Australian Police given computer spyware powers

December 13, 2004

Australian Federal and state police now have the power to use computer spyware to gather evidence in a broad range of investigations after legal changes last week.

The Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant to use software surveillance technologies, including systems that track and log keystrokes on a computer keyboard. The law applies to the Australian Federal Police and to state police investigating Commonwealth offences.

Critics have called the law rushed and imbalanced, saying police will be able to secretly install software to monitor email, online chats, word processor and spreadsheets entries and even bank personal identification numbers and passwords.

Irene Graham, executive director of watchdog Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the law went too far in allowing police surveillance.

"The legislation has been passed without the proper scrutiny and the ALP is too afraid to stick to their guns and oppose it," she said.

Ms Graham also believed the act could override parts of the Telecommunications Interception Act, which tightly regulated telecommunications monitoring. AdvertisementAdvertisement

A spokesperson for the federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, denied this, saying the act specifically said it should not be read to override the Telecommunications Interception Act.

The spokesperson said there were protections in the legislation, including reporting to Parliament and allowing reviews by the Ombudsman.

In addition to redefining the kinds of surveillance devices that can be used, the Surveillance Devices Act allows surveillance for offences far less serious than those allowed under the Telecommunications Interception Act. Warrants to intercept telecommunications can only be obtained to investigate offences carrying a maximum jail term of seven years or more. However, Surveillance Devices Act warrants can be obtained for offences carrying a maximum sentence of three years.

Ms Graham said the three-year benchmark was too low and the act went too far in setting out circumstances in which police could use surveillance devices.

A warrant could be obtained under the act if an officer had reasonable grounds to suspect an offence had been or might be committed and a surveillance device was necessary to obtain evidence. They can also be obtained in child recovery cases.

The act also has secrecy provisions making it an offence to publish information on an application for, or the existence of, a surveillance warrant.

The Government said the act would consolidate and modernise the law. Mr Ruddock said the power of Commonwealth law enforcement using surveillance devices lagged behind what technology made possible and what was permitted in other jurisdictions.

However, Electronic Frontiers is concerned that key-logging software can even record words written and then deleted or changed and thoughts that are not intended for communication

What's wrong with American journalism?

What's wrong with American journalism?

I am taking the opportunity of a piece of news about the Drudge report to begin a series of short articles on American journalism (one posting every three days). My meeting with Danny Schechter, the editor of mediachannel. org, also gave me the idea of comparing journalism in Europe and America. I will obviously be making postings out of Paris, and hope my selection will be appreciated as a European's interpretation of the American scene.

Let me begin with this remark by Rich Ord, Webpronews: "According to Google Zeitgeist, the internet based Drudge Report is the third most searched for news source as of October, 2004. Why is this interesting? Of the top sites searched for news sources, the Drudge Report (DR) is the only Web based news service. It is significant that online news sources are now mainstream news sources when using pure popularity as the barometer. All of the others in the top five are principally television based. The Google Zeitgeist list of most popular news sources is as follows: CNN, Today Show, Drudge Report, Fox News, MSNBC..."

What is amazing about this piece of news is that very few people seem to be worried: it is now part of the American media landscape - as wonkette. com or other opinion blogs - and relatively well accepted, even if the parent/child relationship between DR and its baby-blogs can be discussed or denied (seen from Europe, there is no doubt it exists). Organisations with hundreds of journalists - and skilled people and a long tradition of fact-checking - are now put on the same level as a single person. But nobody seems to care! Isn't important when rumours and second-hand commentaries become as important as breaking news and investigative reports? And ironically, during the presidential elections, major American newspapers were almost obliged to follow the lead set by opinionated weblogs: de facto, their agenda was driven by this new cast of opinion leaders.

The second point is the apparent lack of courage among many American editors (due to media-political correctness?): the only one who reacted to this new trend was John S. Carroll, LA Times editor in a prophetic lecture entitled "The Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: the Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America" (targeting Fox News talk-shows but a lot of his examples could be applied to opinionated blogs). What does this editors' self-censorship mean? That today blogs are so popular that nobody dares say that Drudge's sons of the blogosphere raise as many problems as they bring solutions. I know that American editors aren't pro-blogs, but I'm still waiting for a strong editorial saying that blogs are not the corner stone of 21st century journalism...

What's the main issue for European journalists in this American blogmania tsunami? Usually, the information process can be divided into four segments (fact-checking being part of the two first segments): breaking news, investigative reporting, balanced analysis and then opinion. With the bloggers, you jump directly from breaking news to the opinion article. This is a major disruption and, by the way, a major misunderstanding of what journalism is: when you are articulated and well informed, it's rather easy to become an opinion giver, but it is much more difficult to fact-check the news and avoid manipulation by the government or big companies and interests. You need staff, a newsroom, and what has existed in media organisations from a century. Period.

I am, by now, perfectly aware of bloggers' arguments regarding the CBS affair concerning the "60 minutes" report about George W. Bush National Guard service. It is said that, thanks to the "guys in pajamas", truth emerged very quickly. To be frank, I'm not fully convinced. For the following reason: CBS' competitors would have done the same job, criticizing the sources and the conclusions as they usually do. But it would have taken days and days. What is really new is that, as a case study, the collective intelligence of the blog community did the work in a few hours. It is now impossible to re-write the story as if bloggers didn't exist, but as far as we are concerned in Europe, the blog issue is only a question of timing, not a question of principle. Bloggers, in this sense, are part of the journalistic community. As potential contributors and as accelerators - as opinion makers as well -, not as editors or truth makers!

Another worrying issue is what could be called "American demagogy" or the "Zagat culture" and I will develop that in another posting. The syllogism is the following: blogs are popular, blogs are worthy - instead of so-called MSM or mainstream media -, so blogs give you the truth! In France, you don't say a restaurant is good because it is full and seems successful. First, you try the food and second you let pass time to see if the promises are kept in the following months. So, it is not because you have 12 million monthly visitors on Dailykos. com that it is a good site. It's certainly a successful blog, but beyond that it reveals a crisis in American public opinion. I see it as a symptom, not a cure! Sorry if it is a bit tough, but there is no reason to accept any "religion of figures" based on the audience of some weblogs: so far, fairness and accuracy were not indexed on Google technology! It's more or less the same story about the "We Media" concept.

What's wrong with American journalism? (2)

What I would like to show - five days after my first posting - is that the American press was a model and a reference for all newspapers for 30 years and, surprisingly, has become a counter-model in the last two years. For all of us outside the US, it could be a lesson of humility.

How American journalists reported the Vietnam war at the beginning of the 70's and how, month after month, they changed the mind of a majority of Americans will remain a "Golden age" of American journalism. At this period, it was possible to say We are all American journalists . And when you look back today at what the American journalistic landscape was offering, it was terrific:
- the best Journalism Schools such as the Columbia School of Journalism or NYU and so many others
- a tradition of fact-checking that really didn't exist in other countries
- the rise of Op-Ed pages in major newspapers to present a huge range of points of view
- the lack of corruption in a profession that had, at one time, been corrupt
- and maybe the most important thing, the invention of a genuine we-report-you decide journalism.

During the 70's and 80's, it was already easy to criticize the American capitalism or the American empire, but immediately you had to add a proviso: American democracy is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution and battalions of investigative reporters and smart columnists. . In other words, American democracy was fact-checked by the American press!

Then, in the history of American journalism, there was a first alarm bell at the beginning of the 90's during the first Gulf war. The Army controlled all images and prohibited in-depth and independent coverage of military operations. The result was that the American press appeared as a victim of the Government and the Pentagon. When you read all comments of this period, it's about poor journalists who could not access the battleground. This kind of victimization of the profession of journalist was really the worst thing to happen because it masked a lot of difficult (and pending) issues.

At the same time, the world discovered CNN (born in the 80's) and a lot of questions linked to professional practices:
- the relationship between journalism and patriotism
- criticism regarding official military sources
- dictatorship of real time and virtual reality
- knowledge of non American cultures? But only a few media experts began to ask if it was a CNN issue or a more general problem of American journalism. We knew there was a problem, but we considered it was a parenthesis (and in reality, the parenthesis is still open).

Nevertheless, the main impression remained that the American press was a victim, and not a player of the new infowar process. For many American editors and senior news executives, it was easy to say it's not our fault and to consider themselves without reproach. This, I feel, explains the drift that happened after the 9/11 attacks.

What about today's American journalism? It is impossible to minimize the trauma of the World Trade Center 3,000 victims. Journalists were concerned, as were all American citizens and nobody can reproach them for reflecting this trauma and sometimes writing differently than they used to do.

It is also difficult to see the American press as a unique entity and I don't want to be seen as judge and jury. And it's impossible to talk about American journalism without mentioning Seymour Hersh from the New Yorker : years ago, he revealed the Mylai massacre during the Vietnam war and this year, he was the first to investigate the Abu Ghraib abuses in Iraq. He is proof that American reporters can find resources to be at the cutting edge of good journalism.

But what has happened to the American press in 2002 and 2003 will remain in the journalism history as a severe blow to our profession. Edward Wasseman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee university, said in a recent article, The supremacy of fact is under siege. When a study found that 72% of Bush supporters believe that Iraq had or was actively developing weapons of mass destruction, and 75% believe that Iraq was substantially supporting al Qaeda, something is wrong with the country's political information system.

Here the problem is not that American journalists didn't have enough means or ideas to investigate the pre-war claims concerning Iraq's strategic arsenal - that could happen to every reporter -, the real issue is that American newspapers became the best agents of the Bush administration. In the New York Times, you often found articles with the unique views of the largely discredited Ahmed Chalabi and his friends from the Iraqi refugees community in New York or London. Same thing at the WaPo where skeptical reports about WMD were downplayed and relegated to inside pages. How American journalism, well-known for its investigative and fact-checking tradition, became a caricature of journalism, that is a mystery.

BBC news chief, Richard Sambrook, helps us find some first answers. Recently in New York he said that American media were failing the public by wrapping themselves in the American flag. The responsability of the news media is to ask the difficult questions, to press, to verify. And we know that all of us failed to ask the right questions about WMD in advance of the war.

Instead of weapons of mass destruction, American newspapers were confronted with weapons of mass disinformation (from the government and the CIA). Sorry, Danny Schechter, if I don't use your terminology, weapons of mass deception!

Unfortunately, what appears as a failure of American journalism is not limited to pre-war assertions. Two very important debates were wasted or, worst, ignored by a majority of newspapers :

- first, this old/new journalism called embedded journalism. This kind of journalism at time of war has always existed and cannot be criticized in itself. But the newspapers embedded journalists didn't have time to write their own stories, they had to react to and comment on what was seen by Americans on Fox news, CNN and the other networks. In my opinion, American newspapers were right to accept the principle of embedded journalism, but they were wrong to rely almost exclusively on it. It gave a strong distortion on what was perceived by American audiences.

- regarding Human Rights issues, the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo jail status were evidently discussed in major newspapers, but not really in the other 800 important regional daily newspapers. A sort of self- censorship has ruled the American press including some major Press Institutes or Organisations who usually discussed everything about media matters. There was a strange silence in the most chattering and debating press!

If 2002 and 2003 were bad years for American journalistc standards, 2004 looks better. First because the Abu Ghraib scandal was not minimized or depreciated. Everything possible was done to inform American readers and very few columns said the responsability for abuses was limited to a few individuals.

Second, major newspapers have made their mea culpa, in particular the New York Times and the Washington Post. This is very encouraging: personally, I'm not used to finding articles from editors or publishers saying We were wrong.

Third, in June 2004, the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission slowed down the relentless march of American media consolidation in a decision consecutive to a lawsuit led by the Media Access Project. It is a first understanding that the loss of a free, independent press and diversity of media voices is anthetical to democracy prophetically said Frank A. Blethen, publisher of the Seattle Times.

Nothing negative in 2004. I'm not an insider and it's difficult to me to talk about the coverage of the presidential election. About the "post-war" issues, I was a bit disappointed by newspapers who made their mea culpa: during the Fallujah siege and assault in November 2004, mainstream media were incredibly patriotic. Again. And even after the CBS's Fallujah mosque images or when CNN reported that it has been manipulated by military sources in the first days of the assault.

Globally, I'm more confident today than a year ago because press credibility is now so low in America that this has become a major issue. Just because it is a threat to the whole newspaper industry and a vicious circle: if readers don't trust their newspaper, they don't buy it anymore, the circulation and the advertising revenues decline. So, American newspapers have to react very quickly to their readers, questions if they dont want to ruin their main asset : the truth. Hopefully, in the news business, the first word will not be ignored any more.

What are we expecting here in Europe (and maybe in other continents) from American journalists? That they close the "patriotic parenthesis" which has begun in the 90's. And that they invent an "open journalism" to other cultures and ways of thinking: forget to be mainstream - in the sense to follow the current American public opinion - and don't believe the voices saying that "your readers know better than you do". In other terms, take risks!

Iraq and the U.S. Legacy

by Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) November 26, 2004

Competence made order out of chaos. It knew how to analyze problems and set priorities. It saved lives. But a life saved is not a life released from hatred or the other legacies of violence or repression.

As far as modern military organizations are concerned, U. S. forces would have to be rated as quite competent at what they are designed to accomplish: killing people, destroying things, and bringing chaos out of order.

If that were the extent of expectations about modern armed forces, nothing more would need be said. But today's military forces are expected to reverse the traditional process, particularly those who, like the U. S. in Iraq, created the problem. To date, efforts by the U. S. to recreate a stable, new order that incorporates the best traditions and practices of the past, nourishes expectations for the future, and meets the immediate needs of the population, have lagged significantly.

On meeting the immediate needs of the population, a survey by the Iraqi Health Ministry, the UN, and a Norwegian nonprofit agency found that malnutrition among children under five has almost doubled--from 4.0 to
7.7%--since the March 2003 invasion. The culprit is a combination of unsafe drinking water, lack of reliable electricity or fuel stocks to boil water, and crumbling or non-existent sewage systems.

Security--the absence thereof--for Iraqis, for humanitarian aid workers, for UN personnel, even for military forces in central Iraq and a number of locations elsewhere in the country, has created a climate of fear both for the present and the future. The U. S. trumpeted its action as liberating the Iraqis from a tyrant, which is true as far as it goes. But the tyrant, for all the predictable and utter ruthlessness he employed when needed, managed to provide enough services to keep a restive population under control.

So far, the U. S. has neither duplicated the provision of services nor provided a general sense of security. Major aid agencies have been forced to withdraw their staff because of the dangers. And despite the intentions of Washington, official government humanitarian aid and reconstruction has been limited by the continuing violence. As two long-time aid workers observed November 23, aid or reconstruction carried out at gunpoint[is] virtually indistinguishable from military and political action.Their summary: Reconstruction has not occurred. Civil society has not been restored.

In fact, 20 months after the invasion, some among those who supported war are beginning to call for troop reductions. The change of heart comes not because the security situation has improved but because it just might get better if the aggravating presence of large numbers of foreign troops is reduced. Fewer occupiers would remove a major pretext for continued violence and could serve to induce more Iraqis to abandon armed conflict for political participation.

Indeed, with the announcement of elections for the national assembly on January 30, a definitive statement of U. S. intentions in Iraq would be well-timed. It would complement other recent decisions and announcements, including:

* November 18: agreement by the Paris Club (the 19 wealthiest creditor nations) to write off 80% of Iraq's debt to the Club members ($42 billion, roughly one-third of Iraq's total debt of $120 billion) in three stages between 2004-2008.
* November 23: statement by Iraqi election officials that 220 parties had applied to participate in the elections. (Less well publicized was a November 18 report that 47 groups--Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and Turkomen--agreed not to participate because of the U. S. attack on Fallujah.)
* November 24: the communique from the high-level meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh of Iraq's neighbors, the Group of Eight leading industrial countries, China, the European Union, Arab League, Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the UN that called for a concerted effort at pre-election nation-building that would set the stage for a united, federal, democratic and pluralistic state.

These follow a fatwa issued in October by Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that directs all Iraqis to vote in the January ballot, a move that puts enormous pressure on the interim Iraqi government to stay with the electoral timetable, especially since the national assembly will choose a new interim government from its members. It will also draft a new constitution and prepare for a final round of elections in December 2005 for a permanent government.

So what could the U. S. do to move toward resolving its dilemma? It should:

* publicly commit the U. S. to total, unconditional withdrawal with no residual bases;
* cut Baghdad Embassy staff to fall in the range of other U. S. embassies in the region;
* concentrate redevelopment aid on small projects that directly employ Iraqis so that more Iraqis feel they have a future;
* respect existing cultural authority lines; they may be imperfect, but correcting them is not the purview of foreign occupiers;
* properly train and equip Iraqi security forces on the premise that quality is more important than quantity;
* trust these quality Iraqi forces and let them operate independently of U. S. troops;
* keep the commitment to leave unconditionally and completely.

The last, of course, is the most important--and will be the hardest to do. But without it, the U. S. may well discover that its Iraq adventure, instead of releasing Iraqis from hatred or the other legacies of violence or repression,only intensified and spread anti-American hatred throughout the world.

Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org), a retired U. S. army colonel and a senior fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

For More Analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus:

Being Over There:Location, Location, Location By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( November 11, 2004)

Indecision on Iraq? By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( October 18, 2004 )

When "Scores" Count By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( October 6, 2004)

Ripples From the Schlesinger Report By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( August 30, 2004)

Posing the Right Question By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( July 30, 2004)

How Long a War? By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( May 13, 2004)

Why So Many Were So Wrong for So Long By Col. Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) ( February 5, 2004)