Putting measures in place to stop criminals and terrorists is good, right? So why are so many people howling with outrage at what's being discussed at the National Security Enquiry?

But first...

What is the inquiry?

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has commenced an inquiry into potential reforms of national security legislation. Its aims concern, "equipping Australia against emerging and evolving threats" from "criminals and terrorists" particularly with regards to telecoms and online communications. The inquiry was referred to the Committee by the Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon.

What is being discussed?

Many issues are being discussed but the most contentious ones regard data retention. These explore how the police and ASIO can monitor, store and search phone and internet activity records of all Australians without requiring judicial oversight or warrants.

It's only online, right?

As soon as anything to do with technology or the internet starts getting banded about, large sections of the public start switching off. They can't relate to it. Much of the language coming from the inquiry suggests that the inquiry members themselves aren't far removed from this group. However, imagine this was a law that saw the police attaching a tracking chip to you so that they could track all of your movements around town and overseas and store them for two years at a time (or even forever as the police are now asking) in case you (or someone you knew) were ever involved in a crime?

Now consider that people nowadays store more personal information online than they do in their house. It is unlikely that anyone would countenance a law that allowed the police or ASIO to stroll into your house without permission whenever they wanted to because they thought you might be involved in a crime. Consequently, a question being asked is, 'Why should online be different?'

Being forced to hand over your private passwords

One piece of legislation being discussed forces people to hand over their private passwords to computer files, email, private messages and Facebook messages. The notion of being forced to pass on such private information under threat of Federal prosecution has caused a furore. It also causes problems for the following groups...

Protecting journalist sources and whistle blowers

Journalists being allowed to protect their source has been a long-running discussion, however, the proposed laws would make any protection impossible. For instance, it is normal for Radio stations, to have people call in anonymously and talk about potential criminal activity or blow whistles to raise awareness. However, the proposed legislation would allow police to track down sources regardless of a journalist's wishes. Even the thought of that happening should be enough to put whistle blowers off speaking out and that severely undermines one of the functions of the media.

The undermining of the Right To Remain Silent

Many people think this right only applies to criminals. However, the following video describes how this is utterly wrong, and just why that right is so important at protecting society. While it's US based the first part provides an incredibly compelling argument from a law professor on why you should never talk to police because the potential for damning yourself (guilty or not) can be extraordinarily high. Throughout the talk he baits the next speaker who is a police officer (and hugely-experienced interrogator) on how interesting a counter argument will be only for that speaker to eruditely agree with everything the lawyer said. They are long but fascinating and well worth watching.

Security

The stored records, which would be vast in size, are supposedly to be kept by Internet Service Providers. These aren't companies trained in privacy issues or who are required to background-check employees - they're businesses who have naturally spoken out against having this storage burden dumped upon them at huge cost (a figure of $700m per year has been mooted with any figure most likely being passed on to the public). However, of enormous concern should be security.

The number of high-profile hacks on government and companies is growing all the time. Barely a month ago, hackers published reams of customer information from Australian ISP, AAPT.

It's not like companies learn from being hacked either. After being repeatedly hacked last year and despite protestations on each occasion that it had learned from its mistakes, Sony got hacked yet again just a few weeks ago. The notion that ISPs might suddenly become military-grade privacy protectors is fanciful. Even the military gets hacked - witness the Stratfor (US Defence contractor) debacle plus the entire Wikileaks saga.

Exposure

Another concern is what could be done with that data. It's one thing to embarrass someone by exposing that they go to porn sites but what if it were discovered that they regularly visited BDSM sites or were a member of an adult baby club or that all of the websites they went to were for gay people? What if they were looking up Sexually Transmitted Infections or websites concerning HIV and AIDS treatment? What if medical insurance companies saw that someone had a pre-existing condition? What if someone was exposed frequenting websites of a particular political party? What if they frequently went to haveanaffair.com.au?

Roxon says that necessary safeguards will be taken to prevent this from happening but it is fair to say that this is an empty promise. She cannot guarantee that in any way. Nothing is secure online, and any claim otherwise is nothing more than rhetoric.

The body scanners lies and privacy fails

It's unfortunately necessary to point out that governments and law enforcement agencies aren't always the most trustworthy of people. A related example is the body scanners furore. Here, the latest generation of body scanners provide images in such high definition that they basically show the person completely naked. Despite numerous official assurances that images were not to be stored and that operators would be trained not to react to them, shortly afterwards one UK operator scanned a colleague to look at her "gigantic tits". More recently a US courthouse was recently caught out having stored some 35,000 images of people passing through its scanners while in India pictures of a film star were circulated among airport staff.

Fallible police

While it's uncomfortable for decent society to contemplate that the police are fallible, history is unfortunately littered with examples of overbearing and, in some instances corrupt police (plus those who have simply made mistakes). It is because of such events that rights such as the right to remain silent have evolved to protect society and act as a safeguard. Some examples are very recent and shocked the world, especially with regards to peaceful protests in places like the US and Melbourne. Meanwhile, in the UK, London police corruption was recently highlighted in the News of the World phone hacking scandal and criticised during the Occupy protests.

Stephen Blanks from New South Wales Civil Liberties told the ABC, "The current law is that telecommunications data can be accessed by these agencies without a warrant, but if they want to access content then they have to get a warrant. But what's being proposed sounds like they want to wind back the supervision regime, they say there's never been a problem with corruption or misuse of these powers so the supervision regime is too onerous. And they're looking at forcing telcos and ISPs to retain data for up to two years so they can access it if they want to."

On top of this the police are also asking to access encryption keys from the likes of Skype and Blackberry so that all secure messages can be monitored too - a practice that was deeply criticised when Middle Eastern incumbent regimens called for similar powers during the Arab Spring revolutions.

Thus far, the main justifications given for removing the legal checks and balances has been that 'we can trust them to do what's right.'

[Update] Also worth noting is popular online community, Reddit. A popular section of the website, called Bad_Cop_No_Donut, lists pictures, videos and news articles of police abusing their powers all over the world. The site receives many new submissions every day. It can be seen here.

Everyone has broken the law

The policeman in the above videos points out that he can follow any car and eventually have justification to pull them over. He also states that if you never exceed the speed limit you'll likely cause an accident with traffic rear-ending you.

The lawyer points out that there are so many laws of the land that it's impossible for law makers to know them all. He illustrates how it can be a Federal offense in America to be in possession of a lobster.

In Australia our laws can be both more proscriptive and less well-defined. Our border security laws are so tight that there are several reality TV shows made about them which are popular around the world. However, in the world of content classification breaking the law literally comes down to the opinion of government bureaucrats and classification laws that are at odds with the realities of the modern world.

The most popular book in much of the Western world is 50 Shades of Grey. The internet is littered with pictures and videos that are similar to the extreme sex themes contained within. However, purchasing videos and pictures of such acts is against the law in most Australian States because they show themes that offend "the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults."

Other contentious laws concern child pornography. In Australia, it is possible to be convicted of child porn offenses without ever seeing either a child or porn. You can even be a child. If you possess an 'adult' video where a female has small breasts or bunches in her hair, or has a fluffy toy by the bedside, then there are grounds to classify it as child porn. Even simple images of a naked 27-year old have been classified obscene by The Classification Board because the model looked like she might have been under 16. The photos in that instance weren't far removed from featuring a topless person in the background of a photo on a beach. On top of this the Classification Board has a history of reversing its decision because of hysterical media outcries (led by tabloid columnists) or even outraged politicians.

Finally, as the lawyer in the video points out, there isn't a person alive who can say with total confidence that they haven't ever breached a tax law.

Copyright

Copyright is another problem. At present Australians are avid downloaders of TV series such as Dexter and Game of Thrones due to the difficulty of accessing content locally. Powerful lobby groups such as AFACT condemn all such activities as blatant theft but things aren't so simple. Copyright and piracy have been discussed extensively elsewhere. However, what is clear is that in the views of significant numbers of government members and lobbyists, all copyright infringement is illegal. At present it's near impossible to catch the (literally) millions of 'offenders' within Australia. However, police having access to the nation's online content would certainly change that.

Fishing trips

With this in mind, giving the police powers to access a person's web history and online life, without oversight, has upset many people. It means that the police can likely find evidence of a crime committed (or an embarrassing activity) by anyone whether they are a hardened criminal, an irritating peaceful protester or simply someone that a police officer does not like. Others have suggested political enemies too.

Policy creep

Once a law has cleared many hurdles and made legislation, tweaking it at a later date is comparatively simple. Such tweaks rarely get significant public or media scrutiny but they can be significant. Some hypothetical examples that have been discussed lately include the following:-

If the law is passed to store metadata (information about the information) it is comparatively simple to switch this to storing all data down the line, whether now or in a generation or so.

It would also be comparatively simple to switch data retention from two years to indefinitely and to remove police barriers to accessing it.

Victoria recently passed laws which makes it illegal to swear in public or sing a rude song. Robert Clark, the Attorney-General for Victoria states 'anti-social behaviour' is "one of those areas of crime that has been rising."

Consequently, the concern is how far the laws can go even if they are introduced in a watered down form. Could it become illegal to swear on the internet? It would certainly be simple for police to check if you had and also to tell whether you were a repeat or habitual offender.

Conclusion

The above reflects the concerns of the online commentators who have been following the inquiry. Pointedly, there hasn't been much, if any, support for any of the proposals outside of the inquiry itself. Following the #NatSecInquiry hashtag on Twitter provides a steady stream of people aghast with what's being proposed. George Orwell's 1984, which gave the world the concept of 'Big Brother is watchingyou' is constantly mentioned - there's even a campaign to send copies of the book to Nicola Roxon.

Those not versed in online normalities are may well still wonder what all the fuss is about. Arguably the best recent article concerning surveillance comes from the SMH and details how an Australian hero was put under surveillance because of his girlfriend. All of their intimate moments were monitored and transcribed. Ultimately, the consequences were devastating.

Different people will have different views regarding what's being proposed. Let us know your thoughts below.