Is the Gillard Government really planning to force Australian ISPs to retain logs detailing individual Internet usage for several years?

It sounds too surreal to be true. Yet this latest push by a Government dragging Australia fast towards Orwellian hell has been a matter of public knowledge – and some debate – for a while. So far, official denials have not been convincing.

Mandatory Data Retention: 10% of the Government's plans are public

Rumours first surfaced months ago of secret meetings convened by the Attorney General’s Department, in which ISPs were consulted about ways to monitor internet usage.

In June, the story made headlines, at least in Australia’s IT  media. The ripple of coverage began on June 11th with Ben Grubb’s article in Zdnet.com.au: Govt wants ISPs to record browsing history. There was a follow-up article in Zdnet by Renai LeMay a few days later: Govt denies it wants web history records. News Corps’ Brett Winterford was considerably more reassuring – see Call for calm over data retention talks – although it’s interesting to note an acerbic debate with Ben Grubb in comments below that article.

By the end of June, Liz Tay was reporting that the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts has been given a reference to investigate the adequacy of Australian online privacy protections: see Feds launch online privacy inquiry.

In similar fashion to the way the debate over Internet censorship (the ‘filter’) has unfolded, it’s the Greens who’ve led efforts in the Federal Parliament to open up the topic for public debate. Greens Senator Scott Ludlum has emerged once again as the leading parliamentary champion of online rights – this time in relation to privacy. He said in June:

“It is time the Parliament took a proper look at the degree to which the privacy of Australians online is being eroded by governments and corporations alike,” Ludlam said.

“Importantly, it’s [the inquiry] going to allow us to have a proper look at Government plans to compel ISPs to collect the web browsing history of all Australians, for purposes which are not at all clear.”

A general election has since been called. Presumably, the Senate Standing Committee’s inquiry will carry over into the next Parliament.

This potentially explosive story dropped out of the headlines again – until Ben Grubb got a reply a few days ago from the Government to a Freedom of Information request.

Having tried to obtain a copy of the top-secret document used in discussions with the IT industry via FoI, the Sydney Morning Herald received a document with no less than nine tenths of the content erased! (see No Minister: 90% of web snoop document censored to stop ‘premature unnecessary debate’)

The issue was discussed this morning on Channel 7 breakfast news (see the video below).

Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia and Seamas Byrne of Gizmodo.com.au both did an excellent job outlining privacy concerns about this mind-boggling case of authoritarian over-reach, in an Australia where civil liberties are fast becoming an endangered species.

Laurie Oakes: likes a leak

The minor curfuffle over Laurie Oakes’ latest leak revelation – coming fast on the heels of Chris Uhlmann’s leak expose following Oakes’ previously announced leak – has obscured the really big leak which this blog is proud to bring to a breathless Australian public.

It’s a world exclusive.

Chris Uhlmann: ABC leak expert

According to an anonymous Canberra insider, Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott recently told a top-secret meeting of his election team to avoid discussing the Gillard Government’s Internet censorship plans.

“The Coalition would love to gain extra votes by opposing this irrational, authoritarian and highly unpopular Labor policy – but Abbott’s high-level contacts in the mass media and security agencies told him to shut up and conform” the source explained, on condition of  anonymity.

Abbott apparently urged his colleagues to “get elected!”

[Laurie Joakes and Chris Buhllman are senior member of the highly respected Canberra Press Gallery with virtually unlimited credibility]

When growth within living organisms is exponential it’s often described as cancerous.

ASIO budget growth 2001-2009

On that basis, the growth of Australia’s internal ‘intelligence agency’ has become a fully-fledged tumour over the last decade.

More than a year ago, Bernard Keane reported in the independent Australian news website Crikey that the annual budget of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation grew from “$60m at the state of the decade to nearly $300m in the final Howard Government budget”.

The graph, reproduced here from Keane’s original article on Crikey, shows the picture clearly.

Expecting to see some decrease since then – or at least a stabilisation of this sky-rocketing budget – I did a quick desktop search today. The most recent relevant document I could find is a Parliamentary Paper entitled Budget 2010–11: Security Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and related intelligence issues by Nigel Brew. Here are two brief extracts:

After several years of receiving regular annual increases to its budget and experiencing rapid, significant growth in staff numbers under a planned expansion program stemming from the 2005 (Taylor) Review of ASIO Resourcing, ASIO’s overall budget has again increased (from $427 million in 2009–10 to a total of some $717 million this year) as the program enters its final phase…

ASIO is also expecting an increase of 89 to its Average Staffing Level (ASL) this coming financial year, bringing the agency’s ASL to a total of 1800. This is in line with ASIO’s ongoing five-year growth program and keeps it on track to meet its objective of 1800 staff by 2010–11, consistent with the recommendations of the Taylor Review. ASIO staff numbers have been steadily increasing every year now for some time.

By stealth – and with broad bipartisan support and precious little scrutiny from the mass media – Australia’s secret state has enjoyed a budget increase of some 1,000% in a decade.

Bernard Keane’s comment back in 2009 is even more relevant today:

“All this for an agency with no public scrutiny or performance indicators to assess whether it is doing its job or responsibly spending taxpayers’ money.”

Here’s a brief extract – consisting of a few sourced quotations – from the webpage on the Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth website entitled WTC 7 Gallery of Evidence:

Kamal S. Obeid, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Berkeley, of Fremont, California, says: “Photos of the steel, evidence about how the buildings collapsed, the unexplainable collapse of WTC 7, evidence of thermite in the debris as well as several other red flags, are quite troubling indications of well planned and controlled demolition“

The near-freefall collapse of World Trade Center Building 7

Ronald H. Brookman, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Davis, of Novato California, writes: “Why would all 110 stories drop straight down to the ground in about 10 seconds, pulverizing the contents into dust and ash – twice. Why would all 47 stories of WTC 7 fall straight down to the ground in about seven seconds the same day? It was not struck by any aircraft or engulfed in any fire. An independent investigation is justified for all three collapses including the surviving steel samples and the composition of the dust.“

Graham John Inman, structural engineer, of London, England, points out: “WTC 7 Building could not have collapsed as a result of internal fire and external debris. NO plane hit this building. This is the only case of a steel frame building collapsing through fire in the world. The fire on this building was small & localized therefore what is the cause?”

Paul W. Mason, structural engineer, of Melbourne, Australia, argues: “In my view, the chances of the three buildings collapsing symmetrically into their own footprint, at freefall speed, by any other means than by controlled demolition, are so remote that there is no other plausible explanation!“

“In my opinion WTC7 was with the utmost probability brought down by controlled demolition done by experts” – Hugo Bachmann, Professor emeritus for structural analysis and construction at ETH and former Chairman of the Department of Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. (source)

The official US Government version of events regarding the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 is an affront to reason.

To survive, advanced human civilization must continually reaffirm commitment to the core values of truth and justice.

Failure to respond rationally and with courage to the compelling evidence surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is corrosive to both.

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Footnote: Once one accepts the official accountof WTC-7′s collapse is false – and understands that the building must have been felled by controlled demolition – the question arises as to why WTC-7 was brought down in such a suspicious manner, separated from the more publicised collapses of WTC-1 and WTC-2 by several hours.

Was WTC 7 a Dud? by Jeremy Baker considers this interesting topic.

More recently, David Ray Griffin has published Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight: The 9/11 “Official Story” and the Collapse of WTC Building Seven. It’s meticulously documented and a perceptive call to action. Dr Griffin concludes:

Through these and related means, the truth about the collapse of WTC 7 has been effectively hidden, even though it has existed in plain sight all these years. Even the bare fact of the collapse itself has been so effectively hidden that in 2006 over 40 percent of the American public did not know about it, and in 2009 a judge in New York City, upon hearing a reference to Building 7, asked: “Building what?”

I offer this essay as a case study in the power of the forces behind SCADs or deep events to hide things that exist in plain sight, because if they can hide the straight-down free-fall collapse of a 47-story building captured on video in broad daylight, they can hide almost anything.

I say this, however, not to instill despair, but to point to the seriousness of the problem, and also to pave the way for making a proposal. Recognizing the high correlation between those who know about the collapse of WTC 7 and those who believe that a new – or rather real – 9/11 investigation is needed, I propose that the international 9/11 Truth Movement initiate, starting this September, a world-wide, year-long “Building What?” campaign. Through this campaign, we would seek to make the fact of its collapse so widely known that the mention of Building 7 would never again evoke the question: “Building What?”