Australian summit on international surveillance scandal ?

Nick Xenophon to call summit on international surveillance scandal

Independent senator accuses major parties of 'sleepwalking' on issue in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA revelations

Lenore Taylor political editor

The independent senator Nick Xenophon will hold a summit on the international surveillance scandal and the activities of the US National Security Agency in Australia, accusing the major parties of “sleepwalking” on an issue causing outrage around the world.

Xenophon has been pressing the government to disclose the extent of surveillance of phone and email records by Australian security agencies, possibly working with the NSA.

Leaks from the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showed the US-led electronic surveillance operation had harvested address books from Gmail, Facebook, Hotmail and Yahoo accounts around the world, including Australia.

Asked about the revelations, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Senator George Brandis, would say only: “All communication interception activities carried out by Australian agencies are conducted in accordance with Australian law."

The French newspaper Le Monde has published new revelations from Snowden suggesting the NSA has been intercepting French phone traffic on what it termed "a massive scale".

The White House conceded on Monday that revelations about how its intelligence agencies have intercepted enormous amounts of French phone traffic raised "legitimate questions for our friends and allies".

“This kind of surveillance is shocking –and the Australian government should be shocked by it too,” Xenophon said.

“In Britain, the US, France, Brazil and Mexico there is public outrage over this level of snooping, but in this country the major parties are sleepwalking on this issue.

“These revelations show that government assurances of adequate oversight are simply not credible – and assertions that all this is legitimate intelligence in accordance with Australian law are no comfort either. It is the law itself that needs to be re-examined.

“This issue needs to be brought out into the open, which is why I’ll be hosting a summit of MPs, journalists, legal experts and academics in the first week parliament resumes on November 12.”

Controversial plans that would force telecommunications companies such as Telstra to keep subscriber information and phone records for up to two years were delayed by the former Labor government.

Asked about the laws, which the government said were designed so security agencies could keep up with the rapidly changing nature of communications, the then shadow attorney general Brandis promised a Coalition government would “examine them carefully”.

“The public would accept a level of mandatory data retention in relation to telecommunications,” he said.

“They would accept the logic of a regime being technology-neutral and reaching the internet, but my political judgment is that there is no way the public wouldn't react very strongly against a proposal unless they were absolutely guaranteed that their internet browsing history or use would not be subject of the mandatory retention regime.''

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/nick-xenophon-to-call-summit-on-international-surveillance-scandal?CMP=twt_gu