Home Australia George Brandis — “Laws… Don’t Go Far Enough”

George Brandis — “Laws… Don’t Go Far Enough”

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Australia’s Attorney General George Brandis

by Dee McLachlan

After the London Bridge attack, UK Prime Minister Theresa May declared there needs to be greater regulation of the Internet, and that something should be done about the “online safe spaces” that allowed terrorism to “breed.”

So now Australia is looking at UK-style legislation that would give security agencies more powers to compel telecommunications and social media companies to assist them in accessing data.

Nothing More Important Than Your Safety!

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was alleged to have said, “The privacy of a terrorist can never be more important than public safety – never”. He was commenting on the dispute when the FBI sought to force Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to an individual responsible for the mass shooting in San Bernadino, California in 2015.

And now Turnbull’s government is here again — with plans to access encrypted messages.

In mid-2013, less than 3 per cent of counter-terrorism investigations intercepted communications that were encrypted. Today the figure is around 40%.

Australia’s Attorney General George Brandis said,

“Within a short number of years, effectively, 100 per cent of communications are going to use encryption… This problem is going to degrade if not destroy our capacity to gather and act upon intelligence unless it’s addressed.”

Under existing laws, telco companies have some obligations to help authorities — but Brandis wants more.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 11 June:

“The rapid proliferation of encrypted messaging by terrorist networks has prompted the Turnbull government to look at changing laws to force telecommunications and technology firms to help authorities decrypt suspect messages.

“Attorney-General George Brandis said the government will not pursue the controversial “backdoor” access option by forcing firms to plant flaws in their encryption software that would allow it to be cracked by police or security agencies.

…Brandis said the government will not pursue the controversial “backdoor” access… “

Well, he can’t really open the backdoor to access communications — it would not only open it up to security agencies — but to every hacker or foreign government too.

So Brandis told The Age on Sunday that one method could be to “improve warrant-based access to communications at the sender or receiver ends”. I’m not really sure what that means. Does he know what he’s talking about? He seemed confused what metadata was when trying to push in those laws.

But Brandis always wants more laws. He want to impose “obligations of cooperation upon the corporates.”

Brandis told Sky News on Sunday:

“My concern is the existing laws … don’t go far enough…”

George Brandis on metadata below:

I urge the reader to watch an experienced journalist, Naomi Wolf, talk about  how democracies are eroded by laws “to protect us”.

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17 COMMENTS

  1. Naomi Wolf’s 10 easy points to identify approaching fascism.

    1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
    2. Create a gulag — Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law
    3. Close down an open society,
    4. Set up an internal surveillance system
    5. Harass citizens’ groups
    6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release – This scares people
    7. Target key individuals — Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss (How about those whistleblower laws)
    8. Control the press (I’d say those controlling the press are controlling government)
    9. Dissent equals treason — Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of “spy” and “traitor”.
    10. Suspend the rule of law
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

    • I feel that Oz has gone beyond qualification for the above mentioned points . Everything changed here after 911 .
      Like I’ve said before , mainly good people here herded by two faced wolves .
      As Heller wrote , to claim insanity one must be sane to realise that everything is insane .
      Our politicians have always been selected never elected .

      • Of course you are correct.
        The hilarity is more interesting when one examines who selected/enabled Perilous Pauline , the Hinch and other odd bobs.
        We can detect by whom, by the results reflected in the failure by the Hinchs et. Al. to really expose the historic lies.
        Same old game; control both sides in politics and media.
        The internet exposure is a problem, how to control it/us?

  2. If Brandis – and what I think of him as ‘our’ leading law maker is not fit to print in a public forum – was truly interested in taking on the misnomer ‘terrorism’ he would first begin to identify who the ‘terrorism’ belongs to and then urge the complete halt to all Islamic immigration. He would then crack down on those Mosques that are known to be Islamic hotbeds of radicalism, for example, Lakemba and Parramatta, just to mention two of them, and immediately limit access to our money by those Muslims who have two or more wives and that the head honcho at Centrelink is only too well aware of.

    Like all those who now ride roughshod over us, Brandis is a creature beholden to his own self-importance and what the Globalists, via our intelligence services tell him and the cabinet to do.

    And to Dee, All those points you have raised are valid and only a fool would deny the significance of where we are all today in the fascist West.

    • youre singing from Brandis’ hymn sheet when you bang on about the very scary islamic terrorism.
      identify who terrorism belongs to? good idea.. what about this?

      is it in the name of islam that a whole list of countries has been invaded by the west, illegal immoral warmongering based on lies, against people who were no threat to anyone? resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, millions? and the displacement, poisoning, maiming, orphaning of hundreds of thousands more? who owns that? G W Bush said he invaded iraq because “god told me to.”

      and just what do you think muslims get in the way of centerlink benefits that anyone else of any other religion here is not able to claim? Under aus law, if a man has more than one wife, only one is recognised, if any other is eligible to claim anything, she may qualify for single parents benefit, or unemployment, or whatever, but I bet you cant show a single example where anyone here in this country can claim for multiple wives.

      muslims are not the problem, the problem is people who keep voting for the dog whistlers.

    • Neminis,
      Fancy, I will go along with you a bit……..sometimes you appear reasonable, except when promoting your agenda for specific purposes.
      And that is your trick, to claim some credibility and rightious objectivity.
      If you are to be fair dinkum about muslims, perhaps you might enlighten us on why George Soris is promoting the islam
      Invasion of Europe with the social expected upheavels attacking christianity. Also include the US.
      All Dr. Day written all over you. ‘Support problem, cause a reaction and then impose totalitarianism’ as was the modus operandi in the Soviet Union with the real ‘holocaust’ by starving a reported 20 million Christians in the Ukraine by the Bolsheviks implementing a markist/communist/totalitarian/collectivist/Nazi/banker’s agenda.
      Yes the problem might not be the Muslims, perhaps the problem is those who finance, arm and promote Muslim fundamentalism for the purpose of creating division and to encourage violence to invite a hostile response, so that those to gain stand on the sidelines to clean up and impose totalitarianism in some form.
      The rapport presently between the Saudis and Israel is of note.
      So who is financing and arming ISIS?
      Who is defending the proxy ISIS by bombing Syria and Syrian forces?
      Oh well, we know ‘the plan’, just ask General Wesley Clark.
      So God told Bush to invade!
      Bullshit, it was the NEOCONs who used 911.
      Now who did 911?
      Of course the Muslims did 911, did they not Nemisis?
      More bull shit.
      Tell Tel Aviv that the world has awakened to the bs and their duplicity has been exposed………. now there you will find you dog whislers.

  3. When politicians start making noises about increasing aristocratic power over anything you can rest assured that their henchmen have already been exercising it for years.

  4. Saudi Arabia is an ally and we supply arms and mercenaries to bomb Yemen, even though they sponsor mercenary armies to attack secular democracies https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/06/10/how-i-know-that-sauds-did-9-11-attacks.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html
    We support the US in its failed 15 odd years in Afghanistan, they seem to be resisting the invaders quite well, why do they need Australian trainers?
    Brandis and Dutton are eroding the separation of powers.
    Turnball has turned nationalist populism into xenophobic patriotism.
    And the drumbeat of war and terror continues justifying increased surveillance and security theatre, despite its ineffectivness http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/britain-refuses-to-accept-how-terrorists-really-work/.
    Its as though Orwell provided an instruction book.

  5. Funny how our political always seem to be concerned about our physical safety but when I put that up against a comparative measure such as their concern for our financial welfare, it seems they don’t give a stuff about us.

    Dunno why that is but its funny how one proves the lie of the other.

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