�CPA - The Guardian - #1453

AS POSTED HERE ---> �CPA - The Guardian - #1453

Media reports revealed last week that the federal government is planning to allow ASIO officers to carry weapons. Agents of ASIS – Australia’s overseas spy agency – would also be able to carry weapons and launch paramilitary actions in other countries. The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) would be permitted to carry out domestic wiretaps on request from ASIO or ASIS with a simple warrant from a judge. In the same week, experts and refugee groups went public with grave concerns about proposed legislation that could jail volunteers assisting asylum seekers. Everywhere you look, the federal government is attacking the civil liberties of Australians and tightening the cordon around “fortress Australia”.

The news comes hard on the heels of announcements that the applications for refugee status for Afghans and Sri Lankans have been suspended for six months and three months respectively. The notorious Curtin immigration detention centre in WA has been recommissioned. Australia is breaching its obligations under international law to receive asylum seekers and to process their requests for refuge. (See Rudd government to reopen infamous detention centres.)

The reports follow on the federal government’s refusal to consider key recommendations of the Brennan committee that investigated human rights in Australia and reported to the Federal Attorney General last September. The committee found widespread support in the community for a Human Rights Act but the federal government was having none of that. Its plans were clearly headed in the opposite direction.

The Sydney Morning Herald went public last week with reports from intelligence sources that ASIO officers would soon be able to carry weapons for “self-defence”. There was no evidence given that intelligence officers need protection from the public. On the contrary, there is mounting evidence that the public needs protection from ASIO.

The Law Council of Australia recently wrote to the Attorney General asking that the spy agency be reined in with regard to its investigations. The Council claims ASIO misleads the individuals it interviews into believing they have fewer rights to legal representation and to refrain from answering questions than they actually have under current legislation. In the case of “terror suspect” Izhar ul-Huque in 2003, Justice Adams noted that the agency had been deceptive, intimidating and engaged in a “gross breach of powers”.

ASIS lost its gun licence in 1983 when officers terrorised guests at the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne during a mock surveillance and hostage rescue exercise. Officers were allowed to carry weapons again in 2004 as a result of the Howard era spy agency power grab that followed 9/11 and the Bali bombings. The latest move would give the local MI6 and CIA equivalent the power to carry out paramilitary actions in other countries. The PM’s National Security Adviser, Duncan Lewis, is a former special forces commander. The move would worsen Australia’s reputation in the region for interference in the internal affairs of its neighbours and heighten tensions.

DSD is said to be getting a powers boost on top of its new $14 million Cyber Security Operations Centre in Canberra. The military agency will be able to perform domestic wiretaps upon request from ASIO or ASIS. All that would be required would be a warrant from an obliging judge. The powers are to be granted in response to a claimed increase in terror threats and cyber attacks. Much is being made of allegations that Australian mining companies’ computers have been subjected to cyber attacks launched from China. In the meantime, the only proven spying charges affecting the mining industry have been those against Australian businessman Stern Hu who was convicted in March of receiving bribes and stealing commercial secrets from China.

Proposed new criminal charges directed against people smuggling have been described as “mind-blowing” by Mary Crock, professor of public law at Sydney University. “These laws capture innocent people who may be operating under perfectly good and humanitarian reasons,” she told the Herald. The law would turn anyone sending money overseas that might eventually be used to pay a people smuggler into a criminal. Australians who assist asylum seekers escape danger and who unwittingly might be helping to engage people smugglers could be jailed for up to 10 years. A pilot who knowingly flies foreigners carrying false documents to Australia would also become a criminal. So would a ship’s captain who rescues asylum seekers on the high seas and brings them to Australia. Arne Rinnan, the captain of the Tampa, would have been caught in this legislative net.

People are fighting back against the persistent attacks on their democratic rights by the federal and state governments. Adelaide construction worker Ark Tribe is willing to go to jail and incur a hefty fine rather than submit to an interrogation by the construction industry’s secret police, the ABCC.

His matter comes before the Magistrates’ Court in Adelaide on June 15. Opponents of the anti-democratic push are having some victories. Key elements of South Australia’s “anti-bikie” legislation that eroded freedom of association were struck down by the SA Supreme Court last September. The Rann government is appealing that ruling in the High Court. Defenders of civil liberties are now pressing for a state-based human rights act in the absence of a national one. The fight to defend democratic rights must be stepped up in response to the Australian governments’ incessant power grab.