President 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'.

Full story »

As Australia readies for new see-through – and mandatory – airport scanners from 1 July, international security guru Bruce Schneier has put the entire issue of "security theatre" in context with some apt examples. He explains that national transport authorities are actually doing the terrorists' work for them.

Full story »

A Senate Committee is inquiring into proposed mandatory see-through scanners at airports from 1 July but doesn't have all the information it needs, CLA says. CLA is calling for a standards-based security risk assessment, an obligatory step under government protocols, which may or may not have been done for the controversial new devices.

Read submission » ...

Politicians 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.

Full story »

Mandatory, see-through, airport scanners ride roughshod over our civil liberties, CLA says in its submission to the Senate Committee set up to rubber stamp the proposal. The federal government is hell-bent on forcing us to go through the revealing scanners, without an alternative pat-down procedure, from 1 July 2012...even though two of the world's most security-conscious nations, Israel and Germany, have actively rejected them, as CLA's video on the proposal demonstrates.

Read CLA submission » ...
Other submissions to the Inquiry » ...
CLA video » ...

Plans to introduce see-through scanners at airports don’t allow you any choice, like frisking or pat-down as alternatives. The scanners are bad in principle, will cause delays and produce false positives, and they create a head-on assault on Australians’ civil liberties. They are also a waste of taxpayers’ money, hundreds of millions of dollars of it – you can email/SMS/Tweet the Minister with your thoughts (details are on screen in the video). If you like, you can join CLA or donate so we can continue this campaign and others to help protect Australians’ rights and freedoms - click here.

Click here for the Freedom Has Flown video telling the real story of what’s wrong with Australia’s proposed airport scanners.

CLA has received many requests over the past few months for information about people's civil liberties and rights in relation to surveys by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The ABS is becoming more like Big Brother in its approach, it seems, in two major surveys currently under way into Health, and Financial/Utilities. Here's a report of a recent interview...

Full story »