Metadata, Australia and Edward Snowden
By Daniel Ellery
I have some thoughts, one being that this war on ‘terrorism’ has created through surveillance on unparalleled scales, the largest form of oppression the world has ever seen. Through the collection of metadata and phone logs, governments have the power to track people’s every move, in what is literally an exact living example of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell’s famous novels.
Edward Snowden helped leak information regarding the NSA’s mass surveillance of Americans’ phone and internet activity and is still being hunted for the theft of government property, two counts of violating the Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information, and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person”. Australia has gone about it differently. What we have done is used the same blanket term ‘terrorism’ which is perfect because after all, anyone could be a terrorist, right? Through using terrorism as a guise, the Australian Government has set into effect the exact same breaches of civil liberties that Edward Snowden helped to uncover in 2013, but now, it is deemed completely acceptable. Not only completely acceptable, but totally necessary. This is how the grandest invasion of privacy has a snug home under the title of Terrorism.
It is no longer a thin line that we are treading, indeed, we have crossed it. Examples including but not limited to imposing penalties on anyone that speaks out about atrocities committed in the Nauru Detention Centre can basically be seen as a law passed to charge and prosecute whistleblowers. Like Edward Snowden, people that leak sensitive information that the public have a right to know, could be charged with espionage and even treason. This is the surely the biggest threat to democratic values we have ever seen on a global scale.
It is also very interesting to remember that Vladimir Putin provided Snowden with one year of political asylum in Russia. One cannot help but wonder what information Snowden has dispersed to Russia. When this is taken into account with the current state of affairs in Syria, it could escalate the conflict to much further heights of what it may seem to be at first glance.
What does this mean for journalists, human rights activists and people with critical thought legally and democratically challenge the government? The scope of power this lends to the government and government agencies is quite scary. When government pressure is used as a means to restrict or reduce media coverage of information the public have a right to know, it is media censorship plain and simple. No different to communist countries like China or North Korea.
It would seem now that if you have a view that opposes the mainstream that you have been radicalized. Now you have a title. You are a radical. And under Turnbull’s government, radicals are not wanted in this country. So heed that warning or risk having your name put on a watch-list or better yet, your citizenship revoked.
Another way to look at things is certain reality television has also had a hand in staging human experiments such as Big Brother, where contestants are put in a house for months on end with no contact to the outside world, and track their behavioral, emotional and mental changes and also their thoughts through interaction with ‘Big Brother’. Facebook and other social media sites are also used for various human experiments. From asking us ‘What’s on your mind?’, to knowingly altering the content of what you see in your news feed to study changes in ones mood. For example, showing an abundance of negative or unhappy posts to see how this affects the individual users’ emotional state. We tell these sources literally what we are doing, who we are with and where we are going every single day.
Technology like smartphones and the Apple watch prove that people will actually pay large amounts of money to be tracked, monitored and located easily. What more could over-reaching, information-crazed, privacy-denouncing Government want?
Not so long ago, the internet used to be a place where information could be shared freely, just like we as a society could go about our day to day business quite freely. Next time you’re walking around, talking of freedom like you’ve got it, ask yourself (or Siri) this: What is surveillance other than control?
6 comments
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donwreford
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Geoff Andrews
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Adrianne Haddow
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RosemaryJ36
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paul walter
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5ime0n
Return to home pageThe CIA and the like covert agencies have long had a interest in the internet as a method of investigating individuals in particular ones who are not considered as part of the cultural norm of what the CIA consider a normal part of what the cultural ideology of Western establishment values, this in part is the individual must have a allegiance to what is defined by often politicians as a supportive and have a internalized brain pattern that endorses the value system as to be a legitimate state of knowing your place?
What this means is a series of value judgement’s such as Russia being politically suspect, that the democratic system is the fairest way to elect a leader as opposed to the elected leader being a stooge for a minority interest, you must not say the Jews are Arabs, the Jews must not be criticized however they act as a criminal organization as the word for this is antisemitic? one has to as a individual become subservient to the the financial elite without acknowledging that we must be a conditioned slave to the system that is to live in a state of imprisonment that you must pay huge amounts for your sentence in the shell you exist in and including the destruction of your health.
I’m so disappointed that, in more than four hours since the publication of Mr Ellery’s article, not one single member of Team Australia has reminded us that we have nothing to fear if we’ve done nothing wrong.
Geoff, have you forgotten? Reading is not their strong point.
If they can’t read documents and reports pertaining to their portfolios and policies, they are unlikely to read articles with words like metadata in the title.
Although I would have thought the name Snowdon would have attracted them. In the eyes of our overlords he equates to a terrorist, doesn’t he?
Jews may have been despised and marginalised for centuries as well as being persecuted in far worse ways in more recent times.
But now we have Palestinians being treated in the same way by Israelis (who are mostly Jews) with the support on the USA among others.
Persecution is never warranted and the Israeli settlements are continuing in a bare-faced breach of prior agreements.
I do not know at first hand of any god who can be relied on, in which case, who promised the land to Israel?
The article is fine, the sad thing is, not enough people will read and understand it.
I think that this article misses a crucial point. It isn’t the technologies we need to be concerned about, but the interests who may or may not be using them for their own goals. Its the same as the argument against the so called ‘New World Order’. A world government could universalize human rights law, make medical advancements available globally, etc. In the case of surveillance and data collection, certain information used correctly could create significant improvements to the movement of people and goods, for example. The real question is why do we feel we can’t trust those in power to not abuse their position?