[LINK] "Bosses could read your email: Gillard" and "Anti-terror laws used to spy on family"

Bernard Robertson-Dunn brd at iimetro.com.au
Mon Apr 14 20:54:12 AEST 2008


<brd>
Two articles I found interesting.

It seems parliaments find it difficult to actually control how 
legislation gets used.
</brd>

<article 1>
Bosses could read your email: Gillard
Correspondents in Canberra
April 14, 2008
Australian IT
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23535333-15306,00.html

PROPOSED laws to allow companies to snoop on their workers' emails are 
needed to protect vital electronic infrastructure from terrorist 
attacks, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

The federal government is developing new counter-terrorism measures 
which include changes to the Telecommunications Act that would allow 
companies providing services critical to the economy to read workers' 
emails.

The proposal has been slammed by civil liberty groups, who say the new 
laws will be abused by employers.

But Ms Gillard says the changes won't lead to an invasion of privacy. "I 
promise we are not interested in the email you send out about who did 
what at the Christmas party," Ms Gillard told the Nine Network. "What 
this is about is looking at our critical infrastructure."

In the past, that might have meant protecting roads and buildings - but 
now it means safeguarding vital IT systems.

"Our technology is a big infrastructure issue these days," Ms Gillard 
said. "If our banking system collapsed, if our electronic system 
collapsed, obviously that would have huge implications for society. So 
we want to make sure they are safe from terrorist attack."

That involves making sure the government has "the right powers" to 
ensure it knows "if there's something unusual going on in the system".

Any changes to the Telecommunications Act would be based on national 
security and not "an unseemly interest in people's private emails".

Dale Clapperton, chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia - an 
organisation representing internet users concerned with on-line freedoms 
- says the proposed laws could be abused by employers. "Our concern is 
if (businesses are) given these powers, they are more likely to be used 
for eavesdropping and corporate witchhunts rather than protecting 
Australia from some kind of cyber attack," Mr Clapperton told ABC Radio. 
"If an employer had a particular employee that they wanted to get rid 
of, it would be a fairly trivial matter to use these powers to watch 
everything that they do on the computer until they have caught them 
sending a personal email during work hours, or some pretext for getting 
rid of them."
</article 1>

<article 2>
Anti-terror laws used to spy on family
By Chris Green
Friday, 11 April 2008
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/antiterror-laws-used-to-spy-on-family-807873.html

A family who were wrongly suspected of lying on a school application 
form have discovered that their local council used anti-terrorism 
surveillance powers to spy on them.

The family, from Poole in Dorset, said they had been tailed for three 
weeks by council officials trying to establish whether they had given a 
false address in an attempt to get their three-year-old daughter a place 
at a heavily oversubscribed local nursery school, which their two older 
children had attended. The family had in fact done nothing wrong, and 
the investigation was eventually aborted.

Yesterday it emerged that Poole borough council had legitimately used 
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to monitor the family. This 
involved keeping a detailed log of their movements for two weeks, 
following the mother's car as she took her three children to school each 
day and even watching the family home to ascertain their sleeping habits.

The Act, passed in 2000, was supposed to allow security agencies to 
combat terrorism.

The 39-year-old mother, a businesswoman who wished to remain anonymous, 
said: "I can't imagine a greater invasion of our privacy. I'm incensed 
that legislation designed to combat terrorism can be turned on a 
three-year-old. It was very creepy when we found out that people had 
been watching us and making notes. Councils should be protecting 
children, not spying on them."

The council defended its right to investigate families in a covert 
manner, saying it had used the law twice in the past year to 
successfully prove parents were lying about where they lived.
</article 2>
--

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au





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