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Australia May Be the World’s Most Secretive Democracy

207 points by rfreytag 7y ago

vermilingua 7y ago
“You’ve got a mature liberal democracy that pursues and hunts down whistle-blowers and tries to kill the messenger.” Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? Peak democracy was WWII, we seem to have been sliding towards authoritarianism since then.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Peak for whom? WASPs?
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    For the liberal democracies of the time. I wasn’t there, so I can’t comment as to which specific demographic benefited the most from that.
  - seszett 7y ago
    Maybe in the US, but most citizens of the other democracies at the time were neither anglo-saxon nor protestant. You might say that they were at their peak for the majority of their population maybe, but I think that's the normal, intended outcome of democracy.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Peak democracy was WWII uh... Do you mean the time just before WWII, when most European nations were either Fascist or Communist? Or do you mean the time just after WWII when all of Europe was destroyed?
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    The latter. It was a resounding victory for democracy, and it flourished all over the world for decades. That being said, history is written by the victors.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      The decades after WWII were consumed by the Cold War, between two sets of victors, one of which was definitively not democratic. The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists.
      - macspoofing 7y ago
        >The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists. As opposed to the democratic governments the Soviet Union supported? Give me a break here. The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. I cannot understand how people can look at history and be completely blind to the actions of Soviet Union.
        asark 7y ago
        Why did you take the parent post as an example of anyone being completely blind to the actions of the Soviet Union? The points seems to be that treating the immediate Post-WWII era as some high point for democracy is... well, requiring further support than is immediately obvious, anyway, since there were two victorious sides, one of which wasn't democratic at all, and the other which supported autocracies all over the world, too. Pointing out that the spread of democracy post-WWII was mostly confined the defeated states in that conflict, and that neither victorious side did much to support democracy elsewhere and even the "free world" often did the opposite, isn't a defense of the Soviets.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        > The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. That's the point, though. The USA did exactly the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair I am not blind to the bad actions of the USSR. I'm just also not blind to the bad ones of the USA and its allies during the same time period.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  People always demand unchecked democracy because they always believe they're interests align with the majority. Why should everyone get a say? Why should anyone get a say? I don't believe a legitimate democracy can have any power greater than the individual. To extrapolate, "The government may do x." If you replace 'government' with an individual, that is the guideline. For example 'Jose may tax your income.' Obviously, Jose may not do that.
- Angostura 7y ago
  Really sliding to authoritarianism since then? Until 1968, every new play in Britain required a licence from the Lord Chamberlain's Office before it could be publicly performed. There was no legislation attached to this, so the Lord Chamberlain could censor as he chose. Can you imagine introducing such a rule today? How about applying for a license before launching a website?
  - Theodores 7y ago
    That law came in 1737 when there was a new theatre in town and satirists who dared to call the government silly things. It was the moral panic of the time. In 1959 we got the Obscene Publications Act and that got used quite a bit during the Thatcher years with a new moral panic - video nasties. Video nasties weren't just Chainsaw Massacre stuff they also had a thing to say about society. Police raided quaint little video shops and did their best to enforce the law, sometimes getting it wrong, well, often getting it wrong. This only encouraged the market in 'Video Nasties' so in 1984 they brought in a new law to get this moral panic under control. You could say that the law had been updated for the medium of the era - VHS cassettes - and that they could not be bothered with the stage any more. However, the stage is a public place, you have people congregate in an audience and they could be a dangerous rabble. In 2000 we got the Terrorism Act and that followed on from the Criminal Justice Act that had came along earlier in the 1990's to make it illegal for more than four people to get together to listen to 'repetitive beats'. There are plenty of laws regarding what you can and cannot say online and people have been prosecuted for saying not so nice things on Facebook. You might not have to apply for a licence to run a website but that is not so enforceable when you could put your website online in a country far, far away. Actual censorship has got a lot more refined over the decades. As has propaganda. A lot has gone on over the last twenty years of widescale internet usage, however it will be a while before we find out what this is.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    Aside from the absurdity of having a lord make any decisions, I think much of the population—maybe not a majority, but a significant part of the population—would be fine with that if presented as opposing or “preventing” terrorism (as if that’s even possible).
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  > Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? It's not a mature liberal democracy, maybe it was one time. It's just that power always tries to acquire more power and obviously any not __perfectly__ designed political system will always end up authoritarian and undemocratic.
- lordleft 7y ago
  Plato explored this idea (that democracies are precursors to tyrannies - see Andrew Sullivan's article about this here: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html?gtm=top http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donal...
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    I think that’s a pretty natural progression. A well run dictatorship is probably superior to a democracy in the short term so it’s always tempting to give up freedom in exchange for efficiency. The question is how long the dictatorship can keep it up before going downhill.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      If you're allowed to take a form of government and say, "well-run," why not have a well-run democracy?
      - maxxxxx 7y ago
        It’s a little easier to set direction if you don’t have to ask everybody. There is a reason why successful companies are basically dictatorships .
        SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        I consider myself to be strongly pro-democracy, but as a thought experiment look at TV shows like "X Factor" (or "American Idol" if you're in the US) to see the results of democracy in action. These shows should be producing the finest musicians the world has ever seen, right? After all, the masses know best.
        Veen 7y ago
        There are some who would argue that X Factor does, in fact, produce the best because best means nothing but most popular. Otherwise, you have to bring in subjective measures of taste which are open to being condemned as elitist. (Personally, I'm happy to be an elitist, provided it's an open elite that anyone can join)
- gonzo41 7y ago
  I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia. Generally Australia is pretty free, even without explicit freedom of speech. The military is very competent and retrained in its actions, however in my life I've only seen an increase in nationalism related to the military. The right wing love to drape themselves in the flag and related militaria. I think the afghan war crimes by special forces should be of genuine public interest to Australians. And I think the application of Top Secret to government documents about these matters is the real problem. Its a problem for the public and democracy when you can use something like a Classification as way to cover up misdeeds. I feel sorry for the guy going down for the leaks.
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    > I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia A NewsCorp journalist was the first to be raided.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Compulsory voting?
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Outlawed silent protest, a base of any free society.
    - neumann 7y ago
      Not really. You can lodge an empty ballot paper.
      - jakeogh 7y ago
        Silent protest is not participating. Surreal that needs to even be said.
- mikorym 7y ago
  > sliding towards authoritarianism I think that we are at a time where there is more public input, whistle-blowing, outcry over corruption, democratic processes, and so forth than ever before in history. I daresay that we are also at an information age; a time in which we can identify authoritarianism, and argue and critise it from the comfort of our couches and for the larger part without fear of death. We should not confuse the matter: to think that the sum of our current challenges imply the lesser to be the sum of historic challenges.
- germanlee 7y ago
  How could peak democracy be ww2? The only significant democracy in ww2 was the US. British Empire, Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, China, etc were not democracies. There was the US and everyone else was a non-democratic empire or a colony of the empire.
NedIsakoff 7y ago
I've always said that freedom (liberalism) and democracy is actually unnatural. People do not want freedom and democracy, they want authoritarianism that favor their point of view or agenda. The problem is that we have different points of view or agendas. Example: Look at New Zealand after the mass mosque shooting. People support the actions taking which include banning owning or reading the guy's manifesto. Owning it means up to 10 years in jail and/or up to $50,000 in fines.
- i386 7y ago
  The big difference between those point of views is that one is about letting people live safely within secular society and the other is the violent murder of the other. They are not morally equivalent positions. Stop treating them that way.
  - gdhbcc 7y ago
    Expect they are morally equivalent because morality is relative and individual.
  - umvi 7y ago
    "Safety" comes at the expense of freedoms, such as the freedom to read the shooter's manifesto. Whether or not you think the freedom/safety it is worth the trade off is you opinion, but you can't deny it's one step closer to total authoritarianism. I've personally read a few shooter manifestos, including "My Twisted World", and don't see why it's a big deal to do so. I found it to be a fascinating insight into a world of mental illness I would never have imagined.
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    Can you please explain what positions do you think are being treated as equivalent in the parent comment?
  - kryogen1c 7y ago
    > The big difference between those point of views is that one is about letting people live safely within secular society and the other is the violent murder of the other. You want to believe this is black and white, but its not. There is no more blurry line in existence. Actively promoting murder? Eliminate free speech for that, threw em in jail. But what about promoting violence? Violent protests? What about rape, is that worthy of eliminating free speech? What if a high schooler is bullied and then commits suicide? What about microaggressions that make people feel uncomfortable and like they may be in danger? What about people born without advantages that change their chances of "success" from 60% to 10%? Are you actively promoting death and suffering by purposefully ignoring the homeless people you walk by?
sammorrowdrums 7y ago
I really feel the loss of moral authority is much bigger risk than it seems. It creates the perfect propaganda for enemies when you criticize what they do and it's hard to see it perpetuating anything but a race to the bottom.
- rchaud 7y ago
  The usual targets of the Australian government's finger-wagging are far past the point of caring. Maybe that's a sign that Australia can implement more of a "show, not tell" model when they talk up their implementation of democracy. The country's mining and minerals sector is heavily dependent on exports to China, while its real estate sector would wouldn't be nearly as rich as it is without foreign capital from Asia's 1%, many of whom are involved in political parties the Australian government routinely excoriates. This has been the case for a long time; it's only now that it's all out in the open.
degenerate 7y ago
Australia is a member of the "Five Eyes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement From what I understand, Australia, Canada, NZ, UK, and USA intelligence agencies can all spy on each others' citizens legally and share the information with each other. That's not the intent of the agreement, but allows a loophole where the countries can spy on their own citizens by proxy. Correct?
- vermilingua 7y ago
  Correct, compounded by the passing of the AABill last year. Australian agencies can now intercept any communications in Australia, including foreign entities that operate in Australia. We are yet to see whether any foreign corp will deny such a request (but they come with inbuilt gag order so we may never know).
- JoeSmithson 7y ago
  Five Eyes nations basically agree to not spy on each other's citizens and instead (potentially) agree to accept targets suggested by each other, and then feed back the resulting intelligence. The text of the original agreement was released to the public recently but annoyingly you have to pay for it. This article[0] has an overview though; > The two nations – linked by common bonds of history, culture and language – agreed not to collect intelligence against each other Consider also the quote at the end of this article[1]: > France wouldn't be welcome in the "Five Eyes" alliance in any case, a former top US official told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France -- France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that." i.e. it is a prerequisite of joining the agreement that you stop any spying on other members' citizens. Basically, if you are American, then only the FBI (or DEA or whatever) can intercept your phone calls, and they can only do this with a warrant from an American court, they may however, get this warrant based on intelligence supplied by ASIS, (in a way) at Australia's "request". The main point is, Five Eyes is not a mechanism for those countries to side step their own internal legal requirements for surveillance - it is essentially the opposite. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/25/intelligence-deal-uk-us-released https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/25/intelligence-d... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-impedes-eu-privacy-efforts-despite-outrage-at-nsa-spying-a-930488.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-impedes-...
hirundo 7y ago
> Democracies from the United States to the Philippines are increasingly targeting journalists to ferret out leaks, silence critics and punish information sharing — with President Trump leading the verbal charge by calling journalists “the enemy of the people.” It's interesting that they felt the need to qualify this as Trump leading the _verbal_ charge. But there's quite a distance between insulting and prosecuting journalists. Trump's worse sin in this area isn't throwing around charges of fake news, but advocating for lower standards of proof in slander and libel cases. Hopefully Congress will never send him such a bill to sign. In my opinion another such demerit comes from this administration's continuing of the last's pursuit of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. What other suppression of journalism by this administration am I missing? The Obama administration had some worse black marks in this area with his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Chelsea Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden. I think Rand Paul would have been more pro free-speech on this issue, but who in the current crop of candidates could be relied upon to keep their mitts off the press?
robkop 7y ago
I hate what is happening here but I'm not sure what can be done about it. It seems that security/ whistleblowers etc will always have a lower importance than the major campaign issues of the day. And because of this it seems like no party should ever be bothered to push for what's in the voters best interests on these topics. Instead it only makes sense for politicians to push for what is personally best for them in these cases. I'm not sure what the solution to this is or even if I fully understand the problem but this appears fundamentally wrong to me.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  Because the last election was won "miraculously" by the party deliberately having a policy of not having a policy on anything, I think the next couple of decades will see more of the same. All the parties will stop publishing any kind of policy details, and it'll be fought on personalities and "how good is security?". We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind.
  - twanvl 7y ago
    > We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind. Where does idea that all problems in modern society are the fault of the baby boomers come from? We are talking about a very diverse group of people, with very diverse sets of ideas, as are the generations after them.
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      I think the baby boomer generation did a lot of damage by eroding social systems and piling up deficits. But the question is whether whoever follows will do any better.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    Boomers dying off won't automatically create large-scale changes you're expecting. I've been hearing that social conservatism will decrease once the boomers are gone, but that doesn't explain why thousands of young men get turned on to highly conservative views on the Internet by somebody looking into a webcam. As long as humanity exists, there will be other humans who can and will exploit their fears and insecurities to gain power and influence for themselves.
chris_wot 7y ago
Now hold on a moment. They are saying that The Daily Telegraph lost a defamation suit because they can be easily sued... that is not exactly true. The issue here is that a News Limited publication - one with a reputation for smearing people, inaccuracy, bias and essentially a political mouthpiece of the conservative LNP - was not able to substantiate the claims made in their story. Everything else is pretty spot on, unfortunately.
- sjy 7y ago
  Regardless of whether you agree with the outcome in that case, Australia's defamation laws are more plaintiff-friendly than those of countries like the US and UK, and have been subject to criticism for years [1], independent of the more recent debate over national security laws. [1] https://theconversation.com/social-media-and-defamation-law-pose-threats-to-free-speech-and-its-time-for-reform-64864 https://theconversation.com/social-media-and-defamation-law-... [2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-are-ripe-for-overhaul-20181207-p50kwk.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-...
NamTaf 7y ago
These raids have been highly condemned amongst the public here, and (at least my echo-chamber of) people seem to be pretty wholly against it. Of course, we're also an apathetic people because we've had it so good for so long that no one will force any change, and it'll just keep getting worse. It's also seen in our elections. There's no big visions. No bold statements from politicians about producing changes to make a better society. It's all attack ads and pandering to key demographics just to win votes and stay in government. It's depressing and dire, because I don't see it changing in much of my lifetime and it's the exact reason why our leaders are completely dismissive of action even when we stare down the barrel towards issues like climate change. Hell, our current PM literally brought a lump of coal into parliament as a prop to taunt the opposition by saying "this is coal, don't be afraid". edit: Another great example of the apathy I'm talking about is the collective shrug that most Aussies gave as incredibly intrusive anti-encryption and data-logging laws were introduced last year. Simply, no one cares unless it immediately and directly interrupts their middle-class suburban lifestyle.
- dantheman 7y ago
  I think in general 'big visions' are pretty bad and dangerous -- they're what get you the anit-encryption data logging laws. In general things are pretty good and so anyone making radical changes would most likely move in a worse direction.
  - NamTaf 7y ago
    I really don't classify the anti-encryption data logging laws as a big vision. To me, they're the continuation of the erosion of Australia's (somewhat implied) privacy rights. They were one of the bigger single moves in that space recently, but I by no means see it as a 'big vision' change.
- iliketosleep 7y ago
  I am curious about why you think climate change is an important issue in Australia. It's a relatively small country, without much of a manufacturing industry.
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marsRoverDev 7y ago
I have seen rusted on voters from both sides of the aisle condemning this. The government's mistake was raiding a News Corp journo - they have absolutely no-one on side on this issue now.
ptah 7y ago
quite interesting: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/how-are-human-rights-protected-australian-law https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/...
dontbenebby 7y ago
The article says it's illegal for a government official to share info without a supervisor's permission... but is there a law saying publishing classified info is illegal? In the states, we make that distinction.
- yitchelle 7y ago
  What would be difference between sharing and publishing, from a legal perspective?
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    I think usually the idea is you prosecute the person who steals the information, but if they pass it to another person who publishes, that person can't be prosecuted. If the same person stole and published I'd expect they could still be prosecuted. But others resharing it, (eg if someone posted a pastebin and others shared) would not.
  - throwaway846657 7y ago
    In the US the distinction is made so that journalists exposing misdeeds from people in power cannot be prosecuted since the value of the information is too high for the public.
- shakna 7y ago
  The police raids, which are still too newly performed to be definitive about, appear to be hunting for the original sources. No charges have been leveled against the journalists involved, yet. It took them years to suddenly care to hunt for these sources, so the whole situation is... Odd.
- sjy 7y ago
  Julian Assange hasn't been charged with 'publishing classified information' either. In both Australia and the US you can be prosecuted for participating in another's crime of leaking classified information. The question is, what qualifies as participation (aiding, conspiracy, etc), and is there an express or implied exception for the activities of the publisher in question?
pelasaco 7y ago
I moved from France to Australia, around 2009. I love to live here and feel really free and safe here. I would never come back to France or any other so called more democratic country. <3 Australia.
dontbenebby 7y ago
Sadly it's not surprising to me that a culture that prides itself on cutting down "tall poppies" pushes back against whistleblowers. I am more and more convinced each day that the true stuggle of our order is that of freedom versus order, not any particular ideology. Those who favor order inevitably feel it's reasonable to cut back on freedoms to increase order, and don't seem to be able to acknowledge that a truly free society cannot be risk free.
surge 7y ago
I didn't realize Secret City was mostly social/political commentary.
- ianhowson 7y ago
  Like House of Cards, it was intended as fiction but rapidly became difficult to differentiate from reality. See also: Pine Gap
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MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say Some, perhaps, but it's clearly not universal. These guys [0] rank Australia equal to the UK, right between the ratings of the USA and Canada. [0] http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/opengov/ http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/opengov/ (I'm not sure if it count as ironic that they don't support HTTPS.)
soraminazuki 7y ago
This article mentions Australia as a "mature liberal democracy," but everything else written here seems to flat-out contradict that statement. Did Australia use to be more liberal and democratic in the past?
satori99 7y ago
"But even among its peers, Australia stands out. No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say" Except when a government employee sells used government furniture to a 2nd hand dealer -- including filing cabinets full of cabinet-level documents pertaining to national security deliberations by the highest members of government. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-01/asio-takes-custody-of-cabinet-documents/9386328 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-01/asio-takes-custody-of...
senectus1 7y ago
Democracy, like security, is a process not a state. We'll sort these bastards out.. it'll just take time.
thewileyone 7y ago
You can detained and held for days without any charge and then released with the stipulation of that if you talk about your detainment, you'll be arrested for violating state secrets. Watch "Secret City" ... it's fucking nuts!

207 points by rfreytag 7y ago

“You’ve got a mature liberal democracy that pursues and hunts down whistle-blowers and tries to kill the messenger.” Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? Peak democracy was WWII, we seem to have been sliding towards authoritarianism since then.

paulryanrogers 7y ago
Peak for whom? WASPs?
- vermilingua 7y ago
  For the liberal democracies of the time. I wasn’t there, so I can’t comment as to which specific demographic benefited the most from that.
- seszett 7y ago
  Maybe in the US, but most citizens of the other democracies at the time were neither anglo-saxon nor protestant. You might say that they were at their peak for the majority of their population maybe, but I think that's the normal, intended outcome of democracy.
macspoofing 7y ago
>Peak democracy was WWII uh... Do you mean the time just before WWII, when most European nations were either Fascist or Communist? Or do you mean the time just after WWII when all of Europe was destroyed?
- vermilingua 7y ago
  The latter. It was a resounding victory for democracy, and it flourished all over the world for decades. That being said, history is written by the victors.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The decades after WWII were consumed by the Cold War, between two sets of victors, one of which was definitively not democratic. The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists.
    - macspoofing 7y ago
      >The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists. As opposed to the democratic governments the Soviet Union supported? Give me a break here. The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. I cannot understand how people can look at history and be completely blind to the actions of Soviet Union.
      - asark 7y ago
        Why did you take the parent post as an example of anyone being completely blind to the actions of the Soviet Union? The points seems to be that treating the immediate Post-WWII era as some high point for democracy is... well, requiring further support than is immediately obvious, anyway, since there were two victorious sides, one of which wasn't democratic at all, and the other which supported autocracies all over the world, too. Pointing out that the spread of democracy post-WWII was mostly confined the defeated states in that conflict, and that neither victorious side did much to support democracy elsewhere and even the "free world" often did the opposite, isn't a defense of the Soviets.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        > The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology. That's the point, though. The USA did exactly the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair I am not blind to the bad actions of the USSR. I'm just also not blind to the bad ones of the USA and its allies during the same time period.
linuxftw 7y ago
People always demand unchecked democracy because they always believe they're interests align with the majority. Why should everyone get a say? Why should anyone get a say? I don't believe a legitimate democracy can have any power greater than the individual. To extrapolate, "The government may do x." If you replace 'government' with an individual, that is the guideline. For example 'Jose may tax your income.' Obviously, Jose may not do that.
Angostura 7y ago
Really sliding to authoritarianism since then? Until 1968, every new play in Britain required a licence from the Lord Chamberlain's Office before it could be publicly performed. There was no legislation attached to this, so the Lord Chamberlain could censor as he chose. Can you imagine introducing such a rule today? How about applying for a license before launching a website?
- Theodores 7y ago
  That law came in 1737 when there was a new theatre in town and satirists who dared to call the government silly things. It was the moral panic of the time. In 1959 we got the Obscene Publications Act and that got used quite a bit during the Thatcher years with a new moral panic - video nasties. Video nasties weren't just Chainsaw Massacre stuff they also had a thing to say about society. Police raided quaint little video shops and did their best to enforce the law, sometimes getting it wrong, well, often getting it wrong. This only encouraged the market in 'Video Nasties' so in 1984 they brought in a new law to get this moral panic under control. You could say that the law had been updated for the medium of the era - VHS cassettes - and that they could not be bothered with the stage any more. However, the stage is a public place, you have people congregate in an audience and they could be a dangerous rabble. In 2000 we got the Terrorism Act and that followed on from the Criminal Justice Act that had came along earlier in the 1990's to make it illegal for more than four people to get together to listen to 'repetitive beats'. There are plenty of laws regarding what you can and cannot say online and people have been prosecuted for saying not so nice things on Facebook. You might not have to apply for a licence to run a website but that is not so enforceable when you could put your website online in a country far, far away. Actual censorship has got a lot more refined over the decades. As has propaganda. A lot has gone on over the last twenty years of widescale internet usage, however it will be a while before we find out what this is.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  Aside from the absurdity of having a lord make any decisions, I think much of the population—maybe not a majority, but a significant part of the population—would be fine with that if presented as opposing or “preventing” terrorism (as if that’s even possible).
zzzcpan 7y ago
> Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? It's not a mature liberal democracy, maybe it was one time. It's just that power always tries to acquire more power and obviously any not __perfectly__ designed political system will always end up authoritarian and undemocratic.
lordleft 7y ago
Plato explored this idea (that democracies are precursors to tyrannies - see Andrew Sullivan's article about this here: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html?gtm=top http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donal...
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  I think that’s a pretty natural progression. A well run dictatorship is probably superior to a democracy in the short term so it’s always tempting to give up freedom in exchange for efficiency. The question is how long the dictatorship can keep it up before going downhill.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    If you're allowed to take a form of government and say, "well-run," why not have a well-run democracy?
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      It’s a little easier to set direction if you don’t have to ask everybody. There is a reason why successful companies are basically dictatorships .
      - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
        I consider myself to be strongly pro-democracy, but as a thought experiment look at TV shows like "X Factor" (or "American Idol" if you're in the US) to see the results of democracy in action. These shows should be producing the finest musicians the world has ever seen, right? After all, the masses know best.
        Veen 7y ago
        There are some who would argue that X Factor does, in fact, produce the best because best means nothing but most popular. Otherwise, you have to bring in subjective measures of taste which are open to being condemned as elitist. (Personally, I'm happy to be an elitist, provided it's an open elite that anyone can join)
gonzo41 7y ago
I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia. Generally Australia is pretty free, even without explicit freedom of speech. The military is very competent and retrained in its actions, however in my life I've only seen an increase in nationalism related to the military. The right wing love to drape themselves in the flag and related militaria. I think the afghan war crimes by special forces should be of genuine public interest to Australians. And I think the application of Top Secret to government documents about these matters is the real problem. Its a problem for the public and democracy when you can use something like a Classification as way to cover up misdeeds. I feel sorry for the guy going down for the leaks.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  > I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia A NewsCorp journalist was the first to be raided.
dillonmckay 7y ago
Compulsory voting?
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Outlawed silent protest, a base of any free society.
  - neumann 7y ago
    Not really. You can lodge an empty ballot paper.
    - jakeogh 7y ago
      Silent protest is not participating. Surreal that needs to even be said.
mikorym 7y ago
> sliding towards authoritarianism I think that we are at a time where there is more public input, whistle-blowing, outcry over corruption, democratic processes, and so forth than ever before in history. I daresay that we are also at an information age; a time in which we can identify authoritarianism, and argue and critise it from the comfort of our couches and for the larger part without fear of death. We should not confuse the matter: to think that the sum of our current challenges imply the lesser to be the sum of historic challenges.
germanlee 7y ago
How could peak democracy be ww2? The only significant democracy in ww2 was the US. British Empire, Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, China, etc were not democracies. There was the US and everyone else was a non-democratic empire or a colony of the empire.

NedIsakoff 7y ago

I've always said that freedom (liberalism) and democracy is actually unnatural. People do not want freedom and democracy, they want authoritarianism that favor their point of view or agenda. The problem is that we have different points of view or agendas. Example: Look at New Zealand after the mass mosque shooting. People support the actions taking which include banning owning or reading the guy's manifesto. Owning it means up to 10 years in jail and/or up to $50,000 in fines.

i386 7y ago
The big difference between those point of views is that one is about letting people live safely within secular society and the other is the violent murder of the other. They are not morally equivalent positions. Stop treating them that way.
- gdhbcc 7y ago
  Expect they are morally equivalent because morality is relative and individual.
- umvi 7y ago
  "Safety" comes at the expense of freedoms, such as the freedom to read the shooter's manifesto. Whether or not you think the freedom/safety it is worth the trade off is you opinion, but you can't deny it's one step closer to total authoritarianism. I've personally read a few shooter manifestos, including "My Twisted World", and don't see why it's a big deal to do so. I found it to be a fascinating insight into a world of mental illness I would never have imagined.
- balfirevic 7y ago
  Can you please explain what positions do you think are being treated as equivalent in the parent comment?
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  > The big difference between those point of views is that one is about letting people live safely within secular society and the other is the violent murder of the other. You want to believe this is black and white, but its not. There is no more blurry line in existence. Actively promoting murder? Eliminate free speech for that, threw em in jail. But what about promoting violence? Violent protests? What about rape, is that worthy of eliminating free speech? What if a high schooler is bullied and then commits suicide? What about microaggressions that make people feel uncomfortable and like they may be in danger? What about people born without advantages that change their chances of "success" from 60% to 10%? Are you actively promoting death and suffering by purposefully ignoring the homeless people you walk by?

sammorrowdrums 7y ago

I really feel the loss of moral authority is much bigger risk than it seems. It creates the perfect propaganda for enemies when you criticize what they do and it's hard to see it perpetuating anything but a race to the bottom.

rchaud 7y ago
The usual targets of the Australian government's finger-wagging are far past the point of caring. Maybe that's a sign that Australia can implement more of a "show, not tell" model when they talk up their implementation of democracy. The country's mining and minerals sector is heavily dependent on exports to China, while its real estate sector would wouldn't be nearly as rich as it is without foreign capital from Asia's 1%, many of whom are involved in political parties the Australian government routinely excoriates. This has been the case for a long time; it's only now that it's all out in the open.

degenerate 7y ago

Australia is a member of the "Five Eyes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement From what I understand, Australia, Canada, NZ, UK, and USA intelligence agencies can all spy on each others' citizens legally and share the information with each other. That's not the intent of the agreement, but allows a loophole where the countries can spy on their own citizens by proxy. Correct?

vermilingua 7y ago
Correct, compounded by the passing of the AABill last year. Australian agencies can now intercept any communications in Australia, including foreign entities that operate in Australia. We are yet to see whether any foreign corp will deny such a request (but they come with inbuilt gag order so we may never know).
JoeSmithson 7y ago
Five Eyes nations basically agree to not spy on each other's citizens and instead (potentially) agree to accept targets suggested by each other, and then feed back the resulting intelligence. The text of the original agreement was released to the public recently but annoyingly you have to pay for it. This article[0] has an overview though; > The two nations – linked by common bonds of history, culture and language – agreed not to collect intelligence against each other Consider also the quote at the end of this article[1]: > France wouldn't be welcome in the "Five Eyes" alliance in any case, a former top US official told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France -- France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that." i.e. it is a prerequisite of joining the agreement that you stop any spying on other members' citizens. Basically, if you are American, then only the FBI (or DEA or whatever) can intercept your phone calls, and they can only do this with a warrant from an American court, they may however, get this warrant based on intelligence supplied by ASIS, (in a way) at Australia's "request". The main point is, Five Eyes is not a mechanism for those countries to side step their own internal legal requirements for surveillance - it is essentially the opposite. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/25/intelligence-deal-uk-us-released https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/25/intelligence-d... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-impedes-eu-privacy-efforts-despite-outrage-at-nsa-spying-a-930488.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-impedes-...

hirundo 7y ago

> Democracies from the United States to the Philippines are increasingly targeting journalists to ferret out leaks, silence critics and punish information sharing — with President Trump leading the verbal charge by calling journalists “the enemy of the people.” It's interesting that they felt the need to qualify this as Trump leading the _verbal_ charge. But there's quite a distance between insulting and prosecuting journalists. Trump's worse sin in this area isn't throwing around charges of fake news, but advocating for lower standards of proof in slander and libel cases. Hopefully Congress will never send him such a bill to sign. In my opinion another such demerit comes from this administration's continuing of the last's pursuit of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. What other suppression of journalism by this administration am I missing? The Obama administration had some worse black marks in this area with his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Chelsea Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden. I think Rand Paul would have been more pro free-speech on this issue, but who in the current crop of candidates could be relied upon to keep their mitts off the press?

robkop 7y ago

I hate what is happening here but I'm not sure what can be done about it. It seems that security/ whistleblowers etc will always have a lower importance than the major campaign issues of the day. And because of this it seems like no party should ever be bothered to push for what's in the voters best interests on these topics. Instead it only makes sense for politicians to push for what is personally best for them in these cases. I'm not sure what the solution to this is or even if I fully understand the problem but this appears fundamentally wrong to me.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
Because the last election was won "miraculously" by the party deliberately having a policy of not having a policy on anything, I think the next couple of decades will see more of the same. All the parties will stop publishing any kind of policy details, and it'll be fought on personalities and "how good is security?". We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind.
- twanvl 7y ago
  > We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind. Where does idea that all problems in modern society are the fault of the baby boomers come from? We are talking about a very diverse group of people, with very diverse sets of ideas, as are the generations after them.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    I think the baby boomer generation did a lot of damage by eroding social systems and piling up deficits. But the question is whether whoever follows will do any better.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Boomers dying off won't automatically create large-scale changes you're expecting. I've been hearing that social conservatism will decrease once the boomers are gone, but that doesn't explain why thousands of young men get turned on to highly conservative views on the Internet by somebody looking into a webcam. As long as humanity exists, there will be other humans who can and will exploit their fears and insecurities to gain power and influence for themselves.

chris_wot 7y ago

Now hold on a moment. They are saying that The Daily Telegraph lost a defamation suit because they can be easily sued... that is not exactly true. The issue here is that a News Limited publication - one with a reputation for smearing people, inaccuracy, bias and essentially a political mouthpiece of the conservative LNP - was not able to substantiate the claims made in their story. Everything else is pretty spot on, unfortunately.

sjy 7y ago
Regardless of whether you agree with the outcome in that case, Australia's defamation laws are more plaintiff-friendly than those of countries like the US and UK, and have been subject to criticism for years [1], independent of the more recent debate over national security laws. [1] https://theconversation.com/social-media-and-defamation-law-pose-threats-to-free-speech-and-its-time-for-reform-64864 https://theconversation.com/social-media-and-defamation-law-... [2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-are-ripe-for-overhaul-20181207-p50kwk.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-...

NamTaf 7y ago

These raids have been highly condemned amongst the public here, and (at least my echo-chamber of) people seem to be pretty wholly against it. Of course, we're also an apathetic people because we've had it so good for so long that no one will force any change, and it'll just keep getting worse. It's also seen in our elections. There's no big visions. No bold statements from politicians about producing changes to make a better society. It's all attack ads and pandering to key demographics just to win votes and stay in government. It's depressing and dire, because I don't see it changing in much of my lifetime and it's the exact reason why our leaders are completely dismissive of action even when we stare down the barrel towards issues like climate change. Hell, our current PM literally brought a lump of coal into parliament as a prop to taunt the opposition by saying "this is coal, don't be afraid". edit: Another great example of the apathy I'm talking about is the collective shrug that most Aussies gave as incredibly intrusive anti-encryption and data-logging laws were introduced last year. Simply, no one cares unless it immediately and directly interrupts their middle-class suburban lifestyle.

dantheman 7y ago
I think in general 'big visions' are pretty bad and dangerous -- they're what get you the anit-encryption data logging laws. In general things are pretty good and so anyone making radical changes would most likely move in a worse direction.
- NamTaf 7y ago
  I really don't classify the anti-encryption data logging laws as a big vision. To me, they're the continuation of the erosion of Australia's (somewhat implied) privacy rights. They were one of the bigger single moves in that space recently, but I by no means see it as a 'big vision' change.
iliketosleep 7y ago
I am curious about why you think climate change is an important issue in Australia. It's a relatively small country, without much of a manufacturing industry.

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marsRoverDev 7y ago

I have seen rusted on voters from both sides of the aisle condemning this. The government's mistake was raiding a News Corp journo - they have absolutely no-one on side on this issue now.

ptah 7y ago

quite interesting: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/how-are-human-rights-protected-australian-law https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/...

dontbenebby 7y ago

The article says it's illegal for a government official to share info without a supervisor's permission... but is there a law saying publishing classified info is illegal? In the states, we make that distinction.

yitchelle 7y ago
What would be difference between sharing and publishing, from a legal perspective?
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  I think usually the idea is you prosecute the person who steals the information, but if they pass it to another person who publishes, that person can't be prosecuted. If the same person stole and published I'd expect they could still be prosecuted. But others resharing it, (eg if someone posted a pastebin and others shared) would not.
- throwaway846657 7y ago
  In the US the distinction is made so that journalists exposing misdeeds from people in power cannot be prosecuted since the value of the information is too high for the public.
shakna 7y ago
The police raids, which are still too newly performed to be definitive about, appear to be hunting for the original sources. No charges have been leveled against the journalists involved, yet. It took them years to suddenly care to hunt for these sources, so the whole situation is... Odd.
sjy 7y ago
Julian Assange hasn't been charged with 'publishing classified information' either. In both Australia and the US you can be prosecuted for participating in another's crime of leaking classified information. The question is, what qualifies as participation (aiding, conspiracy, etc), and is there an express or implied exception for the activities of the publisher in question?

pelasaco 7y ago

I moved from France to Australia, around 2009. I love to live here and feel really free and safe here. I would never come back to France or any other so called more democratic country. <3 Australia.

dontbenebby 7y ago

Sadly it's not surprising to me that a culture that prides itself on cutting down "tall poppies" pushes back against whistleblowers. I am more and more convinced each day that the true stuggle of our order is that of freedom versus order, not any particular ideology. Those who favor order inevitably feel it's reasonable to cut back on freedoms to increase order, and don't seem to be able to acknowledge that a truly free society cannot be risk free.

surge 7y ago

I didn't realize Secret City was mostly social/political commentary.

ianhowson 7y ago
Like House of Cards, it was intended as fiction but rapidly became difficult to differentiate from reality. See also: Pine Gap

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MaxBarraclough 7y ago

> No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say Some, perhaps, but it's clearly not universal. These guys [0] rank Australia equal to the UK, right between the ratings of the USA and Canada. [0] http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/opengov/ http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/opengov/ (I'm not sure if it count as ironic that they don't support HTTPS.)

soraminazuki 7y ago

This article mentions Australia as a "mature liberal democracy," but everything else written here seems to flat-out contradict that statement. Did Australia use to be more liberal and democratic in the past?

satori99 7y ago

"But even among its peers, Australia stands out. No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say" Except when a government employee sells used government furniture to a 2nd hand dealer -- including filing cabinets full of cabinet-level documents pertaining to national security deliberations by the highest members of government. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-01/asio-takes-custody-of-cabinet-documents/9386328 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-01/asio-takes-custody-of...

senectus1 7y ago

Democracy, like security, is a process not a state. We'll sort these bastards out.. it'll just take time.

thewileyone 7y ago

You can detained and held for days without any charge and then released with the stipulation of that if you talk about your detainment, you'll be arrested for violating state secrets. Watch "Secret City" ... it's fucking nuts!