The dangers of modern anti-terror legal and security excesses are demonstrated by the inefficiencies and errors of the past, Keith McEwan says, with proof available in his own ASIO files. There is no reason to believe that the modern computer age’s ability to rapidly record far more data will – of itself – make accuracy of the data or its analysis any greater than in the past.
Check ASIO files for creative writing
The Editor, The Age: The Age Editorial and Nicola McGarrity`s article on anti-terrorist laws point to the need for balanced laws that protect citizens’ rights (Age 14.8.09). Of particular concern are police powers to conduct warrantless searches and to hold people in detention, without charge, for eight days.
An additional danger to human rights is the ongoing practice of law enforcers classifying people as guilty by association. I am mindful of this when I glance through my ASIO files, compiled during my 17 years in the Australian Communist Party over half a century ago.
Therein, my father, sister and brother-in-law were, in 1956, reported to be Communists – although this was far from the truth. Also, my father-in-law, a manager of a shipping company and a very conservative man, was classified as being a Communist sympathiser.
Imagine their plight if the Communist Party had been declared illegal at this time of the Cold War, and all members were imprisoned.
(If anyone is interested in reading my ASIO files, which I consider to be a farrago of fact, fiction, trivia and innuendo, compiled by keen operatives with a fixed mind-set, the 22 volumes are available to the public at the Australian Archives, Canberra).
As Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– Keith McEwan, CLA member, Bendigo, Vic