Over the last week a top secret court order requiring US telecommunications giant Verizon to hand over all call data to the National Security Agency showed the world the scale of domestic surveillance under the Obama Administration. As reported by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian:
“The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.”
The universal surveillance of citizens who are not even suspected of any wrongdoing has rightly garnered an angry response. While online activists and civil liberties campaigners have been warning of creeping secret government powers to spy on the everyday transactions of citizens for years, here is clear and simple proof.
And what of Australia?
Under Australian Commonwealth, state and territory laws, police and security agencies currently have access to data about which Internet sites you have been looking at, who you are calling and who is calling you, where you are located when using your phone or accessing your email account.
This information can be gathered without the need for agencies such as ASIO, the Federal Police or state and territory police getting a search warrant from a judicial officer. All that is required is for a senior officer of those organisations to give permission.
And in the last 12 months the Gillard Government proposed an expansion of warrantless surveillance and the bulk capture and retention of communications and browsing data – just the ‘metadata’, suggesting this was nothing to worry about. It is precisely this kind of data that has rightly alarmed the customers of Verizon in the United States, who have had this personal information secretly collected for months. An Abbott-lead government could take these proposals even further.
Compounding the existing opacity of our security and intelligence agencies’ dealings, ASIO is not subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 1982. The Privacy Act 1988 does not apply to the disclosure of personal information to ASIO by other agencies. Records of ASIO acts and deliberations are kept classified for decades.
The WikiLeaks Party believes that in a democratic society that subscribes to the rule of law, surveillance of the community should not be allowed to occur without judicial oversight. When it functions properly, the judiciary is the one arm of government in the democratic system which provides a bulwark for the individual against the state.
If elected to the Senate in September we will move to ensure that security and police agencies will have to seek a warrant from a judicial officer before embarking on a data collection exercise. We would demand that information on the number of warrants applied for, the number of applications granted and the nature of those requests be tabled. The sharing of data on Australians by our intelligence gathering agencies with overseas governments should be similarly reported on and tabled. There should be a requirement for annual reporting by Australian telecommunications companies and ISPs on the data access requests they receive and the nature of these requests.
The NSA revelations paint a simple picture of what occurs when powerful agencies have the ability to make secret orders to collect data on us without a proper balancing of the community’s interests. Agencies like ASIO and the Federal Police must not be allowed to be superior to the Australian community. Put into practice, the WikiLeaks Party’s core principles of transparency and accountability will mean that all Australians will know what these powerful agencies are doing in our name and with our personal information.
Latest: NSA whistleblower comes forward, watch the interview with Edward Snowden: www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video
What we don’t need is another entity to correct the present situation. What we need is the REMOVAL of ALL private data collection policies, and the introduction of new policies to prevent International eaves dropping on private citizens, we also need new policies introduced for the COLLECTION of data for ALL Government Polititions, and departments. Then maybe someone can work out who’s telling the fibs, and we are a PUPPET for the US!
US needs a Wikileaks party.
When civil liberties are being plundered to protect us is always the excuse. The difference between the old USSR and Australia or diminishing along with freedom soon we will have civilians on the beat to spying on each other in person. Jobs for the boys or what??
I have heard 11 agencies will have access to metadata – the ATO being one of them – if true, imagine you are being audited, they get to track your movements and see who you converse with. Anyone with knowledge of this and journalism skills should break this story because we are the nation that rejected the ID card, people are not going to be happy about this if it is explained in a way that affects their lives.
I have personally witnessed bureaucrats lying to external oversight agencies and obfuscating in Estimates hearings. The reassurances that there is nothing to worry about frankly is less than comforting.
There seems to be a growing inverse relationship where governments are becoming less transparent while at the same time incursions on individual privacy has increased, albeit the latter is a forced transparency.
There is something greatly wrong with this scenario and the fact governments and decision makers cannot see the long term effects is a concern and does not bode well for future policy.
An incredibly courageous young man. It’s time America realised that the people of the world don’t care that they want to protect themselves against terrorists or whatever other high flown excuse they want to make as a Government. America has become the terrorist of the world, and as more people like Edward stand up and say NO the tide will turn against them.
Sadly it is beginning to look like some old Nostradamus or Book of Revelation prediction is coming true… the Devil knew he had but a short time and wreaked wrath upon … or something like that. No doubt things are going to get a lot nastier before they are forced to shut down.
I used to laugh at the Chinese on my many travels there when driving on their freeways.. cameras would flash every driver passing by no matter who or what they were doing to monitor people’s movements , friends, etc
Now the unfortunate thing is I am not blind to this same abuse of power in my own backyard. Except we aparantly live in a democracy and have “rights”.