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.
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 :)
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.
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.