Terror laws clear Australian Senate, enabling entire web to be monitored
smh.com.au
smh.com.au
The campaign will focus on allowing constituents to easily contact their representatives via calls, emails, facebook and twitter.
Here is the campaign mockup -> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByT3WMbCYAEsFcA.jpg:large
We also have an animation in development to more easily explain in laymen terms the repercussions of the proposed legislation.
For anyone inspired enough to want to help out there are a few roles to fill.
1) Website development
https://github.com/stopthespies/website
There are a bunch of open issues but your best bet is to join us at #ausprivacy on freenode to get a better idea of what needs to be done and where we are at.
2) Legislator Dataset
We have a large majority of the contact details for legislators thanks to OpenAustralia.org but there are quite a few missing still. So for those who can't help out with development, we would love help finding missing contact information. I have already wrote a call for help on Reddit -> http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/2hhh2m/call_for_v...
3) Press/Media
If you are a journalist or influential person/company who is interested in promoting the campaign, please shoot me an email(can be found in my HN profile)
What is going on there, Aussies? How is there enough support to pass these kinds of laws? (or is there?)
I would have thought post-Snowden this would have been out of the question.
As far as I can tell from mainstream journalism here in Australia, that's the top priority for most people. It doesn't matter if the brown people are immigrants, refugees, terrorists or locals.
I'm an Australian who lives/works overseas but spends quite a bit of time in Australia, and it's quite sickening to return every 6 months to a more polarised, racist, and terrified public -- and it's sure as hell not Al Qaeda, Daesh or any other external group that's causing the problems, it's the mainstream media.
Last week New Zealand re-elected their head office just days after government spying came to light. The majority of voters don't care. To quote another reddit thread:
> The big reveal was actually that New Zealand was conducting mass surveillance of its population when it's PM and gov't promised it wasn't.[1]
Last year New Zealand was voted 'freest country.'[2]
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2gf9p3/the_kim_do...
[2] http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.as...
It's complicated.
Mr. Snowden and Mr. Greenwald released proof about plans for mass surveillance, but most voters were satisfied with Prime Minister Key's explanation that the plans were not implemented. If the mass surveillance system was implemented, there wasn't any evidence provided from Mr. Snowden's cache of documents.
And, like you said, the majority of voters didn't care.
You can watch the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKSDmwKcFQA
I don't think what Snowden and the PM were saying were so incompatible - it's a word game. Sir Bruce Ferguson (ex head of the GCSB) said on RNZ that surveillance is an agent actively looking at data, so "mass surveillance" would be agents actively looking at 4.4M peoples' data. Clearly that's not happening, so John Key can claim that there's no mass surveillance here with no conflict. Snowden said he routinely saw New Zealanders' data, but the Americans can collect all that data with impunity since we're all filthy foreigners to them - there was no evidence presented that it's the GCSB actually collecting it.
This is why surveillance, like tax, needs international laws these days - domestic law is mostly irrelevant unless you're the US. In our case the US can collect our data with no issues since basically all our internet goes through there, and we can just ask them for it if we want it. Everyone can say they're not doing any wrong with no fear of contradiction, and everyone is happy.
Except us, of course, because, you know, we're being constantly monitored.
The word game is two sides of a coin.
But of course, it's another example of how the law lags way behind on tech matters - within 5 or 10 years an agent having to actually look at the data will be totally anachronistic. Algorithms can already find patterns more readily than humans can in many cases.
"Key Activities in Progress: Access ... New Zealand: Partner cable access program achieves phase 1"
"New Zealand: GCSB's cable access program SPEARGUN phase 1; awaiting new GCSB Act expected July 2013; first metadata probe mid 2013."
Yeah if you play word games the NSA isn't 'collecting' everything either. Since 'collecting' means a human inspecting the content.
Mass collection and permanent storage, automated reasoning and algorithmic processing for keywords/content/intentionality IS surveillance or at least that's a useful definition, anyway.
Then even if you do care, what can you realistically do?
Rationality is not this government's strength, and they seem to be aligning themselves on the wrong side of many issues. When you have the Rockefeller family switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy and the collapse of coal demand, the Abbott government's stance makes no sense at all.
And so Labor (left-wing) are cowed into silence because they're not sure they want to fight that one out in the media (which, isn't unfair - if anything happens it's political suicide).
What you do have to remember though is no one really expected the Abbott government to be this insane. A ton of people who voted "not labor" were expecting more along the lines of he tries not to rock the boat too much. Not the "dismantle social welfare, raise fees on everything, screw the healthcare system...what I'm unpopular now? TERRORISM! TERRORISTS EVERYWHERE!"
For corporates however, it was a different story.
His ideas on copyright in that book were quite interesting as well.
As for Labor, Bill Shorten may as well be a Liberal, though I would have thought Pilbesek would have been more vocal in questioning whether it was necessary. I suspect the Royal Commission into Union funding plays heavily on the level of Labor opposition.
The Greens at least opposed it, but this legislation is a bigger threat to them along with their supporters. It will be interesting if they start branding activists as terrorists and whether it has a chilling effect on groups with serious numbers like GetUp who are a major thorn in the government's side.
They portray this as being in response to the latest terrorism news, but I suspect its drafting began at least 12 months ago.
Between this and zero debate on whether Australia should be committing forces to yet another Iraq war the major parties power really needs to be cut down. If they just rubber stamp each others policies in these areas and they don't rate highly enough among the public as voting issues it really makes for a scary future.
Check out my other comment in this thread for a quick rundown on some stuff to start researching.
This legislation is something else. On one hand the new term ASIO affiliate would appear to extend Australian legal coverage to anyone ASIO determines to be operating in a recognised role. This would allow for example five-eyes partners to legally spy on Australians while ASIO can deny involvement of its employees.
The other possibility is that they are scared. The world is changing and consumers are starting to feel the pinch of 40 years of eroding job security and stagnating real wages. These heightened powers would give them legal powers to monitor and disrupt any internal dissent before it has a chance to disrupt the corporate structures. Good luck to starting any grass roots campaign that seeks to change the system.
Corporate espionage is huge, though. China is involved with enormous amounts of industrial espionage and the NSA specifies the Bureau of Commerce as a primary customer.
Definitely the second is true. "Radicalizers" are identified and quieted. PsyOps are used (for example JTRIG with NSA) to spook and discredit people. (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140224/17054826340/new-s...)
You may remember online porn browsing habits are collected by the NSA to discredit and blackmail leaders. Furthermore MINERVA and sister programs are used to seed and quiet dissent by serving targeted online advertisements and content. Many study the concept of "social contagion" - the idea that influencing a few key people who are key social figures can influence the behavior and beliefs of groups. PHK does a great job describing how problematic technological and incendiary political discussions are derailed (http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org//2014/Janson/Sund...).
The defense industry hires Astroturfers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBGary#Astroturfing) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Business_and_adop...) and online social network analysis is a key part of modern political tooling (http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world...) (http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-m...). It shouldn't be a surprise, as the Web makes money off of selling personal information and showing targeted content - when it isn't a state surveillance and propaganda platform, it's a corporate one. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/937b06c2-3ebd-11e4-adef-00144...)
Media manipulation is fairly common place, although it is practiced pretty carefully. (http://www.globalissues.org/article/461/media-reporting-jour...) (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/04/former-l-times...). The Fallujah PsyOp is a great example of how US media is a victim of direct US led propaganda.
Two others (media interests and large companies competing internationally for big contracts) have already been mentioned.
Over 800 police were involved on raids that ended up detaining 30, and only one individual has been arrested on any terrorism-related charge. The national security threat level was raised, and the general public seems to believe that there is something to fear.
I'm going a bit conspiratard here, but it looks an awful lot like the government just invented a terror threat to gain new powers...
The people who work for our government agencies by and large are looking to protect our country. They feel they need additional powers to better protect us against the threat of islamic extremists.
Given the numbers of people going to participate in terrorist acts in Syria, there may well be valid reasons to request these powers. What makes this hard is that the data to show whether these laws are needed or not is highly classified and is unlikely to be shared with the public.
We as Australians should clearly debate whether the liberties we will lose are acceptable, even if they are only temporary.
For my perspective, I am perfectly happy to reverse the onus of proof on people who travel to known hotspots to demonstrate that they were not involved in terrorist activities.
But hyperbole and conspiracy theories do nothing to improve the level of debate, or even help advance your cause
From decades of comfortable living, Australia has one of the most politically apathetic populations of any country. Nobody cares. Or, rather, only a very small minority actually cares to think about this stuff.
Except about immigrants. Don't get them started on the immigrants :)
Other readers, please see my other comment in this comment section about the Snowden Leaks and the NSA wrt terrorism and how the contents of the leaks combined with other sources unilaterally refute the idea that the intelligence apparatuses are being used for (or indeed are even useful weapons for) counterterroism.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/national/adf-member-reports-assault-in...
[2] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/uniformed-australi...
[3] http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-defence-force-memb...
Edit: Did writing that comment now put me on some sort of list? Semi-sarcastic, but semi-afraid. Chilling Effect is best Effect.
Your conspiratorial tone is sickening, given you lack of proof. The circumstances are suspicious, but they also coincide with browning tensions, with ISIS, beheadings and forces being sent to the middle east
The ADF might well be an innocent party, given that it was ASIO that stood to benefit from the legislation.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-26/adf-sailor-withdraws-s...
But Defence forces being attacked for being in uniform is not unprecedented, even excluding Lee Rigby there have been several incidents http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/europe/03frankfurt.h... and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.htm...
And today, I get to be ashamed to be an Australian, too.
There's no need for these laws, and they'll be abused to do anything but "fight terrorism".
If you look at the Snowden documents (and leaks by others) you'll see essentially nothing other than the international nature of the programs. For example, you'll remember from the Snowden leaks that the NSA hacked the Brazilian oil company PETROBRAS to help American oil companies win offshore oil drilling locations. The hacking of Merkle's cell phone was a big deal because it revealed that the US had information from Germany _during the Eurozone crisis_! Stuxnet was used to destroy Iran's nuclear program.
The US also faces the same sort of pressure from other countries. This year alone the DoD was hacked, Wall Street, NASDAQ and JP Morgan were hacked and hundreds of defense contractors were hacked - all with foreign attribution. Israel's Iron Dome designs were hacked by China.
Take a look at the NSA program HACIENTA, which "is used to port scan entire countries" and which uses other compromised (civilian) computers to disguise attribution.
Look at The Intercept reporting (where Glenn Greenwald is right now). He speaks at length about how the US uses NSA operations to benefit the global bargaining posture and competitiveness of US companies. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments...
And take the Inspector General's report from the Boston Bombings - a great example of how and when the NSA domestic programs would be used if they were about terrorism. The NSA is hardly mentioned. The Inspector General investigates the failings of the FBI. (http://info.publicintelligence.net/IC-IG-BostonBombingReport...)
"We focused our review on the entities that were the most likely to have had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the bombings – the FBI, the CIA, DHS, and NCTC, which maintains the U.S. government’s database of classified identifying and substantive derogatory information on known or suspected terrorists. We also requested other federal agencies to identify relevant information they may have had prior to the bombings. These agencies included the Department of Defense (including the National Security Agency (NSA)), Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Department of Energy, and the Drug Enforcement Administration."
The report on the failures to anticipate/stop the Boston Bombers barely mention the NSA. This is because the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Counterterrorism Center are in charge of counterterrorism, not the National Security Agency.
Or go to the NSA's own mission statement. (https://www.nsa.gov/about/mission/index.shtml)
"The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Information Assurance (IA) products and services, and enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances."
(Nothing to do with terrorism.)
Lots of news recently has called out Executive Order 12333's role in defining the goal and the means of intelligence capabilities. EO 12333 was passed in 1981. The Five Eyes, the key partnership of the NSA, has its origins in the 40's and ECHELON and other leaked programs (eg CARNIVORE/PREDATOR) predate 9/11 by decades.
The Snowden leaks disclose a list with over thirty countries with competing digital intelligence programs.
The NSA is not about terrorism. Never was. Never will be. The NSA and CSS are the intelligence arm of the United States. Austrilia's programs are similarly not about terrorism. Digital communications play a huge role in global communications and corporate and international power.
That's not to say there no domestic component to the programs. Domestic programs are also useful to track and disrupt radical ideas and organization within the country (MINERVA), and can also be used to incite discontent in other nations (look up the USAID Cuban Twitter program). Countries are able to manipulate the appearance of consensus within citizens of nations and in this way actually affect this consensus. (Look at the GCHQ programs leaks with BIRDSONG/BADGER/GATEWAY/SLIPSTREAM/ETC.) They also are used to monitor, detect and perform forensics on breaches from other countries.
There's so much to say, but I'll leave the comment with this. Digital communications are so insecure that the attackers always win. Always. And digital communications play a huge role (next to satellite and radio communications) in modern espionage and sabotage. If you just play a defensive game, you lose. The US feels it needs these capabilities. There's a sort of cyber cold war. Every country will lose if it decides not to play. So it doesn't really matter whether we want these programs or not as citizens - no vote is going to disarm nations at cyberwar.
I do not understand it. How can people say such things about one of the greatest inventions of the human species, that allowed us as a species to understand one another better?!? What goes in their mind when they say things like this?
He's also building the Titanic II. Nevertheless, this wasn't the stupidest thing heard in the Senate this week, which would be Chris Back's "Some people may be distressed to know maleness is actually suppressed femaleness".
Edit: Yes, I already know there's a TV show just waiting to be written out of the daily tales of Australian politics. No need to tell me. But the media here, controlled like politics by Rupert Murdoch, isn't going to be the one to do it.
You want to see the cover of the best selling newspaper on that day? Here it is: https://i.imgur.com/2TglCpg.jpg "Hellfire justice" indeed.
Hopefully on some issues they aid in voting the government down but it is really rolling the dice.
You could have said exactly the same two things about nuclear fission sixty years ago. In the bombs that will destroy us, in the power plants that will revolutionize us.
(That the bombs never destroyed us, and the power plants weren't everything we hoped, is not important)
> The internet, while a tool which has revolutionised the way we live, work and operate, has also revolutionised the way sinister and criminal behaviour is orchestrated and undertaken across the world. The internet poses one of the greatest threats to our existence because of this. Therefore we must give ASIO and ASIS increased powers, capability and reach to do what must be done to protect, maintain and advance our safety and security.
Source: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w...
Fastmail is in Australia, your comment seems relevant to me.
This is true, where "our" refers to domestic spy agencies and the governments that consume their output.
Hence these laws.
a government that wants to stay in power
I guess in the end, democracy or not, you get the government you deserve. Australians voted these guys in, they tolerate their actions, and many Australians will applaud them. If it all goes well, great. If not, I won't have much sympathy for them.
This is not an attitude I like to have, mind you, because I find that wherever I see tyranny in the world, I believe that to some degree - sometimes a lot, sometimes only a little - the victims of that oppression had it coming.
For instance, the definition of computer[1] that is being suggested to allow monitoring of the entire internet is:
computer means all or part of:
(a) one or more computers; or
(b) one or more computer systems; or
(c) one or more computer networks;
(d) any combination of the above.
computer means a computer, a computer system or part of a computer system.
Frankly I have no idea where to go from here. How does one talk to your local MP when the details of the proposed legislation are so muddy?
[1]: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w...
[2]: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014C00613/Html/Text#_Toc3...
The new definition plainly allows "one or more computer networks" which means literally the entire internet since it's just "one or more computer networks".
Computer system I think could reasonably be though of as a local network. Whereas in [2] they are being more explicit to head off any issues with something wider.
There is really no pressure on them to limit the scope of this, it doesn't surprise me that they would go for the widest possible definition and then reign it in if there is an resistance.
The Greens? Not likely. The "Green" bit scares too many people. The Dems? Ha! PUP? Oh god no. Other crazy minor parties? See: crazy minor party.
The reason we elect Liberals and Labor (apart from institutional momentum) is that they're the least despicable and dysfunctional. Besides, look at precedent. The last major move in politics was PUP getting seats in parliament for the 3(?) dumbest stooges I've ever seen. Essentially proving that you can buy seats in our parliament.
No, if we want to effect change we need to find another way. Possibly that means joining the major parties and attempting to effect change from within, or perhaps that means more protesting to increase awareness. I don't really know.
The Dutch parliament is the same size and the Australian parliament. In about 5 years they went from a new party to the 3rd largest in the Netherlands. They are still the 4th largest. And these guys seem a little bit wacky. Why can't we get a third party (or the Greens) elected?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/asio-boss-says-we-need-more...
> On the other side of the ledger, Mr Irvine admitted that the debate about civil liberties and intelligence gathering was a valid one to have.
> "I believe however that the vast majority of Australians expect their governments to take all necessary actions to protect their community and further the national interest," he said.
> He said ASIO has no plans for a "grand expansion" of its spy network but said it would need to lift recruitment to meet the demands or cyber terrorism as well as traditional forms of terror.
Sadly, the judicial arsenal for no-oversight spying on telecommunication is in place since 2013 [2], as part of the Military Programming Law. Not that the DGSE would wait for a law to do something like this anyway [3].
1: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/france-adopts-anti-terror-law...
2: http://en.rsf.org/alarm-over-massive-spying-12-12-2013,45606...
3: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/orange-gives-all-of-its-dat...
I do hope that the government tighten some of the definitions within the bill, rather then relying upon courts to narrow the interpretation.
Which now concerns me. Will WikiLeaks Party members be put on a list just like the ASIA targetted communists during the cold war?
It appears to me that regardless of who of the major parties was actually in power something like this would have come in.
For a second there, I thought I was reading about North Korea.
I didnt leave Australia because of things like this, but it certainly makes me rethink returning.
People contribute with personal data to help increase the security of a nation. I don't consider that as an act of spying from government, I call that "Crowd Funding" from the people, for global security.
But well, I'm an optimist and I assume there are doing this for the right reasons.
Those specific groups are safer today, but humans as a species haven't changed. We will almost certainly abuse that power against some other marginalized group, whether we mean to or not.
Moreover, this sort of thing has historically been abused for the suppression of dissent. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Even if the laws were made with good intentions, they are not implemented by perfect human beings. If you get on the US No-Fly list just because of a clerical error, you will have to fight in court for years to get off [1] because the administration does not want to admit mistakes. Laura Poitras, an investigative journalist, was repeatedly "randomly" searched and detained on airports, without any formal charge, because her documentations are inconvenient to those in charge [2]. IIRC, GHCQ employees stored nude images of those they were surveying in the "Optic Nerve" program for their private collections (I couldn't find source for that, though, so take it with a grain of salt).
The general pattern to observe: The combination of power and secrecy fosters abuse.
[1] http://www.wired.com/2014/02/no-fly-list-bungle/
[2] http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det... - Note that this was years before her involvement with the Snowden leaks.
Copyright protection is just a great excuse for enabling widespread eavesdropping and history rewriting. But there is no reason to run it the other way around.
Absolutely, because there have been no large scale terrorist attacks.
"Keeping the elephants away..."
You know the rest.
The NSA's bulk data collecting has been cited as the investigation's initiating factor in 4 out of 225 terrorism-related investigations, that's 1.7%. Is 1.7% worth it? I guess the Australian government said yes.
Source: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/13/review-finds...
Check for other comments on this thread (I posted a lengthy one) for details.