Greens Senator Bob Brown does not think increased police powers are necessary. "We have enormous powers for surveillance, apprehension or punishment of people who are engaged in or intending to engage in or thinking about being engaged in terrorist acts in this country," he said. Australian Community leader Mr Lothar from the 2nd Renaissance is calling for more powers for reverse surveillance of the Federal Police.
Mr Lothar is also calling for expanded community powers to combat the HoWARd Governments fascism.
He says, "Dictionaries tell us that fascism involves, "Extreme right-wing, nationalist and authoritarian systems of government and social organisation."
Almost everyone recognises the past regimes of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini as totalitarian. However, few citizens of the US, Britain, or Australia, consider that their governments have yet reached such extremes." He said
"The mainstream media, and the professional propagandists that now influence and shape every event that is reported by such channels, make it difficult for the ordinary citizen to reason clearly, without being led along carefully contrived lines of argument. Many lines of reasoning given for increased surveillance, and for continual intrusions on individual privacy, end in the exhortation, "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to worry about." For example, one sequence goes like this:
* Criminals do harm to society,
* Criminals use cell phones to talk to each other,
* All cell phones need unique identifying codes, so that law enforcement officers can track criminals by their phones,
* So, your phone has a unique identification code embedded in its SIM card,
* The police (and anyone else) can track your every movement while you have your phone switched on,
* But don't be concerned, "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to worry about."
This all seems reasonable to many citizens, who genuinely feel that they have nothing to hide. They consider that the surveillance is not directed at them, but only at the "bad guys" in society.
However, that's not true. Anyone who thinks it through soon realises that such surveillance is a significant intrusion on citizen's privacy."
Today's line from the war criminal and his cronies Mick Keelty: (AFP): "Police need greater powers to force terror suspects to say who they work with and what they know about planned attacks." "If society really expects law enforcement to prevent and disrupt terrorist activity, then we need to look at other models that are working or that are under development in other parts of the world," he said.
"The AFP's overseas counterparts have a greater ability to force suspects to provide information about planned attacks."
"These include questions such as the person's identity and movements, what the person knows about a recent explosion or another recent incident endangering life and what they know about a person killed or injured in a recent explosion or incident," he said.
Mr Lothar " But don't let officials and propagandists think for you. Think for yourself. Think for your family, think for their security, think for their future, think for their freedom."
Talk Straight About Surveillance
The prevailing debates about surveillance and individual privacy are unidirectional, they all lead towards citizens and away from governments. Nobody ever suggests surveillance of police by citizen groups. Nobody ever argues that, "Since the AFP works for the people, it can have nothing to hide from them. Therefore, let us see the files. Give us the computer passwords.
Let us into the AFP offices, we own them anyway. Don't we?" If Australia was a real democracy, none of these requests would seem strange. But, the fact is that Australia is only a pretend democracy, as are its allies; the US and Great Britain. So, requests of this nature can be expected to be described by authorities of these elected governments as, "outrageous", "impractical", "dangerous", and of course, "not in the national interest."
It is up to ordinary people to raise the level of debate about the undemocratic surveillance practices of the many faceless and unaccountable agents who make daily intrusions on individual privacy, and about the apologists and propagandists for the War on Terror who applaud every new attack on human rights and freedoms as "prudent" or "necessary". If there is no discussion of reverse surveillance in the national media, create it on the streets on a citizen to citizen basis.
If nobody is talking about the outrageous assaults on privacy and human rights embodied in the new anti terrorist acts forced through US, UK and Australian legislatures, start talking about it to your neighbours and friends. If you are apprehended for behaving in a suspicious manner, make sure that the subject of your "disloyal" dialogue comes out in court.
There is nothing inherently wrong with arguing for an overview process covering the files of covert agencies, or other government departments for that matter. Such reverse surveillance could be performed by randomly selected citizens audit teams. That idea won't be popular with the Feds, but discussion of the proposal can't easily be prevented in a society that is declared to be democratic. If such discussions are to be outlawed, secretive states can no longer pretend to be democratic, and they must show their true colours to their citizens, and the world."
Surveillance
HoWARd's Cronies Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he will look into whether the AFP needs greater powers to fight terrorism?
The Government gave the AFP increased powers earlier this year, but Mr Ruddock says he will consider any request made.
"I have asked my officials to look at what the Commissioner has had to say," he said.
"If I get advice from somebody like the Commissioner of Police that these matters need to be looked at, I'll look at them."
Reality
Greens Senator Bob Brown does not think increased police powers are necessary.
"We have enormous powers for surveillance, apprehension or punishment of people who are engaged in or intending to engage in or thinking about being engaged in terrorist acts in this country," he said.
"The challenge to Mr Keelty is to use those powers properly before claiming he needs even more."
Mr Keelty was speaking to a conference of criminologists in Melbourne last night.
Lothar:
Argue For Reverse Surveillance - It IS Democratic! Code breaking, and subsequent surveillance of military communications transmitted by the German and Japanese forces, played a major part in the victory of the British and US forces in World War II. As a consequence, the old allies continue to maintain major systems of surveillance, under the UKUSA agreement. To this day, the US National Security Agency (NSA) is the largest employer of mathematicians and cryptographers on the planet.
But their surveillance now intrudes on the private lives, commercial confidences, and intellectual property rights of all citizens.
Not only those people living within the territories of countries that are signatories to UKUSA are affected. The secret SIGINT community spies on all or humanity, on a 24/7 basis.
It is possible to argue that this constant, all pervading surveillance is in the "national interest" of the British or US governments and their "owners", (but not the interests of ordinary citizens). However, nobody can soundly argue that such spying is in the wider interests of humanity.
When the surveillance systems of UKUSA are used to steal knowledge, dominate trade, create artificial scarcity, and maintain poverty and economic control, they serve to refute the notion that the governments that deploy them are either free or democratic.
Reverse surveillance, on the other hand, is inherently democratic. The whole basis of democracy is that elected representatives act for their constituents, and that they run accountable and transparent administrations. There is nothing in the democratic contract that permits covert surveillance of citizens by government agencies, nor is there any understanding that it is acceptable for "our" governments to bug "their" technological developments and steal or suppress what they choose, to keep scarcity and poverty going in the world.
All such surveillance activities are out of step with democracy, and it is entirely legitimate for citizens of any nominally democratic state to insist of their right of inspection and elimination of surveillance systems. All agencies of government, both overt and covert, come under this remit of citizens in a free society. And I guess that includes Governments who want more, more, more and even more powers to screw citizens over for political purposes.
Surveillance
By Propaganda Monster 7 November 04
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