The surveillance state: How

Australia spies on its own

Murray Hunter 19 November 2013, 12:00pm 33
CrimeHuman rightsPolitics

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(Image by Joel Pett via
kentucky.com)
The Australian security state is collecting intelligence on an Orwellian scale
never seen before. Murray Hunter delves in the sneaky, spooky, world of
Australian intelligence.
THE REVELATIONS released by Edward Snowden over the last 24 hours that the
Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has been eavesdropping on Indonesian
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and even bugged the Malaysian cabinet room
are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Australian security surveillance
operations.
The Australian security services have long been undertaking surveillance operations
on the citizens and residents of Australia as well.
Through rapid technology advances, the Australian security apparatus has grown to
an Orwellian scale. This has not necessarily been at the design of any elected
government but something the Australian bureaucracy was forthright in promoting.
The executive government has only superficial control over the Australian
surveillance system. It is fully integrated with the NSA apparatus which immediately
brings up an issue about sovereignty. This is not about a country's sovereignty over
land, but of knowledge. The international exchange of security information is a
challenge to human rights of Australian citizens, yet to be grappled with.
Consequently, it is not in the interests of the Australian or US intelligence community
for any public or even parliamentary discussion. The idea that the parliament and
executive are in total control of government is a myth.
Through technology and its innovative applications, the concept of privacy has been
reframed to the point that anything a person does outside of the home or on a
computer now is public domain, captured through any of the large array of assets
that can be used for surveillance.
This has allowed the creation of a new premise that has grown up through the
administrative arm of the Australian Government that of compliance.
Australia seems to have adopted an almost fanatical compliance culture where the
administrators believe that they are the natural custodians of Australia's security
interests, instead of the temporarily elected politicians of the day.

Some of the methods the Australian security state utilises for intelligence
gathering, storing, and collation are well documented and summarised below:

Public records
With a strong public backlash against the development of a national identity card
system in 1986, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) developed the tax file number
system as an alternative. A tax file number is necessary for anybody to be employed,
claim social security benefits, and open a bank account and so on. As computer
technology and data storage became more efficient, and data management and
communications systems improved, a national government database was
developed.
Australia is considered a world leader in the use of technology in government
administration.
The Australian Government database is a highly sophisticated group of electronic
document and records management system(s) (EDRMS) for collating, storing, and
matching data between various agencies and levels of government on citizens.
Consequently data collected by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), social security
(Centrelink), Medicare, immigration, customs, and police enforcement agencies are
integrated with relational databases and query systems. This is supplemented by
individual agency databases with extremely detailed information on citizens. They
carry an almost complete personal history of residential details going back decades,
income, occupation, spouses, children, social security benefits, medical, and travel
information, etc. These systems can be accessed by almost anybody within the
public service. Every agency within the government has become part of the
intelligence collection network.
According to academics Paul Henman and Greg Marston of the University of
Queensland, these systems that enable agencies to determine client eligibility for
services are highly intrusive and used with a prevailing deep suspicion of citizens in
regards to their continuing eligibility for services.

Eavesdropping
The most recent revelations in the news about the 'five eye' countries eavesdropping
on their citizens phone conversations, emails, and other electronic communications
has been astounding.
Meta-data collection systems like PRISM and ECHELON are highly likely to be also
operating within Australia due to the close relationship between the NSA and
Australian intelligence community. According to AFP assistant commissioner Neil
Gaughan, Australian intelligence has a much better relationship with the
telecommunications companies than the US intelligence agencies.
However this doesn't appear to be a new occurrence. A reliable source working
within one of the Australian telephone companies when manual exchanges were
operating confirmed that ASIO and state special branches had secret rooms within
the exchanges to run phone tapping operations.

The relatively high number of requests from Australia's security agencies for user
information from internet companies like Google compared to other countries
indicates that the Australian agencies are one of the most active in the western
liberal democratic world when it comes to surveillance of its own citizens.

Number Plate Recognition

The NSW police are using an Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system
which takes continuous snapshots of car number plates. This is supplemented by
tracking cars when they go through tolls.

Drones
Law enforcement agencies have announced that they are preparing to utilise drones
for crime surveillance in the not too distant future.

Informers
State and Federal Governments have been encouraging citizens to inform on other
citizens they suspect of breaking the law. Although "dobbing" is considered very unAustralian culturally, government campaigns have been very successful in achieving
all-time high numbers of informants in crime, social security, and taxation related
matters.
The incredible power of the above described databases is exponentially enhanced
when coupled with recent developments in cellular, RFID, internet, and other
computer technologies.
When private data in retail, banking, travel, health and insurance and so on is linked
to intelligence collected by government, the value of data becomes massively
enriched. Data collected by private organizations and utilized by security services
include:

Internet
The internet domain is under constant surveillance.
Companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and twitter use tracking cookies to gather
data on users. Australian security agencies employ private contractors like the
National Open Source Intelligence Centre (NOSIC) to monitor, collate, and report on
publically accessible information about individuals and organisations.

CCTV
Many business organizations such as shopping centres and banks now utilize CCTV.
These assets can be utilized by security organizations to track and monitor
individuals. This is now being supplemented with media access control (MAC)
systems which can track smartphones. This technology is already being used in
three Westfield shopping centres.

Private databases

Numerous private databases like electronic tenancy database which has detailed
information. These include tenancy history, insurance company records that detail
individuals insured assets, bank records, and university records. These can all be
accessed by security agencies.

Mobile phones
Mobile phones can be used as a means to track people through inbuilt GPS on
smartphones, triangulation, or through electronic data-collectors designed to identify
individual mobile phones in public places.
Shopping

NSA Whistleblower: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info

People's purchase history and movements can be tracked through the use of credit,
debit, and loyalty card purchases.
Each piece of data in isolation can only provide a limited profile of any individual.
However the power of information technology today is being able to collate, merge,
and combine separate pieces of information so that a full and rich profile of any
individual can be developed.
Emails, phones calls, places people go, and purchase history, in the context of other
data collected has the latent potential to build up a profile on anybody. Data from
social media like Facebook can enhance these profiles greatly by adding thought
and behavior information. It's the collection of small bits of information that can be
collated into big pictures. Australian intelligence can retroactively analyse anybody
with a wide variety of data.
Since 2007, when amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception & Access)
Act 1979 were made, during the last days of the Howard Government, government
agencies have the power to search metadata without the individual's knowledge or
any sort of warrant.
CCTV cameras have been installed in many communities without the development
of privacy policies on how they should be used.
The law has yet to catch up with the ability to collect data.
Up until the 1980's, most intelligence gathering was targeted monitoring of specific
groups where 'persons of interest' were identified for intensive surveillance.
ASIO and state special branches were videotaping activists primarily from the 'left'.
Trade unionists, human rights activists, ethnic community groups, religious leaders,
and even governors were targets. Surveillance was undertaken by ASIO and state
special branches, where operatives used electronic means for eavesdropping,
keeping index cards and files on 'persons of interest', recording mainly hearsay
information.

Government databases were agency based and most often localised with little or no
connection to larger databases. Cross referencing people on these various
databases was extremely time consuming and very difficult.
Even then, red flags emerged.
Peter Grabosky of the Australian Bureau of Criminology pointed out that
' thought and discussion of public issues may be suppressed......and....excess use
of (surveillance) may inhibit democratic and political freedom more subtly.
In addition, he believed that malicious accusations made from erroneous records
produce false information which made innocent people suffer at the hands of the
security agencies.
This problem can't be corrected as these records are not assessable to be corrected
for errors.
The Dr Muhamed Haneef arrest by the AFP in July 2007, where it was alleged he
was connected with a terrorist cell in the UK, but later exonerated, hints at the
security services being very territorial and 'out of control'. It appears ASIO were
aware of Dr Haneef's innocence but did not advise the AFP.
Faceless bureaucrats are the ones defining who are the enemies of the state. There
appears to be a general inability to discriminate between healthy dissent in a political
democracy and subversion.
Where no tangible threats existed to national security, lesser ones are posited as
grave threats or even invented remember those "weapons of mass destruction" in
Iraq.
There seems to be an impulse by those within the security services to justify their
existence and perpetuate what they are doing.
Whats more, they don't see themselves responsible to the elected government of
the day, but rather to "The Crown". This has encouraged an attitude intelligence
operatives feel they are not accountable for their actions to politicians.
The rise of surveillance should not be understood as purely a technological
development. It should be seen as a broader economic, social, and political
paradigm shift within society where the balance of power has shifted away from the
people and towards the state. There also appears to be a shift of power away from
executive government towards an unelected bureaucracy. What makes this even
more perplexing is that we don't even know who these people really are.
With a history of security bungles, how wide are abuses of power by the Australian
Security Apparatus?
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) was caught tapping the
phones of ordinary and unsuspecting Australians by the Inspector-General of
Intelligence and Security. No one knows how wide these abuses really are.

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald just ran a story that intelligence data was
passed on to assist the mining giant BHP. Moreover, the human rights website
WEBMOBILIZE alleges in a recent article that the Australian security apparatus is
being used to steal intellectual property from companies and pass it over illegally to
competitors. Some of the organizations alleged to have received unlawfully gained
IP include the University of Melbourne, Ageis Media, Telstra, Sensis, Deakin
University, Belgravia Health and Business Group, Channel Nine, Nine Entertainment,
Nine MSN, Corporate health management, Fairfax media, the Herald Sun, The
Guardian, Nintendo, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Liberal and National Party
Coalition (L-NP).
This interlinked relationship between private corporations and the intelligence
agencies is allowing some corporations to benefit over others illegally, subsidised by
taxpayer dollars.
There has been little in the way of public debate, nor much concern shown by the
major political parties. The issues raised by surveillance, now on the Orwellian scale
in Australia, are very concerning as they are operating at a much higher magnitude
than any other liberal democracy.
The powers to detain anyone under section 34D of the Australian Security
Intelligence Organization Act 1979 for up to seven days without the right to reveal
their detention, resembles the mechanisms of a police state.

Dr. Haneef should never have been charged: report

The Australian Government collects more information on its citizens than the East
German Stasi did on its citizens during the cold war.
As Eric Schmidt of Google says:
" surveillance is just part of society now."
Surveillance is not something external to the individual anymore. We actually live
within the "matrix" of surveillance from which we cannot escape.
With an annual growth rate of more than 20 per cent and a budget of over $4 billion
per annum, ASIO has a new $500 million building in Canberra and a secret data
storage facility is being built at the HMAS Harman Naval Base, near Canberra,
where details are except from public account committees. When other government
programs are being cut, the deep philosophical question of why there is a need to
continue the increase of funding for surveillance of the nation's citizens requires
national discussion.
Mass surveillance doesn't seem to have much to do with terrorism as it has to do
with keeping check on what people are doing. It seems to be more of an intimidating
compliance mechanism, aimed at protecting public revenue, preventing and
detecting crime, tax evasion and fraud.
The rapid increase in staff within ASIO from 618 in 2000 to 1860 in 2010 has
meant that the organisation now primarily relies upon young and inexperienced
analysts in their 20s and 30s. This means that Australia is at the mercy of a "Gen Y"

culture that has grown up connected to the cyber world, where a sense of privacy is
very different to generation before them.
Newly uncovered evidence suggests that ASIO has gone to great lengths to spy on
people who have broken no laws.
Through Australia's history, Australian Security Agencies have blundered in the
assessments they have made on many issues.
The 2004 Flood report, commenting on the failure of intelligence on Iraq, stated that
these weaknesses included a failure to rigorously challenge preconceptions and the
absence of a consistent and rigorous culture of challenge to and engagement with
intelligence reports. Flood found an inconsistency in assessments and very shallow
analytical abilities within the security agencies he examined.
On many occasions, particularly during the Howard years, intelligence analysis was
'bastardised by political agenda. Those who criticized the political agenda ran the
risk of being reframed from dissidents and classed as deviants who came under
security surveillance.
The question is, can government with a long history of cover-ups be trusted?
The dream of a fair, just and equitable Australian society, where sovereignty is in the
hands of its citizens, may be one of the greatest myths. Australia's surveillance, on
its own, has eaten into and taken away many of the rights and liberties of
Australians, turning society into one of mistrust.
The growth of domestic intelligence gathering we see today is almost irreversible,
which hints at some form of Animal Farm" leadership who is defining what our
"truths" are. An important question here is who is actually doing this, if it is not our
elected politicians?
This cannot be really satisfactorily answered relying only on public domain
knowledge. We can only make guesses. However, one undeniable fact is that there
is presently a hidden and totally unaccountable part of government that is changing
the nature of society. It is here where no media organisations are asking any
questions.
Until this question is answered we are living in an illusion about what our society
really is.
We have entered into a new period of governance.
We are now in an age of governance by surveillance of the masses by a few
unknown elite and unaccountable people. Communist totalitarianism may have
collapsed in Europe in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union, but the "free world's"
version of surveillance and intelligence would have made Stalin, Honecker, and
Ceauescu very jealous.
The lack of transparency is becoming indefensible.

Without scrutiny the Australian security apparatus is the loose cannon of the
Bureaucracy which will cause many reverberations like the destruction of peoples'
livelihoods through IP theft, or the ruining of peoples' reputations through
persecution.
There has never been a public mandate for the development of such an extensive
surveillance program. How are the enormous sums of money being spent justified?