspaper. The Australian Jewish News wrote: “Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ on Israel’s part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by ‘a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.’ “This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race – a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.”
If I were Carlton, I would have responded: “If the shoes fit, wear them.”
However, in order to avoid further backlash from the Jewish community and the pro-Israel Tony Abbott government, on August 3, Herald published an editorial saying it “unreservedly apologizes” for any hurt caused to the Jewish community. The paper also removed the cartoon based on facts from its website. Dr. Danny Lamm, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia welcomed paper’s apology and departure of anti-Semite Mike Carlton.
The Sydney Morning Herald is one of the 30% Australian media which is not owned by the Crypto-Jew billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd..
On October 13, 2010 America’s highest paid Israeli lobbyist Abraham Foxman (nearly $700,000 per year) awarded Murdoch his organization’s (ADL) highest award for looking after Israeli interests through his media empire.
Former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, and former foreign minister, Robert John Carr have claimed that country’s organized Jewry runs Australia.
Who is hit hardest by Russia’s trade ban?
RT | August 8, 2014
Germany and Poland will lose the most trade with Russia, and neighboring Finland and Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia will lose a bigger proportion of their GDP. Norway will see fish sales to Russia disappear, and US damages would be very limited.
Russia has banned imports of fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and dairy products from the 28 countries of the EU, the US, Canada, Norway, and Australia for one year.
EU trade is heavily dependent on Russian food imports. Last year Russia bought $16 billion worth of food from the bloc, or about 10 percent of total exports, according to Eurostat.
In terms of losses, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands- the top three EU food suppliers to Russia in 2013 – will be hit hardest. Food for Russia makes up around 3.3 percent of total German exports.
French Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll said his government is already working together with Germany and Poland to reach a coordinated policy on the new Russian sanction regime.
Last year, Ireland exported €4.5 million worth of cheese to Russia, and not being able to do so this year is a big worry, Simon Coveney, the country’s agriculture minister, said.
Farmers across Europe could face big losses if they aren’t able to find alternative markets for their goods, especially fruit and vegetables.
Some are already demanding their governments provide compensation for lost revenue.
“If there isn’t a sufficient market, prices will go down, and we don’t know if we can cover the costs of production, because it is so expensive,” Jose Emilio Bofi, an orange farmer in Spain, told RT.
Australian Security Agencies Target “SyrianGirl” Mimi Al-Laham
By Brandon Turbeville | Activist Post | June 12, 2014
In the Orwellian world of post 9/11 hysteria and the Global War On Terror, speaking truth is a revolutionary act. Indeed, such is evidenced by the fact that speaking out against terrorism is now enough to cause you to be labeled as a supporter of terrorism. At least, that is, in certain instances.
This is particularly the case with Mimi Al-Laham, (aka SyrianGirl), a young Syrian woman who has been active on YouTube, social media, and her own website in speaking out about the Western-backed destabilization of Syria.
Laham has consistently denounced the death squads operating inside Syria as terrorists and agents of the West as well as identified the so-called rebellion as being nothing more than a Western – organized, funded, and directed campaign against the Syrian government , all documented fact. For more information on this topic, please see my book, The Road To Damascus, The Anglo-American Assault On Syria.
However, her statements against terrorism, beheadings, rapes, slavery, and wholesale slaughter have caused her to be labelled as a potential “extremist” and purveyor of “extremist rhetoric.” For that reason, Australian security agencies have been closely monitoring Laham’s online statements and, presumably, much more than that.
Australian Institute of Criminology’s Shandon Harris-Hogan said that such statements and online behavior should be watched for “signs of an escalation in rhetoric or calls for violence” and that “When it crosses that line, particularly into encouraging, facilitating or preparing for violence, that’s when it’s going to particularly hit the radar of security services.
Harris-Hogan also categorized Laham’s statements as anti-US and anti-Israel.
Of course, by “anti-US ,” Harris-Hogan means anti-imperialist and anti-terrorist. Anyone familiar with Laham’s work will know that she is not anti-American, although she opposes the United States’ involvement in Syrian affairs, the funding of savage terrorists to overthrow the secular government of Syria, and the numerous attempts at direct invasion.
As for being anti-Israel, such a position is entirely within reason, since Israel itself was never anything more than a false construction with political and geopolitical goals in mind from the very beginning. In 2014, however, being anti-Israel is equated with being anti-semitic, a cynical and inaccurate propaganda technique to prevent criticism of the settler state. Regardless, Laham has repeatedly opposed anti-semitic views in her videos.
Still, Harris-Hogan stated that Laham had been monitored for 18 months.
Although not technically the “West,” Australia is every bit the Orwellian nightmare as the United States, Britain, and the rest of Europe. Indeed, only in the world of doublethink can one be accused of violent extremism by repeatedly denouncing it. The monitoring of Laham’s online work and political activism, while not surprising, is but one more example of the surveillance state and the crackdown on dissent worldwide
We can only hope that, if the Australian authorities continue to monitor Mimi Al-Laham’s work, that they learn something in the process.
Former Australian foreign minister exposes Zionist lobby power
By Brandon Martinez | April 15, 2014
A controversy is swirling in Australia involving a former foreign minister and the country’s influential Zionist lobby.
Bob Carr, who served as Australia’s foreign minister in the administration of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, recently published a memoir detailing his experiences on the job. In the book Carr hones in on the Israeli lobby, which he says has “extraordinary” and “unhealthy” influence in Australian politics and had a “direct line” into the decision-making processes of the Gillard administration. Not only is Organized Zionism’s grip on Australia unhealthy, it is dangerous and corrosive.
In recent media interviews Carr has said that Gillard overruled his suggestion that Australia not block the Palestinian bid to attain upgraded ‘non-member observer state’ status at the United Nations in 2012 and that this was a direct result of the Zionist lobby’s pull on the former prime minister. Carr also revealed that Gillard was so immovable in her pro-Israel partisanship that she impeded him from making routine statements of concern about the growth and expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank because it would upset the Zionist lobby.
When asked by ABC (Australia) reporter Sarah Ferguson how such a small group of people could wield so much power, Carr mentioned the significant amount of political campaign donations stemming from Zionist sources as well as the Zionist lobby’s courting of Australian politicians and journalists by sponsoring all-expenses-paid-for trips to Israel. Carr accused Gillard of “subcontracting” Australia’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the Middle East to her wealthy Jewish backers.
In 2013 Gillard received the Jerusalem Prize for her unwavering support of the Zionist apartheid state and its terroristic policies. Members of Australia’s main Zionist groups praised Gillard for her “ongoing support of the aspirations of Israel’s people” and noted that she “empathises with the Jewish people and our connection with the land of Israel.” “[T]he Zionist movement of Australia are honoured to be able to demonstrate our gratitude and respect for Ms Gillard’s many years as an unstinting supporter of the Jewish and Zionist cause,” said Sam Tatarka, president of the Zionist Council of Victoria.
Gillard unveiled her brazen Jewish exceptionalist mentality during a visit to the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne in 2012, where she stated that the holocaust was “the greatest crime humanity has ever known.” It is unlikely that Gillard is unaware of the more than 60 million non-Jews who perished during the Second World War, or of the millions of Russian and Ukrainian Christians killed by Jewish Bolsheviks throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Revealing her callous and cold-blooded outlook, Gillard ignores those victims because recognizing their suffering would undermine the racist Talmudic myth that Jews are the world’s ultimate and perennial victims.
The reaction of Australia’s Zionist lobby to Bob Carr’s revelations has been predictably lame. The Zionist kingpin Mark Leibler of the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council dismissed Carr’s exposition about “The Lobby” as a “figment of his imagination.” When faced with truths about their undue influence, the Zionists merely sneer at and heap ridicule upon those like Carr who are brave enough to state the obvious.
Former American politicians have expressed similar sentiments to Carr’s. Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman from Georgia, said that she was ousted from congress by the Israeli lobby because of her outspoken support of the Palestinians. She once told an interviewer that 99 per cent of members of the US congress are veritable servants of Zionist interests. Former congressman Paul Findley wrote a book about the enormous power of Israel’s lobby in the US entitled They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.
Another former congressman, James Traficant, told Greta van Susteren of Fox News that Israel and its supporters in the US have “a powerful stranglehold” over the American government. “We’re conducting the expansionist policy of Israel and everyone’s too afraid to say it,” remarked Traficant in reference to the disastrous Iraq war.
The Zionists, said Traficant, “control both members of the House… and the Senate. They have us involved in wars in which we have little or no interest.” These Zionist elements “control much of the media [and] control much of the commerce of the country,” Traficant stressed. The late Helen Thomas, a renowned American journalist and White House correspondent, echoed Traficant’s perspective, telling an audience in Detroit that “congress, the White House, Hollywood, and Wall Street are owned by Zionists. No question in my opinion.”
The credible assertions of these Washington insiders have been validated by a number of boastful Jewish writers themselves. One such braggart was Elad Nehorai who penned an op-ed for the Times of Israel wherein he implored his fellow Zionists to be more honest about their influence as a point of pride. “Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene,” wrote Nehorai. The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC, observed Nehorai, “was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably.” That organization is “practically the equivalent of the Elders of Zion” he added. “The truth is,” Nehorai conceded, “the anti-Semites got it right… We own a whole freaking country.”
Nehorai’s supremacist musings seem to have been inspired by a 2008 Los Angeles Times article authored by Joel Stein. In that piece, titled “Who Controls Hollywood? C’mon,” Stein bragged candidly about Jewish power in Hollywood, stating that “Jews totally run Hollywood” and calling Americans “dumb” for not recognizing that fact. “As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood,” Stein gloated. “But I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.”
The very fact that discussing Zionist influence is taboo in Western societies is in and of itself an indication of their pervasive power. “To find out where the power lies, ask whom you cannot criticize,” as the wise credo goes. The unusual dichotomy that Zionists like Stein and Nehorai are able to say the things quoted above without any repercussions, while non-Jews who have made comparable assertions are castigated as anti-Semites, haters and conspiracy theorists, underscores the Talmudic double standard that permeates much of public discourse on this important issue.
However, the tide is slowly but surely turning, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Zionists cannot keep a lid on their intrigues any longer.
Brandon Martinez can contacted at martinezperspective@hotmail.com.
The Zionist Lobby Under Fire in Oz
By Brian McKinlay | CounterPunch | April 11, 2014
Australians have been witness to a remarkable conflict in recent days in which their former Foreign Minister Bob Carr denounced the Jewish Lobby and his former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, over the whole series of questions re Australian policy and the demands of Israel and the local Jewish Lobby.
Nothing quite like it has ever been seen or heard before in Australia.
Carr has just published his dairy as Foreign Minister during 2013.
He came to that office in the last year of a sorely troubled Labor Government inheriting the job from Kevin Rudd,a former Prime Minister who took over the Foreign Minister’s portfolio after he, Rudd, was deposed as P.M, but then resigned after more turmoil in the Labor Party.
Carr was no newcomer. Once Premier for 10 years of NSW, the largest state, and seen as a smooth operator if fairly right-wing in his policies and his views, he was seen by many as a likely winner in the new job, in a Government in deep trouble.
A scholar of note, he has written much on one of his favourite topics, American History, with a very good book on the origins of the American Republic.
He came to the Senate, after several years in retirement, as the Government of Julia Gillard lurched from crisis to crisis. It was a job he craved and he got a seat in the Senate and then joined Gillard’s cabinet, where much was expected of him.
The crisis came in the last months of Gillard’s term when the question of Palestinian membership of UNESCO came up for consideration. Gillard was a notorious Zionist from the very inception of her 3-year term, and she was well know for her great support, without any conditions, for Israel. She had links with the Israeli Embassy in Canberra and the Zionist Lobby which also had a fifth column inside the Labor Party, which too has, like it’s US counterpart the Democrats, always had links with the Jewish Lobby.
When Deputy Prime Minister after 2007 Gillard went with a delegation to Israel as guest of a Melbourne Jewish millionaire who organises such events and who provided a job for her hairdresser partner as a salesman for his property empire.
She made no effort while there to visit or see the conditions of the Palestinian people… and one may surmise that her Israeli hosts would have seen to that aspect of her visit. In 2010 she replaced the disastrous Rudd as PM in a” palace coup”, and narrowly won power in a closely divided Parliament.
Her support for Israel never faltered, but when Carr became Foreign Minister in 2013 he had a wider view of the whole Middle East.
We know now that the conflict between Gillard and Carr arose over Israeli matters and appropriate policies in the UN.
Carr was told not to make any criticism of the Settlements on the West Bank, which he wished to do, and when the UNESCO issue arose, he was told to vote (as always) with the USA and Israel. Carr knew the widespread support of Europeans elsewhere in the Asian region for seating the Palestinians in UNESCO. Gillard insisted that he vote with Israel.
Carr demurred and challenged Gillard and then took the matter to the Labor Party Caucus… all members of the federal parliament were then to vote on the matter. Gillard was angry, and a bitter conflict developed.
Carr won out when a majority of the Labor Caucus voted for an Australian abstention in the UN. Carr would have preferred a YES vote but this was a compromise that Gillard, even as P.M. was forced to except she still wanted a NO vote against Palestinian admission, but failed to carry the party.
The Jewish Lobby was outraged and condemned the decision, and Carr for bringing it on. Carr went ahead and abstained, and the vote admitted the Palestinians with a huge margin anyway. The rift between Gillard and Carr was never healed.
Now after the Labor Government’s defeat, Carr is once again in retirement, and his published diary tells the whole story re UNESCO, and the power of the Zionists over Gillard, albeit she was their willing ally.
Not surprisingly he has infuriated the Jewish Lobby and Carr has been denounced in the harshest terms by the very Zionists who run the Lobby, who have described him as “Gillard’s worst appointment” and as “Australia’s worst Foreign Minister.” Carr is known as a tolerant and outgoing man, but none-the-less a Lobby critic has described him as a “bigot”, all in line with the usual Zionist tactics in such cases.
He has replied in kind, saying the Lobby was virtually contracted by Gillard to run Australia’s Middle East policies.
Carr a robust politician has fired back with a furious blast to the Lobby, saying it’s very right-wing and intrusive, and the battle rages now in the media. The Lobby must regret all this as for the first time a senior Labor politician has let the cat out of the bag, re the Lobby.
It will be difficult to get it in that bag again.
There is no word on all this from ex-PM Gillard. She, at the moment, is in Israel.
Brian McKinlay is an Australian Labor Historian who lives in Melbourne and has written widely on Australian history, notably of the Labor Movement, being the author of a 3- volume documentary history of Australian Labor and trade union and radical groups.
Spy agencies seek to store Aussies’ web-browsing histories, end encryption
RT | March 18, 2014
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) is pushing for laws that would make telecommunications companies retain their customers’ web-browsing data, as well as forcing web users to decrypt encrypted messages.
In these post-Snowden times, when people around the world are furious over revelations that their communications’ ‘metadata’ has been scooped up by a vast, US-built surveillance network, Australia’s ASIO is looking to further bolster its phishing powers, as opposed to scaling them back as many people clearly favor.
With no loss of irony, the agency is pointing to the sensational case of Edward Snowden – the former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower who last year departed from US shores with thousands of files on the American spy program – to expedite the process of creating a data-retention regime that would store users’ data for two years, or possibly longer.
“These changes are becoming far more significant in the security environment following the leaks of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden,” ASIO said in its parliamentary submission to modify the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act.
Although retaining ‘content’ data has been declared off-limits to the surveillance program, several security agencies, including the Northern Territory Police and Victoria Police, want web-browsing histories stored.
Metadata gathered on web-browsing would include an IP address and the IP addresses of web servers visited, or uniform resource locators (URLs) and the time at which they were visited. Email metadata, meanwhile, might include information such as addresses, times and the subject field.
Australia’s intelligence agencies accessed metadata 330,640 times during criminal and financial investigations in 2012-13, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Northern Territory Police said in its submission that meta-data found in browser histories were “as important to capture as telephone records”.
Additionally, the agency is calling for enhanced powers to sift intelligence data from emails and social media sites, as well as forcing web users to decrypt encrypted material if requested to do so by the spy agency.
“Under this approach, the person receiving a notice would be required to provide ‘information or assistance’ to place information obtained under the warrant into an intelligible form,” the submission said.
“The person would not be required to hand over copies of the communication in an intelligible form, and a notice would not compel a person to do something which they are not reasonably capable of doing. Failure to comply with a notice would constitute a criminal offense, consistent with the Crimes Act.”
ASIO points to the Snowden leaks, and the increased popularity of encryption technology on the internet, as a reason for resisting changes.
“In direct response to these leaks, the technology industry is driving the development of new internet standards with the goal of having all web activity encrypted, which will make the challenges of traditional telecommunications interception for necessary national security purposes far more complex.”
However, a number of organizations, including the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, the communications lobby group, warned against widening surveillance capabilities and what it means for privacy rights.
“The associations also note that a data retention scheme will involve an increased risk to the privacy of Australians and provide an incentive to hackers and criminals. Data retention is at odds with the prevailing policy to maximize and protect privacy and minimize the data held by organizations,” the submission said.
“Industry believes it is generally preferable for consumers that telecommunications service providers retain the least amount of data necessary to provision, maintain and bill for services.”
ASIO is not only fighting back against any restrictions on its work, it is actually calling for more spying powers.
For example, when the Australian Law Reform Commission argued for the creation of a “public interest monitor” to assert some guidelines on intelligence gathering, ASIO said it “has reservations about this, if the effect would be simply to insert yet another approval step into the authorization of a TI warrant.”
Meanwhile, the Australian Federal Police said it wanted to store data “to ensure a national and systematic approach is taken to safeguarding the ongoing availability of telecommunications data for legitimate, investigative purposes.” At the same time, however, it admitted work needed to be done to understand what type of data got retained and for how long.
Electronic Frontiers Australia, the online rights group, is lobbying against the amendments, arguing that storing web meta-data was “an ineffective method to curb terrorism.”
“The ease with which data retention regimes can be evaded is grossly disproportionate to the cost and security concerns of the data retention regime,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Coalition government’s Attorney-General George Brandis said on Monday that the government was “not currently considering any proposal relating to data retention” despite the push from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said Labor was waiting for the Coalition’s response to an inquiry that had opened in June of last year before it announces its position.
“There was insufficient time while Labor was in office to formulate a considered response to the matters discussed in the Committee’s report, including the merits of a data retention scheme,” Dreyfus said, as quoted by the paper.
Colonial Partners in Israel’s Crimes
By Vacy Vlazna | Intifada-Palestine | January 25, 2014
“Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence” Edward Said
Is it just me, or do you also see a thread of colonial superiority and racism binding US, Australia, Canada to Israel?
Think about it. All are ex-British colonies and like Israel, have a shameful history of genocide committed against their respective Indigenous Peoples and all continue to treat their First Peoples as third class citizens.
I can’t speak for the US and Canada, but, apart from realpolitik and arms trade, an underlying colonial arrogance goes a long way to explain why my ‘civilised’ ‘democratic’ Australian government is complicit in granting Israel impunity to daily perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity against generations of Palestinian families.
The tragic past and near narratives of the suffering of unspeakable colonial atrocities against Indigenous Palestinians and Indigenous Australians bear close resemblance and are written in blood and great injustice.
Just as Israel’s Independence Day and the Palestinian Nakba Day (in remembrance of deportation and dispossession) have a bloody symbiosis, Australia Day or Invasion Day, on the 26th January, is celebrated or mourned according to the victors or the vanquished.
Both Israeli and British colonists took the ‘terra nullius’ doctrine – empty land’ approach to justify their brutal occupations and wholesale land theft of Palestine and Australia. Israel boasts it made the desert bloom though for centuries Palestine traded in olives, oil, quinces, pinenuts, figs, carob, cotton, dates, indigo, artichokes, citrus fruit, almonds, mint sumach and much more. In Australia the Aborigines maintained their food supply with a sophisticated management of the land with fire.
The island, named Australia by British invaders and colonists, was home to almost a million peoples of, at least, 200 nations that traced their ancestry back 60 millennia along spiritual songlines of the land to the Dreaming – to Creation.
The imperial genocidal wars and massacres (guns vs spears) such as those at Hawksbury, Nepean Richmond Hill, Risdon Cove, Appin, Bathurst, Port Phillip, Swan River (Battle of Pinjarra), Gravesend, Vinegar Hill, Myall Creek, Kinroy, Rufus R, Long lagoon, Dawson River, Kalkadoon, Cape Grim, The Black war, McKinley River, West Kimberely resisted by Aboriginal warriors like Pemulwuy, Winradyne, Multuggerah, Yagan, Jandamarra as well as starvation and western diseases decimated the dispossessed Aboriginal population to about 70,000 by 1920.
By then violent genocide was replaced by the more covert cultural genocide, or the genocide of indigeneity, through the government policy of assimilation intended to eradicate indigenous identity by cruelly and systematically destroying connections to family, the tribe and ancestral lands.
Australia’s First Peoples were marginalised onto reservations and missions, restricted entry into white towns, exploited as unpaid slave labour, their indigenous languages and sacred rituals forbidden, and mixed blood children (The Stolen Generations) were forcibly kidnapped from their parents for resocialisation – ie to be made ‘white’.
Assimilation is where Australia, USA and Canada differ with Israel. The assimilation of Palestinians for Israel is an anathema. The Zionist goal is a pure Jewish state, rid of all Palestinians from the river to the sea. The whole of historic Palestine, home to the Chosen People is a goal pursued with, ironically, an ideological fervour akin to Hitler’s Herrenrasse and Germanisation aspirations. Ergo, Israel perpetrates a slow motion brutal genocide and a relentless push of Palestinians over the exile cliff.
Until the 1967 Referendum, Aborigines were government property: “The right to choose a marriage partner, to be legally responsible for one’s own children, to move about the state and to socialise with non-Aboriginal Australians, were just some of the rights which Aboriginal people did not have.”
Sound familiar? Israel’s apartheid policies similarly impact on Palestinians. Israel has passed racist laws that impose severe movement restrictions dividing families, preventing family reunification and obstructing the marriage of couples who come from different zones. At least a third of Gazans have relatives in Israel and the West Bank. The personal pain of such enforced separations which deny Palestinians the shared and cherished moments we enjoy freely is immeasurable…grandparents have never seen their grandchildren who may live 5 kilometres away… adult children are denied the right to be with a dying parent…births…weddings…funerals ..are overshadowed by painful absences.
The Native Title Act, 1993, finally acknowledged that some Indigenous Australians ‘have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs.’ But, as mining boomed on resource rich indigenous lands, corporate colonialism reared its greedy head undermining this landmark act with the Northern Territory Intervention.
It was initiated by the Howard government in 2007 and maintained by successive governments including that of Kevin Rudd who made the historic apology to the Stolen Generations even though indigenous communities were suffering the humiliation of quarantined welfare payments and struggled to survive in third world conditions.
The Intervention was imposed “on the pretext that paedophile gangs were operating in Indigenous settlements. Troops were sent in; townships were compulsorily acquired and native title legislation ignored. Yet no prosecution for child abuse resulted, and studies concluded that there was no evidence of any systematic child abuse.” Marcus Waters, Review: Pilger’s Utopia shows us Aboriginal Australia in 2014
As the Prawer Plan was debated in the Israeli Knesset, the sound of the Australian government salivating with envy must have been deafening while imagining the power to evict, from their ancestral lands, 40,000 pesky Bedouins hindering Israel’s land expansion or the power to simply bulldoze Palestinian villages to build settlements for Zionist colonists.
Notorious for her death stare, Julie ‘Medusa’ Bishop, the Australian Foreign Minister, on January 15, speaking for her government, with colonial panache dismissed Israeli settlements as war crimes with this vacuous statement,
“I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal.”
Not a good look coming from the FM of a nation privileged to have a seat on the UN Security Council, when even the gardener at Parliament House has heard of the Geneva Conventions.
Like its mate, the rogue state of Israel, Australia doesn’t give a toss for honouring its obligations under international law.
It tossed aside its obligations to the Refugee Conventions with its inhumane offshore asylum seeker policy, forcing asylum seeker boats back to Indonesia, refusal to compensate people who have been held for prolonged periods in mandatory detention, ‘breached its international anti-race discrimination obligations by continuing for almost three years it’s intervention policies with indigenous communities of the Northern Territory.’ the high instance of Aboriginal deaths in custody, the breaching of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in the matter of Guantanamo inmate, David Hicks, the unresolved allegations that Australian intelligence officers were complicit in the torture of Mamdouh Habib when he was held in Pakistan Egypt and Guantanamo Bay, the Queensland bikie laws that fail to meet international fair trial standards.
Then there is the present case in the International Court of Justice against Australia spying on Timor Leste during the oil and gas treaty negotiations in an alleged attempt to rip off the poorest nation in Asia.
Colonial terrorism, disguised as civilised democracy, is not only perpetrated by the hollow men and women in authority. They are the monsters for whom you and I vote and without us they are powerless.Until our moral conscience, intelligence and compassion determines how we vote, we too are their accomplices.
____________________________
– Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.
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Indonesia recalls its Australian ambassador alleging phone-taps on President Yudhoyono
RT | November 18, 2013
Indonesia is recalling its ambassador to Australia over allegations that Canberra listened in on phone conversations of the Indonesian president.
Indonesia said the ambassador was being called to Jakarta for “consultations”.
The move by Jakarta comes as the Australian Department of Defence and the Defence Signals Directorate, or DSD, (now known as the Australian Signals Directorate), has been accused of monitoring the phone calls of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife Kristiani Herawati, as well as eight other high-ranking officials, including the vice president, Boediono.
The latest leak, provided in May 2013 by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was released jointly by The Guardian newspaper and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday, and will likely aggravate another diplomatic firestorm between Canberra and Jakarta.
The top secret material from the DSD is in the form of a slide presentation, dated November 2009, and divulges information on the monitoring of mobile phones just as 3G technology was being introduced in Asia.
In one of the presentations, entitled Indonesian President Voice Events, a graphic of calls is given on Yudhoyono’s Nokia handset over a 15-day period in August 2009. The data provides CDRs – call data records – which record the numbers called, the duration of communications, and whether the transmission was a voice call or SMS.
The Australian spy agency “appears to have expanded its operations to include the calls of those who had been in touch with the president,” the report indicated. Another slide, entitled Way Forward, gives the simple command: “Must have content,” perhaps a reference to encrypted material.
Attached to the bottom of each slide in the 2009 presentation is the DSD slogan: “Reveal their secrets – protect our own.”
Also named in the surveillance slides are Dino Patti Djalal, then-foreign affairs spokesman for the president, who recently resigned as Indonesia’s ambassador to the US and is seeking the candidacy in next year’s presidential election for Yudhoyono’s Democratic party, and Hatta Rajasa, current minister for economic affairs and potential presidential candidate for the National Mandate party. Hatta served at the time of the surveillance as minister for transport; his daughter is the wife of the president’s youngest son.
Other high-level officials on the list of “IA Leadership Targets” are: Jusuf Kalla, the former vice-president who ran as the Golkar party presidential candidate in 2009; Sri Mulyani Indrawati, then a reforming finance minister and since 2010 one of the managing directors of the World Bank Group; Andi Mallarangeng, who was at the time the president’s spokesman, and later minister for youth and sports; Sofyan Djalil, who served until October 2009 as minister for state-owned enterprises; Widodo Adi Sucipto, a former head of the Indonesian military who served until October 2009 as security minister.
Another slide, entitled DSD Way Forward, acknowledges that the Australian spy agency’s must “capitalise on UKUSA and industry capability”, apparently a reference to assistance from telecom and internet companies, the same method that the NSA used to collect data on millions of individuals around the planet.
News of Australia’s high-level snooping on the Indonesian president and his top aides is certain to provoke a harsh response from Jakarta, especially considering this is not Australia’s first breach of trust between the Pacific Rim countries.
Tensions between Canberra and Jakarta began in October when top secret files revealed by the German newspaper Der Spiegel and published by Fairfax newspapers showed that Australian diplomatic posts across Asia were being used to intercept communications.
Marty Natalegawa, the Indonesian foreign minister, issued a harsh response and threatened to review bilateral initiatives on issues important to Australia, including people smuggling and terrorism.
During a visit last week to the Australian city of Perth, Vice president Boediono – not yet privy to information that his own Blackberry device had been compromised by Australian spy agencies – briefly mentioned the long-standing spying controversy.
“I think we must look forward to come to some arrangement which guarantees that intelligence information from each side is not used against the other,” he said. “There must be a system.”
Yudhoyono is the latest in a growing list of global leaders who have had their personal communications listened to by the American intelligence service.
It has recently been reported that the leaders of Germany, Brazil and Mexico have been listened to by the so-called Five Eyes, the collective name for the intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, who share information.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel in late October demanded a personal explanation from US President Barack Obama as to why the NSA had tapped her mobile phone. The White House attempted to reassure the chancellor that her phone was “not currently being tapped and will not be in the future”.
It will be interesting at this point to see if the diplomatic backlash in wake of the recent wave of revelations will curb the Five Eyes’ surveillance program, or if it will just go deeper underground.
The Guardian then reported that the DSD worked together with the NSA to stage a massive surveillance operation in Indonesia during a UN climate change conference in Bali in 2007.
On Monday a spokesman for Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “Consistent with the long-standing practice of Australian governments, and in the interest of national security, we do not comment on intelligence matters.”
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Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | August 3, 2022
There is a rising tide of claims from apologists for the crimes of Zionism that they have been misunderstood. Palestinians might be indigenous to Palestine, but the Jews definitely are. What is called the ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict, they say, is competition over the same small piece of land by two rival groups of indigenous people. But are the Jews indigenous to the Levant? And what are the consequences of the argument?
In fact, most of the power structure of the Zionist state is dominated by Ashkenazi Jews who have no ancestral link to Palestine. Overall despite very significant financial and infrastructural contributions from Western European countries (especially the US, UK and France, for example via the Rothschild family), Eastern European Ashkenazim have been at the centre of the Zionist power structure since the early years of the 20th Century. … continue
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