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copyright ©2011 Civil Liberties Australia | Canberra, Australia
CLA believes everyone has the right to access all his/her own information, held publicly or privately, except where an impartial tribunal finds a need to protect privacy or the public interest. CLA strongly believes in freedom of information held by governments, their agencies, Ministers and their staff, and that the onus should be on such entities/people to prove to an impartial tribunal why freedom from information is necessary. FOI access should not be inhibited by cost or ease of retrieval.
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- CLA policy on technology and civil liberties: see policy document.
Obama continues assaults on basic rights
Article posted on Tuesday 22 May 2012President Obama began his reign as the hope of the civil liberties movement, but he ends a four-year term with a worse record than the President Bush he followed. Obama's remorseless assault on basic rights in America, Bernard Keane says, sets the tone for continuing loss of liberties and freedoms in Australia and globally as drone kills, loss of free speech and mass surveillance become 'normalised'.
FOI in Oz handicapped by two-speed approach
Article posted on Tuesday 15 May 2012In a major annual review of FOI in Australia, Dr Johan Lidberg says we're suffering from a two-speed approach with more than half the jurisdictions lagging. He points out the nation ranks as a middling muddler in how information publicly gathered and paid for is made available to the citizens who really own it – all of it, not just the bits the bureaucrats and pollies want released to suit their own spin.
Yours faithfully...what MPs should declare
Article posted on Monday 23 April 2012Politicians don't take mandatory declarations of their interests seriously, says Prof Ross Fitzgerald. In virtually all cases, the lists involve tokenism and hide as much as they reveal, certainly about the entire family's asset base. As well, the lists are largely silent on key issues like faith-based memberships, which may sway important votes on marriage, charity status, aid donations and the like.
Extradition to US is doubly doubtful
Article posted on Wednesday 18 January 2012Mark Summerfield, a patent attorney, analyses the current UK alleged piracy/copyright extradition case with major international ramifications. As well, there's links to the NYT coverage of proposed new US laws which are even more draconian, and to an SMH story of the real-life experience of an Australian extradited and jailed in the US for a similar 'offence'.
Note to Minister: we pay you to make the law
Article posted on Friday 23 December 2011
Fringe-dwelling firms are finding sneaky ways to exploit government agreements to milk them for private data never envisaged when the deal was originally done. In the West, you park at your peril, because the government willy-nilly hands over your private address details – despite previously saying the information was 'off limits'
Australia middling on info rights
Article posted on Thursday 06 October 2011
A new global rating, which ranks how open access to information is within a country, places Australia in the middle, FOI expert Dr Johan Lidberg (pictured) says. We'll know more about really how free and easy information is here, if it is, when Dr Lidberg's new national survey is completed next year.
Should Google forgive and forget?
Article posted on Thursday 11 August 2011Should Australians have the right to be forgotten online? We want your opinion.
There’s an emerging debate over what data we store, how we store it, who can access it and how widely it can be searched and promulgated.
CLA says on the Census:
Article posted on Tuesday 09 August 2011CLA closely scrutinizes government action which infringes the general right to be left alone. If this right is to be infringed, and the Government demand we hand over personal information, we expect the benefits to outweigh the cost and inconvenience. We also expect our private information to be kept just that: private. Sadly businesses and governments often just collect information for its own sake, and then fail to protect it. They treat it as a commodity to be sold or traded. How does the Census stand up?
'Treat crime as crime': UK reviewer
Article posted on Tuesday 19 July 2011The open access that the UK's Independent Reviewer of terrorism laws, David Anderson, has to secret agencies "reflects the importance which our democracy attaches to rigorous independent scrutiny of the many exceptional powers given to authorities to deal with the threat of terrorism," he says in his just-released report. It will be interesting to compare the UK report with that of Bret Walker, also a QC, who was appointed earlier this year to the same oversight role in Australia.
'We must fight for freedom'
Article posted on Friday 22 April 2011'The cause for which we stand and when we must, fight, is freedom,' says Malcolm Turnbull in a thoughtful analysis of effects from the WikiLeaks/Assange matters. He also points out that the High Court in Australia is unlikely to protect the secrets of a foreign government or confidential political information, even if the government wants it to.
Cybercrime: cyning away liberties
Article posted on Monday 11 April 2011
Harmless-sounding international conventions are the latest favoured way for governments to sign away individual liberties, and allow international spying on private data. Anti-rights 'crimes' are increasingly being committed by our politicians in the name of "anti-terror" laws and measures. Adam Brereton has the low down on high-sounding skulduggery.
Govt should back Aussie Julian
Article posted on Saturday 29 January 2011
Rather than pillory Julian Assange, and 'shop' him to the US Administration to meet whatever fate, the Gillard government should stand up for him...and for the world's right to free speech, even if honesty and transparency doesn't suit the Americans, CLA member Jim Collier (photo) told a rally in Launceston. (Youtube video included in the full article)
PM asked to support Assange
Article posted on Tuesday 25 January 2011
Wouldn’t it be good if, on Australia Day, PM Julia Gillard spoke out in support of the right to freedom of speech of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? If she spoke up, it would prove the accuracy of Michael’s Parkinson’s Australia Day comment that he had seen “Australia shrug off an inferiority complex”. CLA's Australia Day letter to the PM
Be afraid of helping Assange!
Article posted on Wednesday 12 January 2011Be afraid, be very afraid!. That's how the US Government and, by extension, the Australian Government wants you to be in relation to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Salon's Glenn Greenwald reveals a long-running government strategy of intimidation, which is what should truly be feared in a democracy.
Free speech is in clear danger
Article posted on Wednesday 05 January 2011The USA's proposed new 'Shield Bill', aimed at thwarting WikiLeaks, would would be likely to constrain public servants only, due to First Amendment protections, according to U. Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone.
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