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

[Saliya Wimalaratne]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 08:54:12PM +1000, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> 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. 

Not that I don't have a lot of respect for Dale's opinions, and not
that I don't think that 'Big Brother' needs lots more enemies like Dale; but:

> "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 

... it would be a fairly trivial matter to get rid of the employee
anyway. Employers don't really need an excuse like 'they sent a 
personal email on company time' in order to sack an employee. 

We need to argue against powers like this on matters of substance;
in this situation, IMHO the matter of substance is that business use
of covert eavesdropping abilities needs to be very tightly-regulated -
the status quo is that covert eavesdropping is a no-no; and we should
require a very large burden of proof to alter it. 

FWIW, I can't see how a user could object to monitoring of their Internet use
at work provided the existence of that monitoring is made clear to them.
Don't like the policy? Find somewhere else to work, or _don't do it at
work_. Remember that your employer's paying you for your time to do 
their stuff; not yours. 

> <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.

An example of legislation being applied inappropriately. Had the surveillance
powers been legislated 'properly', the costs to the council could have
outweighed the benefits (e.g. "use-these-powers-badly; lose-x-funding"). 

How hard could it be to define what the obtained evidence could be used for? 
"You can use evidence obtained under this legislation to prosecute 
suspected terrorists under existing anti-terrorism legislation; all 
other uses will expose you to <insert-bad-thing-here>". 

> 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.

... which proved that they were terrorists? Probably not. And the council
didn't _need_ to prove that because the legislation was enacted in a fashion
that let them subvert it to their own purposes. Not sure that blame's being
appropriately laid here.

Regards,

Saliya