{"id":25993,"date":"2011-07-05T22:54:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T12:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=25993"},"modified":"2011-07-05T23:00:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T13:00:50","slug":"three-cheers-and-a-loud-huzzah-for-the-wikileaks-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=25993","title":{"rendered":"Three cheers and a loud huzzah for The WikiLeaks Amendment!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/national-affairs\/julia-gillard-cant-say-how-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-has-broken-the-law\/story-fn59niix-1225966954147\">Department of Julia Gillard Can&#8217;t Say How WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Has Broken the Law<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Du1otTOHxPk\">Australia Australia Australia<\/a> is now in a much much much better position to defend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WXhOR5xzzEo\">working families working families working families<\/a> from <strike>Julian Assange<\/strike> <strike>WikiLeaks<\/strike> <strike>The Vogon Constructor Fleet<\/strike> illegal fishing. This is thanks to the passage of the <em>Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2011<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>For the record, the politicians responsible for passing the Bill are brilliant men who have come up with many well-thought-out, practical ideas, and are ensuring the political future of this country.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and their personal hygiene is beyond reproach.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"349\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jc6aufHz-i0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>ASIO gets its new powers \u2014 and no one will tell us why<br \/>\nBernard Keane<br \/>\nCrikey<br \/>\nJuly 5, 2011<\/p>\n<p>Well, we never found out why, and now we\u2019ll never know. Last night, the bill to significantly expand ASIO\u2019s powers to spy on Australians sailed through the Senate with the support of Labor and the Coalition.<\/p>\n<p>Just when we needed a bit of that mindless negativity for which the Abbott-era Coalition has become famous, they fell into line with Labor. The Greens, in the form of Scott Ludlam, were the only ones asking <a href=\"http:\/\/scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au\/content\/overestimated-%E2%80%93-senate-estimates-winter-2011\">questions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And the key question remains unanswered: what exactly is it that ASIO cannot currently do that it could do under the bill\u2019s amendments to the circumstances in which it can gather foreign intelligence?<\/p>\n<p>An official of the responsible department, Attorney-General\u2019s, struggled to answer that question at the brief committee hearings the bill received a fortnight ago as part of the unseemly rush to get it through Parliament. He claimed activities associated with weapons proliferation was an example, only to be brought up short by a Labor senator who noted that was already covered under ASIO\u2019s power in relation to Australia\u2019s security.<\/p>\n<p>Afterward, Attorney-General\u2019s produced a bizarre third submission [<a href=\"https:\/\/senate.aph.gov.au\/submissions\/comittees\/viewdocument.aspx?id=0a6813d6-146b-4d70-8735-bdbcfd13b3e3\">PDF<\/a>] to the committee claiming illegal fishing was an example of an activity currently outside the scope of ASIO\u2019s powers.<\/p>\n<p>The real answer of course has always been in plain sight: <strong>the amendment is designed to enable ASIO to spy on people involved with WikiLeaks, which currently falls outside the definitions of foreign states, people connected with a foreign state or foreign political organisations. The amendment is informally known within Attorney-General\u2019s as \u201cthe WikiLeaks amendment\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But the Department\u2019s official line is that it has nothing to do with WikiLeaks and was developed long before WikiLeaks began releasing diplomatic cables.<\/p>\n<p>So Ludlam returned to the issue last night, asking the Government\u2019s duty minister\u2009\u2014\u2009the minister or Parliamentary Secretary rostered on to carry legislation through the chamber\u2009\u2014\u2009repeatedly to explain what it was that ASIO couldn\u2019t investigate that it could under the amendments.<\/p>\n<p>In such circumstances, a duty minister is supported by Departmental officials and, usually, an adviser from the office of the portfolio minister, who sit in the \u201cadviser\u2019s box\u201d, the desks tucked up at the very end of the chamber on both sides. When you go into the adviser\u2019s box, you should be fully across the legislation in question and have a full array of <em>Q&#038;A<\/em>-type briefs for the duty minister to read from, addressing every single possible question that could be asked. You need to be ready to spring a response out to the minister in a matter of seconds.<\/p>\n<p>As it was, given Ludlam had already identified his concerns at the inquiry hearing, it should have been straightforward to furnish the duty minister with some clear responses.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, officials put in a shocker, and left David Feeney, in particular, looking silly as they served up wholly inappropriate material that frequently had nothing to do with what Ludlam had asked. It led to this brilliant moment from Feeney in response to a further demand by Ludlam that the Government explain what the bill would permit ASIO to do that it couldn\u2019t currently do:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Two points, Senator. The first is that ASIO\u2019s mandate, if you will\u2009\u2014\u2009and that is my word\u2009\u2014\u2009is set out in the section I am looking at here, which is where \u2018security\u2019 is defined. It is part I, section 4. There we see the definition of security: \u201c\u201dsecurity\u201d means:\u201d and then it is set out in paragraphs (a), (aa) and (b). I think we see there a codification of some of the issues that you are looking for. I guess that when one contemplates the Cold War one is contemplating an environment that is dramatically transformed today. We are obviously not today working in an environment where there is something of a global contest between two clearly discernible ideologies and constellations of nation states. What we are looking at today is, firstly, a multipolar international environment where non-state actors are particularly relevant and, secondly, an environment which has been transformed by technology. So the sorts of materials you were talking about and the sorts of tools that are required to monitor the movement of those materials, I think, have greatly changed, and as legislators we need to make sure that that is something we remain abreast of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As Ludlam later said, it was rather like Feeney was pouring a bag of cement into Hansard.<\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t Feeney\u2019s fault, but that of the officials nearby who clearly hadn\u2019t prepared a proper answer even to questions that knew were coming, let alone providing a minister from outside the portfolio with a clear grasp of the rationale for the bill.<\/p>\n<p>George Brandis briefly joined the debate, and demonstrated a far more coherent grasp of what was going on than Feeney, but that\u2019s only to be expected from the shadow minister. Brandis was there to report that the Coalition would be joining Labor in blocking the Greens\u2019 amendments and passing the bill, but he felt sufficiently galled by Ludlam\u2019s efforts to question the bill to plead that he, too, was concerned about encroachments on civil liberty and he, too, was sceptical about calls to increase the powers of intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n<p>But as with his failure to object to the Howard Government\u2019s systematic assaults on civil liberties in the name of counter-terrorism, plainly Brandis wasn\u2019t concerned quite enough\u2009\u2014\u2009not even to participate in the committee inquiry into the bill. He left it all to the now-departed Russell Trood.<\/p>\n<p>The Greens amendments to restrict the effect of the expansion of ASIO\u2019s powers were defeated 34-9. As the numbers suggest, a large number of senators couldn\u2019t be bothered turning up to vote.<\/p>\n<p>Still, at least ASIO can now spy on Julian Assange and Attorney-General\u2019s bureaucrats can stop making up stuff about illegal fishing as a cover story.<\/p>\n<p><em>See also<\/em> : <a href=\"http:\/\/larvatusprodeo.net\/2011\/07\/05\/asio-gets-wider-remit-to-furious-debate-only-kidding\/\">ASIO gets wider remit, to furious debate\u2026only kidding<\/a>, Robert Merkel, Larvatus Prodeo, July 5, 2011.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.livestream.com\/embed\/democracynow?layout=4&#038;clip=pla_0e8ce61f-79a8-4b99-98dc-abb169752fa6&#038;color=0xe7e7e7&#038;autoPlay=false&#038;mute=false&#038;iconColorOver=0x888888&#038;iconColor=0x777777&#038;allowchat=true\" style=\"border:0;outline:0\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size:11px;padding-top:10px;text-align:center;width:560px\">Watch <a href=http:\/\/www.livestream.com\/?utm_source=lsplayer&amp;utm_medium=embed&amp;utm_campaign=footerlinks title=live streaming video>live streaming video<\/a> from <a href=http:\/\/www.livestream.com\/democracynow?utm_source=lsplayer&amp;utm_medium=embed&amp;utm_campaign=footerlinks title=Watch democracynow at livestream.com>democracynow<\/a> at livestream.com<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Department of Julia Gillard Can&#8217;t Say How WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Has Broken the Law: Australia Australia Australia is now in a much much much better position to defend working families working families working families from Julian Assange &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=25993\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,9,893,15],"tags":[1230,1108,1257],"class_list":["post-25993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-state","category-thats-capitalism","category-war-on-terror","tag-asio","tag-julian-assange","tag-wikileaks-amendment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-6Lf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25993"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26015,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions\/26015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}