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Journalists and whistleblowers to be jailed

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 3:48 pm
Post subject: Journalists and whistleblowers to be jailedReply with quote

Forget ISIS, 'terrorism' and data retention. This is—or, at least, ought to be—the biggest news story happening right now:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/journalists-and-whistleblowers-will-go-to-jail-under-new-national-security-laws

Quote:
Journalists will be jailed. It might take a year, or two, or even longer. But journalists and whistleblowers will face prison as a result of the first tranche of national security legislation that was passed in the Senate late on Thursday.

And they laughed as they did it. As the Coalition, Labor and the Palmer United party voted in favour of this bill, which dramatically expands the powers of intelligence agencies while creating new offences for disclosing information about the operations they will undertake with these new powers, there was a jovial air in the chamber.

It’s a bill that makes many broad changes to our intelligence gathering apparatus. It introduces a class of “special intelligence operation” for Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) missions where intelligence officers can gain immunity from using force or committing other offences.

Reporting of these operations, which could foreseeably lead to situations where a public disclosure would be in the public interest, could land journalists and whistleblowers in jail. And not just journalists, but any person who shares or republishes this material. In addition, harsher penalties are put in place for intelligence whistleblowers who take documents or records and disclose them, partly as a response to the disclosures made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

So how would these laws work? We have many examples of intelligence reporting that could be caught within the scope of such an offence. Say, for instance, the bugging of East Timorese leaders during their negotiations with Australians were to happen today. If it were declared a ‘special intelligence operation’ – a process which only involves approval from the attorney general – reporting of the fact this bugging occurred, the details around it, the nature of the surveillance, could be caught within the scope of this offence. The same could equally apply for reporting the Indonesian president’s phone was targeted by Australian intelligence agencies, if it were declared a special operation.

Among Asio’s other new powers is the ability to obtain massive warrants for effectively the whole of the internet. They also create new powers for Asio to conduct “optical surveillance” without a warrant. There are many other small expansions that lead to a general widening of the powers of our intelligence agencies.

These are serious changes and they warrant serious scrutiny. But the passage of the bill has been all too easy. After it was initially introduced into the Senate it was quickly referred to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security. This committee is dominated by Coalition and Labor senators – the Greens senator Scott Ludlam and independent MP Andrew Wilkie lost their places after the last election.

As a result of this, the committee’s recommendations were weak. It made just 17 recommendations – remarkably, only seven of these actually suggest changes to the bill itself. Four were changes to the explanatory memorandum, while the remainder were suggestions surrounding oversight by the inspector general of intelligence and security – oh, and one was a helpful reminder that the government should re-appoint an independent national security legislation monitor, an office they initially planned to scrap.

The catch-all disclosure offence for special intelligence operations remained, with some minor suggestions for change. There was a recommendation to clarify that “recklessness” is the mental element required to commit the offence. A note was also suggested in the explanatory memorandum that the public prosecutor needed to consider the public interest before commencing a prosecution. This should be little comfort to any of us, when the options existed to have a real public interest defence, or simply not have the offence at all.

Earlier this week the Senate began debating the bill. The government’s amendments sailed through. Labor capitulated almost entirely on these enhanced powers – and, disappointingly, on the disclosure offence as well. Despite the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, initially saying the government would “need to make changes to remove that consequence” if journalists could face prosecution, the fact is the consequence still potentially exists.

Scott Ludlam fought hard to keep the debate going, and moved a series of amendments that would have protected journalists and whistleblowers, wind back some of the broad new computer warrant powers and increase oversight of Asio.

“I simply do not believe and cannot in good conscience vote, particularly in the climate that we’re in, for continued and relentless expansion of powers for these agencies at a time when the only person who the Australian government had established … to investigate whether the laws that we already have are necessary and proportionate has said in many cases they are not,” he said.

Ludlam spent considerable time questioning how the laws would work and whether they were appropriately crafted – what the limits of the computer warrant powers were, how the disclosure offences would apply – and he was accused of filibustering by the attorney general. Independent senator Nick Xenophon and Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm also raised many serious questions about the scope of the powers being granted.

But in the end the bill passed. Only the Greens, Leyonhjelm, John Madigan and Xenophon refused to support the amended laws.

Brandis, in a late night third-reading speech, said: “What we have achieved tonight is to ensure that those who protect us, particularly in a newly danger age, have the strong powers and capabilities that they need.”

Really, we can only blame ourselves. Could all journalists, collectively, have done more than throw together a handful of submissions? Most major news organisations in Australia raised concerns about the bill and the new offences. But there was no concerted campaign, no unified push to stop these disclosure offences succeeding. We’re now stuck with these laws, probably until someone is made an example of to spur journalists into action.

There is a small comfort in all of this and that is that the laws simply won’t work as a deterrent. They won’t discourage whistleblowers. And they won’t discourage fearless journalists from reporting on our intelligence agencies when it is in the public interest to do so. The disclosures by whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning – and the reporters who told these stories – have shown us that people are willing to take extraordinary actions, at great personal risk, when they believe it is necessary to do so.

It will just mean that some of them will go to jail.

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 7:32 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2014/sep/26/firstdog-eggplants
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Culprit Cancer



Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne

PostPosted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 11:19 am
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How good is this David? The LNP attacked the Gillard Government when they tried to limit what the Media could do and all this passes without a whisper from the same Journos that attacked Gillard and the ALP. Fricking hilarious.
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AN_Inkling 



Joined: 06 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 11:39 am
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It's definite overreach. No new laws were required. In fact we should be winding back some of the previous ones. But that's what a good fear campaign will get you. Security organisations will always ask for more in a climate of fear and governments will give it to them, especially the "conservatives". Being tough on national security always plays well.
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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 12:25 pm
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Culprit wrote:
How good is this David? The LNP attacked the Gillard Government when they tried to limit what the Media could do and all this passes without a whisper from the same Journos that attacked Gillard and the ALP. damn hilarious.


The irony reading is absolutely off the scale on that one. Just another reminder of how self-serving the Murdoch Press is—more worried about being forced to apologise for sensationalist, poorly-researched trash than actual legal restrictions on the freedom of reporting for investigative journalists and national security reporters. Really says all anyone could ever need to say about the priorities of The Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun, doesn't it.

What makes the intense irony less hilarious and more disturbing is that they still manage to wield such power. Can you imagine the effect of just one front page with Abbott and Brandis in photoshopped Stasi uniforms, a la Rudd and Conroy? It'd be a disaster for the government. Elections are won and lost on that sort of stuff.

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 5:10 pm
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David wrote:
Can you imagine the effect of just one front page with Abbott and Brandis in photoshopped Stasi uniforms, a la Rudd and Conroy? It'd be a disaster for the government. Elections are won and lost on that sort of stuff.

LOL. Just imagine the sooking and short memories.

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 5:51 am
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News Limited has been very quiet on these changes (which just passed the lower house, though you wouldn't know that if you scrolled through the Herald Sun website—evidently Kim Kardashian, the AFL Grand Final corporate box stripper and chewing gum left in Buckingham Palace are of higher import), so I did a search to see if they were covering it at all. I was pleasantly surprised to eventually dig up this balanced, well-reasoned piece by Laurie Oakes on Saturday:

http://m.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/our-free-press-is-under-siege/story-fni0fha6-1227072053944

For a brief moment, I wondered whether the Herald Sun was not quite as bad as I had thought. Perhaps they had put their partisan affiliations aside for a short time to defend their profession. But then I started reading the comments.

Note that Oakes offers little to no actual criticism of the government in his piece. It essentially reads like a gentle caution from an insider; like one of those rare times when Andrew Bolt thinks the Liberals need a push in another direction; entirely consistent with the News tabloids' stated concerns about press freedoms 18 months ago. So, what did the core Herald Sun readership make of this?

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It's a toss up who had the worst performance today Laurie or Lewis Jetta


Quote:
Go and write for the Age or work at the ABC Laurie - I used to respect your opinions and pieces but the last ten years have seen you run off so far to the left that you have not one ounce of credibility left.


Quote:
It was your Labor mates that wanted to get rid of free speech, remember that fool Stephen Conroy?

BTW, time to retire Laurie.


Quote:
I was highlighting his bias and hypocrisy.

All Laurie can worry about is what ASIO is doing.

Just thank them for your freedom Laurie!


Quote:
The media lost all my support when the ABC reported the Indonesian spying scandal.They could have reported it when the perpetrators ie the ALP were in power yet waited until after the election to hurt the libs They preferably should have simply sat on it in the national interest. What good did the story do in the interests of freedom of the press other than alienate our closest neighbour and cause the hassles that ensured for the libs.


Quote:
So Laurie is allowed to get into Liberal government secret files and expose what ever he would like to ,but now is affronted that a source of his should be outed, please just go work for Labor as a media man and be done with it


Quote:
Time to retire Laurie. Everything you write argues to the left it is an example of the bias which results in nonsense like the Global Warming alarmism.


Seriously. And that's just from the first 20 comments. Keep in mind that we are talking about legislation that Labor passed without so much as a whisper of dissent. How can people be so short-sighted?

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Pies4shaw Leo

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Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 9:17 am
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The problem with the internet, of course, is that barely light-sensitive jellyfish can post on it, as long as they can type. Happily, what you have there, is a bunch of jellyfish reacting to fear stimuli. We call that "conservative ideology". The reasoning being applied there seems to use the pre-crocodilian parts of the brain. It doesn't represent the views of people who can think critically. The problem with democracy and universal suffrage, of course, is that not only do such jellyfish have the vote but they, collectively, have the casting vote because they tend to mass together in dark pools.
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 5:30 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

Richard Ackland on why there seems to be so much apathy in Australia about this issue (the response on this forum so far being a case in point):

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/stasi-like-data-retention-laws-shouldnt-progress-without-a-mass-uprising

Quote:
One of the charming, yet perplexing, Australian qualities is that most of the time we pay little to no attention to what politicians say or do.

Even though enormous screeds are written about what goes on in the nation’s capitals, generally speaking they are of supreme disinterest to people who decide the outcomes of elections. Maybe, this is natural for a country that for a couple of hundred years has largely been populated by sheep.

Even when legislation affects us directly and profoundly, barely a squeak is raised – unless it is a new tax.

So it is with the data retention bill that nearly six weeks ago landed with a thud in parliament and has lain fallow while committees pick and poke at it.

The profound interference that this legislation proposes for the lives of everyone requires a supreme feat of detachment for it to progress without a mass uprising.

Special interests groups invariably get excited about laws that affect their patch. So it is that we’ve seen media people campaigning against national security laws that criminalise journalists reporting on information that forms part of a “special intelligence operation”.

This is the notorious clause 35P in the first clump of this year’s Isis-related anti-terror laws.

You’ll remember attorney general George Brandis got himself into one of his famous prolix tangles when he tried to falsely suggest on the ABC’s Q&A program that the penalty for disclosing state secrets wouldn’t apply to journalists if a whistleblower, like Edward Snowden, disclosed it first.

His copy of the legislation must have been quite different to the one everyone else was reading. Journalists kicked up such a racket that the attorney general had to produce some soothing balm - like only he could approve prosecutions against reporters for reporting what security agencies deemed out-of-bounds.

The only thing in living memory that has energised protests by the media against national security legislation is the very law that affects their territorial freedom.

Yet, here we are with the data retention bill, which puts the entire population under surveillance, monitors and stores details of our phone calls, our email traffic and inevitably our viewing on the web, and the national outcry is non-existent.

It’s as though the liberty of all the citizens is nothing when set against the prospect of a few journalists ending up in the clink.

Bret Walker, the Sydney barrister who was previously the independent national security legislation monitor, describes this as the “malaise of the citizenry”. There is simply not enough “push back”.

The disproportionate overreach of the data retention amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act extend beyond invasions of citizens’ personal privacy and information. They go to reconfiguring the implied social compact between the state and its citizens.

[...]

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OEP Pisces



Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Location: Perth

PostPosted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:33 pm
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Does anyone have a link to the new legislation. I've checked ComLaw and all I've turned up is the standard Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979. Reading through that doesn't really show anything overly inflammatory as has been described.
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Tannin Capricorn

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Joined: 06 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:50 pm
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^ It's secret. The penalty for reading Act is imprisonment without trial for 7 years or one of PTID's sentences, whichever is longer.
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OEP Pisces



Joined: 12 Jan 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 12:12 am
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Pretty sure I found it.

National Security Legislation Amandment Bill (no.1) 2014.

Schedule 3 Section 35P seems to relate to what is being discussed.

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David Libra

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:27 am
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Here's the link for anyone who's interested (which really should be everyone):

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014B00166

27D is also relevant.

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1061 



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PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 7:26 am
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David wrote:
Here's the link for anyone who's interested (which really should be everyone):

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014B00166

27D is also relevant.


The thing is not everyone thinks Journo's are gods.

If a journo releases information that puts someone at risk of harm then they should have to pay for that.

It's called Consequence!
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HAL 

Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.


Joined: 17 Mar 2003


PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 7:31 am
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Is this a riddle?
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