Tony Abbott to extend anti-terrorism laws

[whitewind]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/tony-abbott-extension-terrorism-laws-amid-jihadi-fears

Tony Abbott is proposing a huge expansion of anti-terrorism laws in response to intelligence advice about a future threat from returning jihadi fighters. At the same time, the prime minister is dropping his controversial watering-down of the racial discrimination act on the grounds that it could jeopardise support for the new terror crackdown from “team Australia”.

The proposed changes include a requirement that Australians returning from designated terrorism hot spots such as Iraq and Syria will have to prove they had travelled for a legitimate purposes, with details yet to be finalised about exactly how such proof could be provided, how non-terrorists could prove their innocence or what penalties would be imposed for those who were found to have travelled for illegitimate purposes.

In some circumstances those charged could be issued with control orders constraining their movements or requiring them to wear tracking devices or regularly report to authorities.

Announcing the changes alongside the attorney general, George Brandis, and the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, after a marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Abbott said “the terrorist threat has not changed” but that there was a “heightened concern” because of the numbers of Australians travelling to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Abbott said the government “wanted to ensure we have all the tools we need” to address a looming terrorist threat and that the democratic process of getting the changes through parliament would be “the most important safeguard” to ensure the legal rights of the innocent were protected.

Brandis said the government had abandoned its previous decision to abolish the independent national security legislation monitor because of the range and scope of changes now being pursued.

The government wants to rush the laws through when parliament resumes in late August.

Labor reacted cautiously, saying it had yet to be briefed on the changes, would like to offer bipartisan support but wanted to ensure the need for security was balanced with the right to privacy. The Greens said they raised serious concerns about “basic freedoms”.

Abbott said he was ditching the changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, advocated by Brandis, as a “leadership call”, because they were complicating the terror law changes which needed to win the backing of “team Australia” and “leadership is about preserving the essentials”.

“When it comes to counter-terrorism, everyone needs to be part of Team Australia,” he said.

The sweeping changes to be included in the yet-to-be-detailed Counter Terrorism (Foreign Fighters) bill include:

• Broadening the criteria for banning a terrorist organisation to cover not only groups engaging in terrorist acts but also those that support and encourage it – including via social media.

• Lowering the threshold for arrest without warrant for terrorism offences.

• Making it easier for the government to suspend passports.

• Removing any end date on search and seizure powers, first introduced in 2005 under an agreement between former prime minister John Howard and the states that was due to expire next year.

Despite the “budget emergency”, intelligence agencies including Asio, Asis, the AFP, the ONA and customs and border protection will get an additional $600m over the next four years.

“We are under a lot of budget pressure at the moment but the community won’t thank us if we skimp unreasonably on national security,’’ Abbott said.

Brandis said the controversial plan to force telecommunications companies to retain metadata for two years would proceed in a separate bill after “consultations” with the industry, who learned about it from the media on Tuesday morning.

But telecommunications companies contacted by intelligence officers about the plan on Tuesday afternoon were assured they would not be required to do anything they were not already doing. Sources suggested smaller telcos were the main target.

Officials conceded the metadata retention would not assist in tracking many internet-based communications, but said it would allow intelligence agencies to continue to use telecommunications data that had become less available.

Abbott said the metadata provisions would include “the usual range of safeguards, warrants”, but metadata is collected without a warrant after an agency fills out a form.

He said it was already an offence to go overseas to engage in terrorist activity, “but we want to make it easier to ensure that people who do go overseas and do engage in terrorist activity can be appropriately dealt with here in this country to prevent them from being a threat to our people”.

Brandis said the measures would not operate retrospectively, but the government wanted the laws in place so they could deal with people now overseas upon their return.

He said he had approached the reforms with a “very strong prejudice against expanding the powers of the state” and against eroding rights and liberties, but emphasised that the overarching obligation of the government was to keep people safe. The risk posed by Australians fighting abroad was “a real not a notional or fanciful” concern, Brandis said.

Senior intelligence officials told journalists their assessment was that the terrorist threat from global Islamist terrorism would rise, that some of the 60 or so Australians fighting in Syria and Iraq would come home dangerously radicalised, and that the Syrian dispute was also re-radicalising Indonesian extremists. Currently the threat was unchanged.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Labor would consider its position on the security overhaul after a government briefing. The opposition supported “improving and updating our national security laws” but would never “compromise the right of our citizens to be free”.

“We need to be vigilant in defending our liberties,” Shorten said. “Once liberties are handed away and rights are handed away, it is very difficult to get them back and indeed, we believe that the sort of thing which we have seen with Peter Greste with being unfairly jailed in Egypt shows why we need to guard our liberties of our citizens very carefully.”

The government said it was also working to bring together counter-intelligence agencies in a similar way to the joint operations conducted under Operation Sovereign Borders.

[gtarman]

Campbell Newman uses "bikies", Tony Abbott uses "terrorists". For fuck sake...when will the general populace wake the hell up, get half a brain cell, and stop letting ultra-right wing nutjobs use the boogieman tactic to erode our individual freedoms? If we were really worried about terrorism the first thing we ought to do is stop cupping America's balls every time they start running low on oil and decide to invade a new country, and start treating other countries with humanity and compassion - being a good international citizen, offering aid, and not imprisoning or turning away people desperately fleeing violence.

I really don't wanna live in this stupid-ass country sometimes. They cut education so an already dumb population will just get dumber and more malleable and susceptible to their bullshit, they feed off of ignorance and use it against us in their self-serving policy agenda. They seek not only to erode our freedoms, but our very ability as a society to know that our freedoms are being eroded.

Edited August 6, 2014 by gtarman

[dionysus]

yeah, i thought we already had quite harsh mercenary laws, so, shouldn't those fighting international jihads be arrested upon re-entry into Australia anyway? letting them free so that we can survey their movements is only going to allow them to create the very terror networks they say these laws are trying to survey, which, at least guarantees results.

"look, we caught a network of 15 terrorists, by rifling through your metadata and removing your rights as a human, obey us"

[DiscoStu]

the worst thing is internet users will be forced to pay for the government spying on them. fair enough if the fascists want to log everyones digital communications it's easy enough to get around, but take it out of their pay, or use some of that fucking future fund that politicians are basically stealing tax payers money so they can give themselves gold class airfairs and free petrol every year fucking cunts. fuck politicians fucking fascists cunts all of them.

[DiscoStu]

Protecting your privacy: Our stand against ‘mandatory data retention’

don't believe the lies of this fucking scum

[DiscoStu]

"look, we caught a network of 15 terrorists, by rifling through your metadata and removing your rights as a human, obey us"

the thing is it has been demonstrably shown through numerous studies, even of the NSA itself, that collection of metadata has absolutely no material effect on crime, the EU dismantled their mandatory retention scheme because they found it was a complete waste of time and money

[etherealdrifter]

"I say forget spying on my mother and niece and get on with chasing the crooks".

right on. since isp's provide the platforms for our web related info, the right cause surely would be to some how fund start ups that can provide security over their OWN infrastructure installed networks. i'm just speculating because i'm a re tard when it comes to it things but if i was trying, i'd be funneling my efforts into installing more tin can to tin can string networks.

but i'd imagine that that much string to criss cross evrywhere would cost heaps.....philanthropy must surely step up and be more philanthropic in these times when the power to live a free and just life for the majority is being eroded by the meglominority.

[shortly]

I dont know that it would get far Cheshire, my eldest son's best mate ran foul of the law for operating an unregistered "clandestine network" aka a dozen teen ages gaming over a lazer network that had gone undetected for 2 years before the powers that be got wind of it & shut it down because it could not be monitored. Dirt cheap, mega fast & easy as apparently, well for teens with 160 IQ's

[-YT-]

So this is tied to the stuff howard bought in? which i think are supposed to end in 2016. As the Benbrika plot showed and proved really, that current laws are sufficiently adequate to tackle this sort of stuff.Guess they dont like the fact they have to obtain a warrant, i dont really see how that is or could be a problem if the situation is of a genuine concern