Assange accuses Australian govt of ‘misrepresenting nature of interception’
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has challenged assurances by the Australian government that communications interception in the country was a matter of “strict oversight.”
Assange sneaks into US conference... as full-body 3D hologram! (VIDEO)
He has dismissed as “absurd” Australian government agencies’ stance on mass collection of metadata in a submission into a surveillance inquiry by the Australian Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Age reported.
"It is absurd that Australian government agencies continue to
misrepresent the nature of interception and their access to
intercepted data via Five Eyes sharing arrangements,"
Assange wrote.
The whistleblower particularly questioned the assurances given by
Australia's surveillance watchdog, the Inspector-General of
Intelligence and Security (IGIS), that it has found nothing
unlawful about data harvesting in Australia.
"I would say that the data sharing about Australian persons
for ASD [Australian Signals Directorate – an intelligence agency]
is regulated tightly by the Intelligence Services Act and the
privacy rules made under that act and that data about Australian
persons is subject to quite strict oversight,” Jake Blight,
IGIS’s assistant inspector-general, said previously.
Assange makes surveillance inquiry submission http://t.co/Ro9jn2zs8E#auspol#NSA#snowden
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 9, 2014
Assange has called on the Senate committee to pay close attention
to documents on the XKeyscore program, leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
“This program includes a Five Eyes Defeat checkbox that
allows analysts to filter out data from one or more of the Five
Eyes countries,” Assange wrote. “Such a check box makes
sense only in the context of a default sharing of information
among the 5 Eyes that inevitably and necessarily circumvents the
TIA [Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act].”
Assange criticized the amendments made to Australia's
intelligence services legislation in 2011 as greatly reducing
“the scope of or meaning of protections for Australians
overseas” and greatly increasing “the surveillance of
their communications permitted."
The Australian government has meanwhile come up with a series of
amendments, which are supposed to upgrade the country’s 1979
Intelligence Act in the face of the terrorist threat. Among
anti-terrorist measures are those granting authorities broader
access to citizens' communications.
Crackdown on freedoms? Australian Senate passes draconian anti-terror laws
The first package of the amendments, passed last week, allows one
warrant to give the nation’s spying agency, ASIO, access to a
limitless number of computers on a computer network when
attempting to monitor a target. Critics of the legislation argue
that the vague wording of the document allows the entire internet
to be monitored.
The same legislation could see journalists jailed for 10 years for reporting on special
intelligence operations, something which has been seen by human
rights watchdogs as an infringement on free speech.
The second package of amendments currently pending approval would
allow Australia’s federal police to secretly search a terrorism
suspect’s home without having to notify the subjects of the
warrant for six months or more.
Those who disclose information on such searches could face up to
two years in jail.
A coalition of Australian media companies asked for a provision
that criminalizes such disclosures to be removed from the
amendment, or at least for journalists to be exempt.
The media groups said in a submission published Wednesday and
cited by The Guardian, that the section “would see
journalists jailed for undertaking and discharging their
legitimate role in our modern democratic society – reporting in
the public interest.”
