Brandis defends pervasive surveillance by security agencies

George Brandis defends pervasive surveillance by security agencies

Attorney general uses Washington speech to repeat his view that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a traitor

Katharine Murphy

The attorney general, George Brandis, has mounted a strenuous defence of surveillance activities by intelligence organisations, citing new threats from fighters radicalised in Syria as justification for beefing up global security capability and cooperation.

Brandis has told an elite Washington thinktank audience that as a lawyer, he has a “bred-in-the-bone respect for due process and civil liberties” – but as the minister responsible for homeland security in Australia, “the more intelligence I read, the more conservative I become”.

He says the “intimate” collaboration through the “5-Eyes” intelligence partnership of the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, Australia and the United States is essential to combating evolving national security threats, and must continue “unaffected” by the Snowden fallout.

Brandis used his address to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies to repeat his previous declaration that Edward Snowden – the former National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower who has exposed the extent and reach of American-led global electronic surveillance – is a “traitor”.

“Snowden is not a genuine whistleblower. Nor, despite the best efforts of some of the gullible self-loathing left, or the anarcho-libertarian right, to romanticise him, is he any kind of folk hero,” Brandis told his Washington audience.

“He is a traitor. He is a traitor because, by a cold-blooded and calculated act, he attacked your country by significantly damaging its capacity to defend itself from its enemies, and in doing so, he put your citizens’ lives at risk – and, in the course of doing so, he also compromised the national security of America’s closest allies, including Australia’s.”

Brandis also argues that advocates calling for governments to wind back surveillance overreach in the wake of the Snowden disclosures do not bear practical responsibility for the consequences of those actions. Civil libertarians arguing for wider limitations on the collection of intelligence “have the luxury of approaching the question from a largely philosophical or legalistic perspective”.

By contrast, Brandis asserts that people who understand the evolving nature of modern terrorism threats – “the capabilities and danger of sophisticated modern terrorism, would wish for fewer limitations on intelligence gathering”.

Brandis used his speech to detail the precise nature of the domestic security challenge Australia faces as a consequence of the Syrian civil war. “Per capita, Australia is one of the largest sources of foreign war fighters to the Syrian conflict from countries outside the region,” the attorney general said.

He pointed to current government consideration of policy methods to ensure radicalised fighters did not continue the conflict on Australian soil. Brandis said Syria had now become “one of the most important centres of terrorist activity.”

“It reminds us of the pervasiveness, mobility and ambition of modern Islamist terrorism. It is yet another reminder to the democratic world of the intractability of the terrorist threat,” he said.

“This problem will not just go away and peaceful nations must never become complacent or lower their guard against the threat that terrorism poses. They must remain vigilant, committed and cooperative in their joint efforts to defeat it.”

Brandis referenced a recent shift in American policy surrounding the collection and storing of intelligence. President Obama is in the process of overhauling the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection program in the wake of the Snowden revelations in an effort to impose some more privacy safeguards.

The shift in the US means data collected by telephone companies would be stored by the companies themselves, not by the National Security Agency. Companies would be required to hand over material to the NSA in response to specific, court sanctioned inquiries.

The attorney general said he had discussed the policy shift during his Washington visit, but he said Australia would ultimately develop its own approach to the issue. “Australia welcomes the president’s clarification of American intelligence collection policies embodied in that directive,” Brandis said.

“That is not to say, of course, that Australia would necessarily have resolved these policy choices in the exactly the same way. Every country’s needs and circumstances are peculiar to it.”

The Abbott government currently faces a senate inquiry into Australia’s telecommunications interception regime.

In submissions to that inquiry, the privacy commissioner and Australia’s intelligence watchdog, the inspector general of intelligence and security, have flagged potential adjustments to the domestic interception regime to ensure that agencies strike the correct balance between protecting consumer privacy and conducting necessary investigations to prevent crimes.

Those agencies suggest more can be done to safeguard community privacy.

But Intelligence and policing agencies are using the same inquiry to defend the central importance of a broad interception regime, and argue it should be expanded.

Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, Asio, wants telecommunications data to be collected by companies and stored for two years – longer in some cases. Law enforcement agencies would then seek access to the held material during their investigations.

The Abbott government is yet to state a clear position on that issue.

Labor recently signalled it would be favourably disposed to forcing Australian telecommunications companies, internet service providers and social media sites to collect metadata from Australian users and store it for two years.

Metadata is the information we all generate whenever we use technology, from the date and time of a phone call to the location from which an email is sent.

Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, played down the significance of collecting metadata, arguing that it was an “envelope”, not contents.

“There continue to be threats. Those threats may increase,” Plibersek said on March 30. “I want to give [intelligence] agencies the maximum ability to do their job well, within the bounds that people would expect.”

But Plibersek’s benign view of metadata was contested by Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who was instrumental in setting up the new senate inquiry into the interception regime. The “envelope”, Ludlam said, was a “deliberately deceptive metaphor”.

“Anyone who downplays the importance of assembling billions of these metadata ‘envelopes’ either doesn’t understand the technology, or hopes to impede your understanding,” Ludlam said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/09/brandis-defends-surveillance-by-security-agencies