Watching the Attorney-General struggle to deal with the issue of ASIO’s Special Intelligence Operations — and the fate of those who publish information about them — has been revealing. As George Brandis has sought to provide reassurance that the new laws are not targeted at journalists (as if that makes a skerrick of difference), he has increasingly emphasised the real point of the laws: they are designed to jail whistleblowers.
Thus, last night on the ABC, Brandis was at pains to explain that journalists reporting what had already been revealed would be in no danger: the laws are in fact targeted at those who make the initial revelation — future Edward Snowdens, to use the figure Brandis has repeatedly invoked (and smeared).
Brandis is already engaged in a US-style war on whistleblowers, having authorised the raid of Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery and the former ASIS officer who blew the whistle on ASIS’s extraordinary spying on the East Timorese government; now he is seeking to prosecute both of them. As his remarks last night make clear, Brandis may not particularly want to lock journalists up for a decade, but with whistleblowers, it’s a different story. His goal is deterrence, to prevent future whistleblowers from revealing wrongdoing within intelligence agencies that might embarrass future governments just as the Abbott government has been embarrassed by revelations of ASIS bugging the East Timorese cabinet for no reason other than to benefit an Australian resources company.
The problem is that there is no practical distinction between journalists and whistleblowers. Silencing whistleblowers is ultimately about preventing accountability and transparency for governments, because without whistleblowers the ability of the media to hold governments to account is significantly diminished. In seeking to jail whistleblowers rather than journalists, Brandis will ensure journalists are unable to do their jobs.
For the same reason, data retention is a direct and explicit threat to journalism and holding governments to account, because it significantly increases the risk that whistleblowers and the journalists and politicians to whom they turn will be identified by security agencies and governments. Data retention must never be permitted, and the laws relating to SIOs need a public interest exception.
Big Mother is watching.
It will be funny watching him and his cheer-squad when Labor eventually wins government and they start hiding stuff with his cat-shit-hiding legislation?
Worth watching the current movie: Kill the Messenger”- which is about the CIA funding Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s by buying massive cocaine via local intermediaries which made its way to poor/African American neighbourhoods of big cities. Some of us remember! Journalist Gary Webb’s attempts to expose this in the 1990s this ran into CIA pressure on all involved including much of the national US media (even the NY Times by golly, who’d have thunk it). The later official US report that confirmed the essentials of what Webb reported, and more, came out during the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio, so most media ignored it. In this country not only do we need legislation which protects journalists from the government we hope they are protected from the guns of rival media who attack them rather than review the evidence without pressure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
Vale Webb, who killed himself in 2004, never having worked as a journalist after he resigned from the San Jose Mercury after they backed away from his story.
Wake up Australia before (or if) it’s not too late; The Liberals are taking away your democracy and freedoms and Labor are aiding and abetting them in their efforts.
Barndis should take his whistle blowing very carefully indeed then. We watch that hand to see how it slaps into the Australian culture into the future. Anzac thinking is this what we fought about? Hummm! This guy should be in Rehab.