New Snowden leak: Australia’s place in US spying web
RT | July 8, 2013
Ex-NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden has disclosed his first set of documents outlining Australia’s role in NSA surveillance programs, picking out four facilities in the country that contribute heavily to US spying.
The locations of dozens of the US’s and associated countries signal collection sites have been revealed by Snowden, who leaked classified National Security Agency maps to US journalist Glenn Greenwald, which were then published in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo.
The sites all play a role in the collection of data and interception of internet traffic and telecommunications on a global level.
Australian centers involved in the NSA’s data collection program, codenamed X-Keyscore, include Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap in central Australia and three Australian Signals Directorate facilities: the Shoal Bay Receiving Station in the country’s north, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility on the west coast, and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside the capital, Canberra.
New Zealand also plays a role, with the Government Security Communications Bureau facility at Waihopai, on the northern point of South Island, also contributing to the program.
X-Keyscore is described as a “national Intelligence collection mission system” by US intelligence expert William Arkin, according to Australian newspaper The Age. It processes all signals prior to being delivered to various “production lines” that deal with more specific issues including the exploration of different types of data for close scrutiny.
The different subdivisions are entitled Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and Marina (internet records).
A spokesman for Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declined to comment on the revelatory map, saying that it was not government practice to comment on intelligence matters, according to national broadsheet The Australian.
Australia is one of the “Five Eyes” – an alliance of intelligence-sharing countries which include of the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
When documents were published pertaining to the British signal intelligence agency, GCHQ’s “Tempora” program, Snowden reportedly commented that the other partners in the “Five Eyes” intelligence “sometimes go even further than the [National Security Agency] people themselves.”
“If you send a data packet and if it makes its way through the UK, we will get it. If you download anything, and the server is in the UK, then we get it,” he said.
In an interview published online last weekend in advance of its printing in German magazine Der Speigel this week, Snowden argued that the NSA was ‘in bed with the Germans’ commenting that the organization of intelligence gathering in countries involved with the organization is such that political leaders are insulated from the backlash, going on to denounce “how grievously they’re violating global privacy.”
Germany reacted to the report on Monday, with German chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, telling Reuters that the Federal Intelligence Agency’s (BND) cooperation with the NSA “took place within strict legal and judicial guidelines and is controlled by the competent parliamentary committee.”
The US and its affiliates have intelligence facilities distributed worldwide in a variety of US embassies, consulates and military facilities. In an earlier report by Der Spiegel, also based on revelations by Snowden, it was revealed that the NSA bugged EU diplomatic offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks.
Related articles
- Snowden links NZ to US spy programme (stuff.co.nz)
- Snowden reveals Australia’s links to US spy web (smh.com.au)
- Snowden releases information about Australian Intelligence gathering programs. (theage.com.au)
Mandatory Data Retention Defeated in Australia, For Now.
By Daniel Nazer | EFF | June 24, 2013
For the last few years, Australia’s security agencies have been pushing for the mandatory retention of the communications data of every citizen. If implemented, this policy would require private companies to keep communications metadata of all customers for two years. Essentially, it treats every person as a criminal suspect. Yesterday, a parliamentary committee issued a report declining to recommend data retention and strongly criticizing the government for failing to adequately explain and justify its proposal. In the wake of the report, the governing Labor Party announced it will not pursue data retention before the next election. So data retention in Australia has been defeated, for now.
The most recent push began last July, when the Attorney General’s Department submitted a list of security proposals, including data retention, to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security. The scheme met with overwhelming public opposition—98.9% of public submissions rejected data retention. Civil rights groups and individuals explained that the scheme sacrifices the privacy of all citizens. Contrary to the government’s claims, collecting metadata is highly intrusive as it reveals the most intimate connections between persons. In addition, the scheme would create a huge trove of data vulnerable to hacking while imposing significant costs on private companies dragooned to act as the government’s spies.
The government failed to rebut these objections. In a ham-fisted attempt to avoid criticism, the Attorney General’s Department initially refused to provide concrete details about its data retention scheme. The committee strongly criticized this lack of transparency:
[T]he Committee was very disconcerted to find, once it commenced its Inquiry, that the Attorney-General’s Department had much more detailed information on the topic of data retention. Departmental work, including discussions with stakeholders, had been undertaken previously. Details of this work had to be drawn from witnesses representing the [department].
Journalist Bernard Keane tweeted that he’d “never seen a government-controlled committee give a kicking to a department” like this report did. In addition to slamming the department for hiding the ball, the committee acknowledged public concern about privacy:
[A] mandatory data retention regime raises fundamental privacy issues, and is arguably a significant extension of the power of the state over the citizen. No such regime should be enacted unless those privacy and civil liberties concerns are sufficiently addressed.
The committee punted on the ultimate issue. It wrote that there was “a diversity of views within the Committee” as to the merits of a data retention regime and said it was “ultimately a decision for Government.” With an election scheduled for later this year, the governing Labor Party announced that it is dropping the unpopular scheme.
Green Party Senator Scott Ludlam cautioned that, even with the defeat of this proposal, Australia’s security agencies might achieve the same result by other means. He warned that, in light of the recent NSA Spying news, agencies may bypass domestic due process through the “wholesale importing of content and non-content data from colleagues in the U.S.” We need greater oversight of the security establishment to ensure that international cooperative agreements are not enabling the evasion of domestic legal restrictions.
Senator Ludlam also predicted that, regardless of who wins the next election, the data retention plan will be back. Security agencies will not abandon their campaign to treat every person like a criminal suspect. Privacy advocates in Australia and around the world need to keep up the fight.
Related articles
- Australian Data Retention Plan Swept Under The Rug…For Now [Updated] (gizmodo.com.au)
- Government backs down from data retention — for now (computerworld.co.nz)
Stamping Impunity on Israel’s War Crimes
By Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle | June 25 2013
Australia Post and Israel Post collaboratively issued two stamps.
Israel and Australia’s joint projects normalizing Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity has sunk deeper in the degenerate mire of hasbara (propaganda & lies);
“So projects that constitute normalization are not about freedom, justice or liberation, but about numbing our minds to the horror of the occupation, so we accept it as normal, as permanent, as an unchangeable fixed reality”! (1)
In May, Australia Post and Israel Post collaboratively issued two stamps commemorating the Australian Light Horse and the WWI Battle of Beersheba in Palestine. The $2.60 stamp features contemporary images of Australian Light Horsemen. The 60c stamp features the statue of an Australian Light Horseman in the Park of the Australian Soldier, funded by the Pratt Foundation, at Beersheba.
ANZAC heroic courage and endurance warrants commemoration but the issue of the stamps entailed a cynical rewriting of Australian war history that deflects ANZAC honor to deodorize Israel’s stinking reputation around the world; the recent BBC’s 2013 Country Rating Poll places Israel squarely amongst North Korea and Pakistan as the world’s most negatively viewed nations
The stamps’ description on the Australia Post shop site states:
“The capture of Beersheba allowed British Empire forces to break the Ottoman line near Gaza and then advance into Palestine, a chain of events which eventually culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.”
Connecting the ‘capture of Beersheba’ to ‘the establishment of the state of Israel’ is an outright lie. Australian Communications minister, Steven Conroy, showing off his ready dexterity to bend over backwards for Israel, shamelessly repeated the lie:
“I don’t have any role in choosing what’s on stamps, but I do support this – it’s a wonderful tribute to the 4th Light Horse Brigade and recognizes a chain of events that eventually culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.”
The real chain of events began in 1895 with the Zionist ambition to take over the whole of Palestine for a Jewish homeland which was accelerated in 1947 by Plan Dalet’s systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine that destroyed over 500 villages, slaughtered thousands of villagers and forcefully deported over 700,000 indigenous Palestinians. Israel then unilaterally declared an independent state in breach of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, still binding, that guaranteed independence for Palestine.
The Australian Zionist lobby has inflated the ANZAC lies. The Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce announcing the special boardroom lunch to celebrate the launch piled on the hasbara:
“During WWI, Australian troops fought alongside the British army to conquer Israel from under ottoman rule…. The friendly Australian soldiers were remembered fondly by residents of the Jewish colonies of Israel. Warm ties were also formed with the Australian soldiers who were stationed in Israel during WWII.”
Fact: In 1917 (and during WWII) Israel did not exist. World War I and II were fought on Palestinian soil.
The claim by Australia Post managing director, Ahmed Fahour is highly questionable, “The Battle of Beersheba is something close to the hearts of both Israelis and Australians” when it was Palestinian fighters who helped the ANZACs …
“Defending the west and south west of the town, the 27th Division’s 67th and 81st Infantry Regiments, were deployed in the fortified semicircular line of deep trenches and redoubts strengthened by barbed wire. These regiments consisted mainly, of “Arab farmers from the surrounding region, and although inexperienced fighters they were defending their own fields.”(Massey, Graeme (2007). Beersheba: The men of the 4th Light Horse Regiment who charged on the 31st October 1917. Warracknabeal, Victoria: Warracknabeal Secondary College History Department.
… while Palestinian villagers struggled to survive the dire economic impact on their land and livelihoods of the mounted armies of the Imperial and Ottoman forces. The Turks had demolished orchards and all the cavalries ‘drank out wells and grazed their horses on standing crops’. Palestinian foodstuffs and livestock were requisitioned by the British military and consequently there was a shortage of basic food and commodities with awful disruptions to daily life.
One generation later, the same villagers were forcefully routed by Jewish terrorist militias to Gaza where they remain in desolate refugee camps under the illegal and inhumane Israeli siege.
The decision to include the image of the statue of an Australian Light Horseman in the Park of the Australian Soldier was Machiavellian sleight of hand. The Park professes to be “a permanent memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state.”
The Park funded by the Pratt Foundation was set up by Zionist Richard Pratt, the Australian Visy Industries billionaire who ripped off Australian customers by fixing prices and market sharing with the rival Amcor group. Visy’s underbelly has been linked to the Hells Angels reputed to have ties to criminal organizations in Australia and overseas.
Nevertheless, Australian political luminaries like Ex-PMs Kevin Rudd and John Howard have attended fundraisers at Pratt’s Melbourne mansion, Raheen; Bill Shorten- now a Minister in the Gillard government- was married there, and others such as exPM Bob Hawke, exPM Gough Whitlam, exPM Malcolm Fraser, ex state premier Nick Grieiner, former police commissioner Mick Miller have been on the Zionist’s lucrative payroll as consultants. Anthony Pratt, Richard’s successor hosted in July 2011, an Australian speaking tour of Israel’s darling, Tony Blair, the supposedly neutral envoy for the Middle East Quartet.
The Park of the Australian Soldier is included in ‘The Anzac Trail from the Be’eri Badlands to Be’er Sheva’ which is a project of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which seizes Palestinian properties in East Jerusalem and razes, over and over, villages on the ancestral lands of impoverished Bedouins.
If you think that the hijacking of the rising sun’s glory is a preposterous fancy you may change your mind when you scratch the surface of the key-players, to find the web of corporate affiliations to Israel’s military and illegal occupation.
Ahmed Fahour Australia’s highest paid public servant, $2.78 million pa, prior to Australia Post, had a long executive career with Citigroup and its website ‘boasts the largest presence of any foreign financial institution in Israel and offers corporate and investment banking services to leading Israeli corporations and institutions, and global corporations operating in Israel’ including equity offerings for Delek.
Haim Elmoznino, CEO of Israel Post was deputy CEO of Delek Israel Fuel Corporation which supplies Israel’s military-industrial complex. Delek also fuels US warplanes. Delek was the exclusive distributer of Ford in Israel and according to Who Profits, “Ford F550 trucks were retrofitted by Hatehof for the Israeli army to armored personnel carriers for use by the IDF in the West Bank….and its vehicles are used by the ‘Caracal’ military … a combat unit which patrols the occupied section of the Jordan Valley, in the West Bank areas close to the Separation Wall and on the Israeli-Egyptian border.’
Sasi Shilo, Chairman of Israel Post, was, CEO of Netivei Hayovel in which Danya Cebus, a construction firm has a stake. Danya Cebus is a subsidiary of Africa Israel Investments Ltd:
“Africa Israel Chairman and founder Lev Leviev and his brother are responsible for the settlements of Zufim (Tsufim) and Zufim North on land belonging to the village of Jayyous in the northern West Bank. They are being built by a Leviev company called Leader Management & Development. The villageës water wells, greenhouses, and most of its agricultural land have been confiscated for these settlements. Among the largest investors in Africa Israel are Barclayës Global Investors (which has been purchased by BlackRock), and the Vanguard Group. In August 2009, Blackrock made a decision to divest from Africa Israel due to its involvement in the occupation.” (2)
Attending the stamp launch was Yaron Razon, Director of Israel Philatelic Service. who in a past life was CEO of Ma’ariv Magazines. Ma’ariv, according to The political line of Israeli papers (a reader’s guide) in +972, 2010, “ is extremely hostile to the Arab population and to human rights organizations, and recently, it shows a hospitable attitude to the settlement project (a recent double spread all but invited people to live in Tapuach, a settlement formally known as the stronghold of Kahane supporters). Among Israeli papers, Maariv is the most supportive of Avigdor Lieberman’s policies”
Also attending was Australia’s Attorney General Mark Dreyfus whose Zionist colors are for all to see in his 2012 speech (3) to the Zionist Council of Victoria where he reiterated the Australian governments ‘enduring support for Israel’ and pointed out how PM Gillard supported Israel’s wearisome mantra of its right to defend itself by perpetrating war crimes against Gaza in 2008/9 and by voting against the UN Goldstone Report which Dreyfus falsely declared was discredited.
Concerned Australians have bombarded the Postal Ombusdman, Australia Post and Minister Conroy with protests against the government’s commandeering of ANZAC and Palestinian history for the whitewashing of Israel state terrorism and demanding the withdrawal of the stamps because young ANZAC soldiers did not sacrifice their lives to give the stamp of approval to Israel’s impunity to daily violate international law and wreak inhuman suffering on Palestinian men, women, children and the elderly.
– 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.
Notes:
(1) Samah Sabawi, Colonization of the Mind: Normalize This!
(2) Interfaith Peace Initiative.
(3) Mark Dreyfus Speech to Zionist Council of Victoria.
Spying on the World From Domestic Soil
By Katitza Rodriguez | EFF | June 21, 2013
The world is still reeling from the series of revelations about NSA and FBI surveillance. Over the past two weeks the emerging details paint a picture of pervasive, cross-border spying programs of unprecedented reach and scope: the U.S. has now admitted using domestic networks to spy on Internet users both domestically and worldwide. The people now know that foreign intelligence can spy on their communications if they travel through U.S. networks or are stored in U.S. servers.
While international public outrage has justifiably decried the scope and reach of these revelations, carte blanche foreign intelligence surveillance powers over foreigners are far from new. In the U.S., foreign intelligence has always had nearly limitless legal capacity to surveil foreigners because domestic laws and protections simply don’t reach that surveillance activity.
This legal framework, with no protection for foreigners and little oversight besides, has been exacerbated by the growth in individuals now living their lives online, who conduct their most intimate communications in cloud services that are hosted in the U.S. and across different jurisdictions. To make matters worse, the vast amount of Internet traffic globally is routed through the U.S. Last but not least, logistical barriers to powerful, mass surveillance have lowered and the application of existing legal principles in new technological contexts has become unclear and shrouded in secrecy, especially in a extra-territorial surveillance context. The US government’s FISA powers, which in 2008 opened the door to broad surveillance of communications where one side is an American and the other side is a foreigner, represent just an example of an increasing state capacity to conduct nearly limitless invasive extra-territorial surveillance from domestic soil.
International Backlash
On June 18, Germans rallied at a well-known Berlin Wall crossing point called Checkpoint Charlie. Under the motto: “Yes We Scan!” German activists protested against PRISM and NSA surveillance in response to President Barack Obama’s Berlin visit. Pictures of the rally show protest signs claiming that the Obama administration has become “Stasi 2.0” with the quote “All your data belong to us”.
The Stasi 2.0 campaign was originally designed in 2007 to fight Germany’s mandatory data-retention law, a law implementing an EU Directive that force ISPs and telecom providers to continuously collect and store records documenting the online activities of millions of ordinary Europeans. Roughly 34,000 citizens filed a lawsuit against the mandatory data retention in protest. The campaign was successful and in March 2010 a German court declared the law unconstitutional and ordered the deletion of the collected data. Now, the Stasi 2.0 campaign has shifted focus on calling upon their government to protect them against overreach scope of NSA foreign surveillance practices, Sandra Mamitzsch from Digitale Gesellschaft told EFF.
Germany has also increased its capacity to conduct sweeping and invasive extra-territorial surveillance from its domestic soil. As we noted, the German government has leveraged its ability to remotely compromise computer systems in order to spy on its citizens. The government has used commercial malware to hack private data. While there has been no confirmation that Germany is deploying these investigative techniques against persons outside German territories, extra-territorial surveillance is feasible because infection occurs via email and other Internet transmissions.
Campaigns against the NSA spying overreach are now being planned for July 6 all around Australia. Australians can get involved here: http://ourprivacy.org.au/
Micheal Vonn, policy director at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association in Canada, told to the Global News in Canada: “[w]e fully intend to get some pointed questions to the Canadian government about knowledge, complicity, alliance with this program. And whether, in fact, very, very quietly, the Canadian security establishment has been harvesting the fruits of this program for some time.”
EFF is demanding Internet companies to join our cause and protect the privacy of their international customers calling on Congress to create a committee to uncover the truth about the NSA alarming allegations. You can take action here. Current foreign intelligence surveillance targetting foreigners must be challenged to ensure strong human rights safeguards, transparency and accountability across the world. A global dialogue on extra-territorial foreign intelligence surveillance among all nations is much needed.
EFF will continue blogging about the impact of the NSA leaks on Internet users abroad in our Spies Without Borders series. Next, we will examine what implications the government’s use of these FISA powers has for Internet users abroad, with an eye to other jurisdictions and the requirements of international law.
This is the 5th article of our Spies Without Borders series. The series are looking into how the information disclosed in the NSA leaks affect Internet users around the world whose private information is stored in U.S. servers, or whose data travels across U.S. networks.
Image: Digitale Gesellschaft, licensed under a Creative Commons BY SA 3.0 license.
Related article
Double Standards for Prisoners Vanished In Israel
By Yahya Dbouk | Al-Akhbar | February 15, 2013
The case of Ben Zygier, known as “Prisoner X,” has opened the door to questions about the possibility of Israel secretly detaining other prisoners and abductees.
Zygier, a Jewish-Australian citizen, died in an Israeli prison two years ago, in a case Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up, imposing media gag orders.
This is not the first time Israel has hidden information related to the whereabouts and conditions of prisoners. Consider, for example, reports of the three Iranian diplomats kidnapped by the Lebanese Forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, who were reportedly moved to prisons in occupied Palestine.
Then consider the case of Lebanese prisoner Yahya Skaf. In addition to a wealth of reporting on his case, testimonies by other detainees all aver that he is still alive and being held in an Israeli prison. It’s a claim that Tel Aviv denies, maintaining that it lost Skaf’s body.
In the same vein, reports from various sources assert that Iranian General Mohammed Reza Asgari, who was kidnapped in Turkey in 2007, is being held in Israel.
Until recently, the global norm was to accept that Israel is a state where the rule of law is paramount. Any reports that questioned Israel’s democratic credentials were considered prejudiced or even anti-Semitic.
Yet if Tel Aviv was able to conceal the truth about Zygier for so long – the fact that he had committed suicide more than two years ago – then it’s entirely fathomable that Israel is withholding the truth about other prisoners like Skaf, Asgari, and the above-mentioned Iranian diplomats.
The answer is now clear and backed up by damning evidence: Israel has both the capability and the willingness to engage in such acts.
A simple hypothetical exercise. Let’s say the kidnapping, detention, and subsequent suicide of the Australian Prisoner X had happened to another detainee of a different nationality. How would the global media reaction differ? Would it have been as fervent as with the Australian Prisoner X?
Just look to the cases of the Lebanese and Iranian detainees, specifically with the three Iranian diplomats and General Asgari. Iran repeatedly declared that it had evidence as to their whereabouts, and the Iranian press reported extensively on the matter. Yet Israeli denials were enough to refute the Iranian account. Western and Israeli reports did not stop there, and Iran was even mocked as a source of fabricated news.
The same applies to cases involving Lebanese citizens, such as Skaf. Israel cannot possibly deny it has him, and that he had entered occupied Palestine. For one thing, Tel Aviv’s claims about Skaf and his lost body make little sense. If he had been a citizen of Australia, or other nations of similar stature, Israel’s account would have differed.
Israeli assertions that Tel Aviv had kept the Australian government in the loop on Prisoner X created more – not less – ramifications. Indeed, Israel is not only able to hide the facts and detain people in secret, but also to involve Western governments in the cover-up.
Sicily blocks construction of US defense satellite base
Gazzetta del Sud | January 11, 2013
Palermo The region of Sicily on Friday moved to suspend US defense plans to construct a satellite communications system on the Italian island after activists blocked construction crews. The move, announced by Sicily Governor Rosario Crocetta, came after protestors blocked trucks and cranes overnight in the town of Niscemi and later clashed with police near an American military base.
Builders at the site, which is part of a global satellite defense network called the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), had allegedly rushed construction in recent days, according to the Sicily governor. “The regional government finds this sudden rush to complete the project truly extraordinary,” said Crocetta. Opponents to the project say it will be an environmental nuisance and threatens world peace. Other bases participating in MUOS are in Australia, Hawaii and Virginia.
Australian surveillance ‘out of control’: 20% increase in 1 year
RT | December 3, 2012
Access to private data has increased by 20 per cent by Australia’s law enforcement and government agencies – and with no warrant. Australians are 26 times more prone to be placed under surveillance than people in other countries, local media report.
In such a way, state structures accessed private information over 300,000 times last year – or 5,800 times every week, figures from the federal Attorney General’s Department showcase.
The data includes phone and internet account information, the details of out and inbound calls, telephone and internet access location data, as well as everything related to the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses visited, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Australian media report that every government agency and organization use the gathered telecommunications data, and those include the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Tax Office, Medicare and Australia Post.
New South Wales (NSW) Police became the biggest users of the private data, with 103,824 access authorizations during the last year – a third of all information accessed by the security forces.
The news triggered massive public outrage, with Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam telling Sydney Morning Herald, ‘‘This is the personal data of hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of Australians, and it seems that just about anyone in government can get it.”
He said the move demonstrated the current data access regime was “out of control” and amounted to the framework for a “surveillance state”.
The reports come as the federal government proposes even wider surveillance powers, including a minimum two-year standard for telephone and web providers – a measure causing public controversy.
The president for the local NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, told the Australian Financial Review that, according to the statistics, recent proposals to step up police surveillance powers and keep internet and phone data for two years or more was little more than a “fishing expedition”.
“It’s stunning and completely outrageous that so much interception is going on,” Murphy said. “What seems to be happening now is this is being done as a matter of first course and not as a matter of last resort.”
The statistics gathered by the council demonstrate that Australians are 26 times more likely to be placed under surveillance than in comparable countries.
However, a spokesperson for Attorney-General Nicola Roxon indicated that “these new statistics show telephone interception and surveillance powers are playing an even greater role for police so they can successfully pursue kidnappers, murderers and organized criminals.”
Ludlam, on the other hand, detailed what the expansion should be accompanied by.
“It’s incumbent on the parliament’s national security inquiry to recommend some form of warrant authorization be introduced, and that there be a review and reduction of the government agencies that can access the personal communications data of millions of Australians,” he said.
Related articles
- Spying ‘out of control’ (smh.com.au)
- Sharp rise in private data surveillance (theage.com.au)
- Access to private net, phone use up by 20% – without warrants (smh.com.au)
The Battle for Privacy Intensifies in Australia
By Rebecca Bowe | EFF | August 31, 2012
Australians are fending off threats to their right to privacy from all directions. First, there was Australian Attorney General Nicola Roxon’s push to expand government online surveillance powers, submitted to Parliament in a package of reforms sought in a National Security Inquiry.
Then, on Aug. 22, the Australian Senate approved the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011, granting authorities the power to require phone and Internet providers to store up to 180 days worth of personal communications data. The purpose is to aid in investigations by both foreign and domestic law enforcement agencies, making it especially controversial since it can result in granting foreign governments access to Australian citizens’ communications data. The legislation only allows for data retention in the cases of specifically targeted individuals.
The bill is based on the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime – which we’ve flagged in the past as one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties – and the passage of the bill opens the door for Australia to join the Convention.
At least we can welcome the news that one of the most controversial aspects of Roxon’s National Security Inquiry proposal, a vague mandatory data retention provision that would have required service providers to retain all users’ communications data for up to two full years, seems to have been placed on hold – for now, anyway.
Yet at the same time, the newly approved Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 is viewed by some in Australia as a kind of “data retention lite,” and a precursor to the mass, untargeted surveillance that the more extreme proposal may yet usher in. An outcome of the approval of this bill, after all, is that providers will now have to install systems enabling data retention for up to 180 days – and pay for it themselves.
Public Fights Back
Despite the steady march toward expanded online snooping powers for law enforcement in the name of “national security,” a hefty pile of submissions landed in Parliamentary chambers last week, reflecting strong public opposition to the proposed reforms. A total of 177 submissions, representing thousands of individuals and organizations, flowed in to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security even though the government allowed only a brief time frame for comment.
Below, we collected some reactions of various Australian stakeholders who drafted lengthy submissions to convey their serious concerns. Civil liberties advocates aren’t the only ones worried about where this is going. The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association and Communications Alliance, a telecom industry group, also chimed in to express concerns about costly new requirements for telecoms that would come attached to these surveillance measures. Since data retention disproportionately burdens smaller ISPs affected by requiring expensive equipment upgrades, the measure has the potential to hamper innovation by discouraging new startups from entering the market.
Re: Making it a Crime to Refuse to Aid in Decryption
One of the worst ideas contained in the National Security Inquiry package is the creation of a new crime under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act of 1979: Refusing to aid law enforcement in the decryption of communications. That interception law granted law enforcement agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), the ability to legally intercept communications for the first time. Reactions to the proposal hinged on the threat it poses to Australians’ right to silence.
Senator Scott Ludlam, speaking on behalf of the Australian Green Party, had this to say:
While the integrity of Australianʹs right to silence has been damaged by the anti‐terrorism laws, with regard to other criminal offences it remains intact. This proposal further degrades the right to silence, presumably to pre‐trial investigations and undermines the privilege against self incrimination. … The Committee should oppose this proposal as a serious erosion of the legal and human rights of Australians.
Electronic Frontiers Australia, a digital civil liberties organization (which is not formally affiliated with EFF), pointed out a number of problems with this idea:
EFA is concerned about the possible creation of an offence for failing to assist in the decryption of communications for the following reasons:
- it undermines the right of individuals to not cooperate with an investigation
- it poses a threat to the independence of journalists and their sources, particularly in circumstances involving whistle-blowing activity related to cases of official corruption
- it could undermine the principles of doctor-patient and lawyer-client confidentiality and other trusted relationships
- there are foreseeable and entirely legitimate circumstances in which decryption of data is not possible, such as where a password has been forgotten and is unrecoverable.
EFA therefore believes that the Committee should reject this proposal.
Re: Extending the Regulatory Regime to “Ancillary Service Providers”
A discussion paper submitted as part of the National Security Inquiry proposal makes it clear that the Australian government is “considering the need for a new interception regime that better reflects the contemporary communications environment,” i.e. a total overhaul of existing legislation to allow law enforcement to pry into communications taking place over platforms like Facebook or Twitter. The discussion paper defines “ancillary service providers” as “Telecommunications industry participants who are not carriers or carriage service providers.” Ultimately, this suggests the government is angling to bring all forms of online communications into the reach of interception laws.
The Australian Privacy Foundation cited the privacy concerns inherent in this proposal.
Telecommunications legislation already goes much further than regulation in most other sectors in mandating a role for private sector businesses as agents of the state in surveillance and law enforcement (banking and finance is the other main area where this has happened). These proposals would see a further significant extension of this role. Online intermediaries in particular host our communications with our friends, relatives, co-workers etc. They host a vast amount of information, the volume and scope of which is growing exponentially as we move to the cloud, use social networks, etc. Using online intermediaries as an agent of the State dramatically impacts on the state’s surveillance capabilities. Even minor changes in what they are required to do on behalf of government agencies can have very broad implications for people’s privacy.
Ludlam, of the Australian Greens, also blasted the idea.
The Attorney Generalʹs paper does not explain how covering ʹancillary service providersʹ – the many and ever increasing forms of social media – in legislation will address ʹcurrent potential vulnerabilities in the interception regime that are capable of being manipulated by criminalsʹ. The Greens believe it is excessive to extend the reach of surveillance into the retention of all social media exchanges. Does this include all business exchanges on video conferencing platforms?
And EFA pointed out that this proposal could expose anyone to law enforcement scrutiny, not just people suspected of wrongdoing.
Central to many of the services that Australians deliberately sign-up for— e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Apple iCloud, etc.—is the concept of sharing across networks. In surveilling a target’s activities in such services, shared friends or media objects connect target and non-target individuals such that following one surveillance target inescapably involves collateral surveillance necessarily breaching the privacy of non-targets. …. Indeed, “cloud computing” itself underlies “social networking”. As such, the information flows pertaining to individuals cross and recross such services to the point where, again, separating surveillance of a particular target is almost inevitably going to encounter that of other individuals, but in this case in ways that cannot be anticipated and very deeply undermine Australians’ reasonable expectation of privacy.
Related articles
- Roxon edges towards keeping online data for two years (smh.com.au)
- Roxon backs new online data powers (theage.com.au)
- Australian Government Moves to Expand Surveillance Powers (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Australian customers could pay for govt spying (zdnet.com)
Australian Government Moves to Expand Surveillance Powers
By Rebecca Bowe | EFF | July 17, 2012
Australia is the latest democratic nation to introduce new national security measures that would vastly expand governmental surveillance powers, following an alarming legislative pattern that’s also unfolded in the United Kingdom and Canada in recent months.
Just as EFF sounded the alarm about the UK’s attempt to move forward with a mass surveillance bill and kept the pressure on before Canada’s online surveillance bill was temporarily shelved in the face of an outcry from privacy advocates, we’re ready to join Australians in pushing back against this latest bid for greater online spying powers Down Under.
Last week, Australian Attorney General Nicola Roxon submitted to Parliament a package of proposals intended to advance a National Security Inquiry in an effort to expand governmental surveillance powers. In a 60-page discussion paper, Roxon calls for making it easier for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to spy on Twitter and Facebook users, which would likely be achieved by compelling companies to create backdoors to enable surveillance. The proposals also revive a controversial data retention regime. And an especially problematic proposal would go so far as to establish a new crime: failure to assist law enforcement in the decryption of communications.
The bulleted list of proposed reforms, which Roxon submitted to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security committee, reflects a wish list of Australia’s intelligence agencies. The discussion paper proposes to revise four laws relating to the surveillance activities of Australia’s six intelligence bodies, at great cost to Australians’ civil liberties. The proposed changes are divided into three categories: those that the government “wishes to progress,” those it’s considering, and those it’s seeking advice on.
On a broad level, the discussion paper makes it clear that intelligence agencies are seeking nothing less than a radical overhaul of Australia’s wiretapping laws.[1] “The magnitude of change to the telecommunications environment suggests that further piecemeal amendments to the existing Act will not be sufficient,” the paper states, in reference to the Telecommunications Interception and Access (TIA) Act of 1979. “Rather, holistic reform that reassesses the current assumptions is needed in order to establish a new foundation for the interception regime that reflects contemporary practice.”
If approved, the revisions would amount to what the Sydney Morning Herald characterized as “the most significant expansion of the Australian intelligence community’s powers since … reforms following the terrorist attacks of 2001.” A readers’ poll that accompanied the article showed that 96 percent of respondents were opposed to any plan that would force telcos to store telephone and Internet data.
“These proposals are one of the biggest threats to the privacy of all Australians for many years,” said Nigel Waters, of the Australian Privacy Foundation and Privacy International. “Governments seem to have an insatiable appetite for more and more information about us all that is none of their business, and when history shows that they can’t make effective use of the intelligence they already collect.”
Concerned citizens have only until August 6 to weigh in on Roxon’s initial package of reforms. To have your say, go here.
The Return of Mandatory Data Retention
The proposed “OzLog” mandatory data retention policy, which Parliament rebuffed in May, sought to require Australian Internet service providers to store information about each and every individual’s web usage history for two years. EFF has been mounting resistance to mandatory data retention policies since before the European Union’s 2006 adoption of the highly controversial Data Retention Directive, and we continue to sound the alarm when similar proposals arise.
The attorney general’s paper references a “tailored” data retention scheme, which would nevertheless require providers to store data for a full two years.[2] As a point of comparison, the European Union Data Retention Directive — which has not been universally adopted and Courts in in Germany and the Czech Republic have declared unconstitutional — requires data storage lasting just six months, with the possibility of an increase to two years in certain cases.
Data retention was included under the category of proposals the attorney general is “seeking advice” on, suggesting that it might not be politically tenable to charge ahead with the controversial measure with the same zeal as before. It was the inclusion of this agenda item that drew the strongest initial responses to the proposal.
“This inquiry will likely be used to again expand the powers of spy agencies when Australians are already under a phenomenal amount of government surveillance,” said Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens communications spokesperson. “This extreme proposal is based on the notion that all our personal data should be stored by service providers so that every move we make can be surveilled or recalled for later data mining. It comes from a mindset that imagines all Australians as potential criminal suspects, or mindless consumer drones whose every transaction should be recorded and mapped.”
Sounding a similar note, Rodney Serkowski of the Australian Pirate Party also seized on data retention as one of the most odious proposals. “It is not possible for the government to adequately ensure that the vast databases of highly personal data would not be at risk or subject to abuse of third parties,” he wrote in an email. “Indiscriminate data retention, as opposed to judicially sanctioned, targeted surveillance of a specific person for specific reason, is incompatible with human rights, and should never be considered legal or legitimate.”
New Rules for ISPs and Telecoms
The proposal would broaden online surveillance powers for Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies by compelling Internet companies to make it easier for authorities to conduct digital eavesdropping efforts.[3] “The exclusion of providers such as social networking providers and cloud computing providers creates potential vulnerabilities in the interception regime that are capable of being manipulated by criminals,” the discussion paper states. “Consideration should be given to extending the interception regime to such providers to remove uncertainty.”
Yet another proposal would sacrifice the privacy of law-abiding citizens for the sake of zeroing in on criminal suspects. It calls for allowing intelligence officials to tamper with a computer belonging to an uninvolved third party who is not under investigation in order to access a targeted computer.[4]
To justify the dramatic expansion of surveillance powers, the discussion paper attempts to portray the intelligence agencies as helpless, claiming that a revolution in communications technology has rendered existing wiretapping laws outmoded and inadequate.[5] “Substantial and rapid changes in communications technology and the business environment are rapidly eroding agencies’ ability to intercept,” the paper states. “Adapting the regime governing the lawful access to communications is a fundamental first step in arresting the serious decline in agencies’ capabilities.”
No New Surveillance Powers Needed
A radical expansion of police surveillance powers is not the answer. This proposal poses a serious threat to online privacy and it’s important to keep the pressure on, just as Canadian privacy advocates pushed back against a similar bill. The revisions floated in Australia’s National Security Inquiry should be met with stiff resistance from Internet users everywhere.
“These proposed changes, if implemented in their entirety, would appear to amount to a massive expansion of surveillance activity across the entire community, accompanied by a corresponding reduction in accountability for that surveillance activity, and are therefore a potentially significant threat to the civil liberties and privacy of all Australians,” Jon Lawrence of Electronic Frontiers Australia wrote in a recent blog post.
Bill Rowlings, CEO of Civil Liberties Australia, said the Australian Government seems to have found the straw that might break the back of the growing trend towards excessive surveillance in Australia. “People – your average Joe – are at last waking up that free speech and privacy matter, and are worth fighting for,” Rowlings said. “The ‘Arab Spring’ in the West might well be fought over such freedoms, rather than freedom of association, as in the Middle East.”
Stay tuned as EFF continues monitoring this proposal.
[1] “Equipping Government Against Emerging and Evolving Threats: A Discussion Paper to Accompany Consideration by the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security of a package of National Security Ideas Comprising Proposals for Telecommunications Interception Reform, Telecommunications Sector Security Reform and Australian Intelligence Community Legislation Reform,” Australian Government Attorney General’s Department, pp. 17
[2] ibid., pp. 10
[3] ibid., pp. 27
[4] ibid., pp. 11
[5] ibid., pp. 23
Related articles
- Every click you make, they’ll be watching (theage.com.au)
- Spies want our net data (theage.com.au)
- Government unveils huge wishlist of new surveillance powers (crikey.com.au)
- Down Under-surveillance: Australian govt seeks confidential online data (rt.com)
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