Article By: Terrence McCoy
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had some “regrettable” news. It was late last month, Australia had just thwarted an Islamic State plot to behead random Australians, &the prime minister’s tone was somber. “Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we’re used to, & more inconvenience than we would like,” he told the country’s parliament. “Regrettably for some time to come, the delicate balance btwn freedom & security may have to shift.”
Consider the balanced shifted. Since those remarks, Australia has endowed its nation’s intelligence agencies w/their most significant expansion of powers in 35 years, legalized the surveillance of the entire Australian Internet w/1 warrant, threatened whistleblowers & journalists with 10-year prison terms if they publicize classified info, & is mulling a new law that makes it easier to detain Australians w/out charge & subject them to “coercive questioning.” Taken together, these are sweeping changes in a nation generally considered 1 of the most liberal in the world — & mark a profound consequence of the emergence of the Islamic State, which has lured scores of Australians to its cause & threatened the country several times in recent weeks.
Times of panic have long driven countries to mortgage civil liberties for a broader sense of security. The U.S. passed the Espionage Act shortly after entering World War I, then interned more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during WWII, then passed the Patriot Act following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — & is now mired in a national debate on the National Security Agency’s sprawling surveillance. Even by those standards, however, critics warn Australia is heading into unsure territory. While the U.S. engaged in a sweeping surveillance program to thwart terrorists & imprisoned detainees w/out charge, the Constitution enabled challenges to the system, many of which have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. But “Australia does not have a written Bill of Rights in its Constitution, making its freedom-abridging laws even harder to challenge in court,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil-liberties advocate, said in a statement. It called the just-passed measures a “week in history when it became easier for the Australian government to surveil & manipulate the Internet at will.”
The nuts & bolts of the recently-passed bill: It allows authorities to access data from computers w/a warrant, but expands the definition of “computer” to include “1 or more computer networks.” This, analysts warned, means that Australian law enforcement agencies can now monitor the entire Internet w/1 warrant bc the Internet is really just 1 big computer network. Then it granted criminal & civil immunity to law enforcement agents who may break the law in the course of the work as long as those prospective crimes don’t cause death, serious injury, sexual harm or significant property damage. The bill also made it an offense, punishable by 10 years in prison, for any1 — whistleblower, journalist or otherwise — to “disclose info” relating “to a special intelligence operation.”
View full article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/07/how-australia-just-became-a-national-security-state/?tid=pm_national_pop
Endings In Beginnings 