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Australia increases anti-terror police powers Australia's police powers were once again widened in the closing days of 2004, when the ruling conservatives were joined by the opposition Labor Party in passing a law allowing police access to private emails. By Andrew Tait for ISN Security Watch Justifying Labor's support, opposition homeland security spokesman Robert McClelland said there was a distinction between stored messages and live telephone conversations, which police cannot routinely access. "Everyone that creates a document does so knowing that that document can be read by others and can be subject to legal process." This law is the latest in a series of acts and amendments to existing laws that have been passed by the Australian government since the 2001 terror attacks in the US. Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock's website lists 24 acts and amendments relating to counter-terrorism, only four of which predate 2001. And Ruddock has made it clear that anti-terror laws may well be tightened again. But though many police powers – and the corresponding restrictions on civil liberties – have been introduced since 2001, counter-terrorism has not been the only grounds for increased state power. The mandatory detention of all illegal immigrants – introduced with bipartisan support in 1992 – had already created areas within Australian territory where the rule of law was suspended; while tougher policing and sentencing continues to fuel the growth of Australia's prison population. Emails and Ammonium Nitrate The law granting police the right to access stored email, voice mail, and mobile phone text messages, passed on 9 December, is only one of a raft of new laws. Other recently-passed laws give the Australian political security police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the right to secretly detain suspects for up to seven days for questioning and the right to perform security clearance checks on purchasers of ammonium nitrate. The most significant changes radically restrict the legal rights of people suspected of breaking national security laws. The National Security Information (Criminal Proceedings) Act, passed with bipartisan support in early December 2004, allows security-related trials to be held in complete or partial secrecy. Defendants, their lawyers, and even the jury, can be denied access to prosecution evidence if it is considered too sensitive. Suspects in counter-terrorism cases will have to defend themselves against unknown accusations. Defense lawyers will be unable to test the credibility of prosecution evidence or witnesses. But Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty told The Australian newspaper that the increase in police power in relation to suspects, while welcome, should be extended even further. Keelty did not want to do away with the principle of the right to silence altogether, he told a University of Melbourne audience last month, except where refusal to answer questions could prevent a terrorist attack. Keelty said such a law already exists in Britain. Fears of terrorism Keelty, along with ASIO chief Dennis Richardson and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, believes that a terror attack on Australian soil is inevitable because of what they say are Australia's western, democratic, liberal values. In addition to promoting social values that are antithetical to Muslim extremists, Australia has been a prominent supporter of US President George Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which are seen by many Muslims as motivated by imperial ambition, not liberal ideals. On 9 September 2004, the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta was hit by a suicide bomber, believed to be from Gema'ah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terrorist organization accused of masterminding the 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub in which 88 Australians were killed. The official travel warning issued to Australians going abroad was updated last year to read: "Australia and Australians have been named by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network as a legitimate target of attack, indirectly since 1998, and specifically since November 2001." Within Australia, the homeland security warning level is "medium", but for Australian assets in Southeast Asia the level is "high". After the Bali bombing, Australia's security agencies came in for some criticism from former agents and military officials. The Flood Report, which was completed in March, said the agencies were generally doing well, but had failed to recognize the threat posed by Gema'ah Islamiyah. The revelation that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly al-Qaida's chief planner, was issued with a visa to visit Australia in August 2001 (which lapsed after he did not use it) has prompted restrictions on the issuing of passports and visas. Twenty Australian citizens have had their passports cancelled or denied, while ten people have been refused entry. The ASIO annual budget has been dramatically increased since the 11 September terror attacks, from A$62.9 million in 2000/2001 to A$152.7 million in 2004-05, while the ASIO's staffing levels have leapt from 584 in mid-2001 to 805 in mid-2004, with a further planned increase to about 1000 by mid-2006. Judicial criticisms The increased police powers have been criticized by Muslim organizations as well as by media organizations, which are concerned by the restriction of freedom of information, but also from within the judiciary, most notably by High Court Judge Michael Kirby. In November 2004, Kirby warned the freshly reelected Liberal government that the government still had to share power with the judiciary. Kirby also said that the counter-terror laws ran the risk of abusing the rights of minorities. Kirby said he was not seeking greater powers for judges, pointing to a Supreme Court decision to overturn an earlier ruling that children of asylum seekers should be released from detention because it contradicted federal law. But he said that Australia's constitution required checks and balances to function properly: "The calm and resolute voice of the judges [...] upholding fundamentals when they lawfully can, is more needed than ever before." Justice Kirby said he was particularly concerned about the rights of minorities in the new era of government power, and renewed calls for an entrenched bill of rights. "Parliaments, from time to time, overlook or even override the fundamental rights of minorities. In Australia, this has been done to those of minority religions, communists, refugees and others, including a minority I understand well, homosexual people," he said. Attorney-General Ruddock rejected Kirby's calling, and reminded him that the role of the judiciary was to back parliament. Ruddock also has his supporters within the judiciary. Justice Rodney Madgwick, presiding over the appeal against deportation by Iranian cleric Mansour Leghaei in November, allowed the ASIO to close the court to the public in order to give the judge secret information about why they consider Leghaei a security risk. When Leghaei's lawyers argued that this would mean that they could not properly defend their client - effectively denying him a fair trial - Madgwick questioned whether such fairness applied in cases of national security. "During the Cold War, Russian diplomats came here on visas. If ASIO found somebody, one of them, spying, a decision would be taken to kick him out and away he would go," Madgwick told the court. Wider trends Australia's anti-terror laws are far from unique internationally, as governments from the US to Uzbekistan have rushed through laws that aim to stop political violence by increasing the power of the state over civil society. Nor are Australia's anti-terror laws out of step with wider trends in Australian politics. The mandatory detention of asylum seekers who enter Australia illegally – in practice often the only way for refugees from oppressive states to enter – has been staunchly defended by the government against criticism from human rights groups. Detention camps, often located in Australia's desolate hinterland, were first established in 1992 with the detention period limited to 273 days – a limit that was removed in 1994. Following the arrival of large numbers of migrants traveling in Indonesian boats to islands off Australia's northern coast in 2001, the government "excised" several Australian islands from Australia's migration zone. Thousands of migrants arriving at these islands were moved to camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, with the right to appeal to the UNHCR for refugee status, but no claim on the Australian legal system. Inmates of detention centers on the Australian mainland, which are all run by a private firm, also do not have recourse to the law. Although Australia has come in for some criticism over its immigration policy, over the past year other countries, such as Britain and Germany, have discussed setting up similar holding camps in areas such as the Balkans and North Africa. The increase in Australia's wider imprisonment rate is also on a par with international trends, although well behind the US, which is the world leader in incarceration rates. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), a government-funded research organisation, reported in 2001 that the number of inmates had risen by 102 per cent in the 17 years from 1982 to 1998. Over the past decade, the rate has risen from 96 per 100'000 people to 117 in mid-2004. The US rate increased from 600 per 100'000 to 714 over the same period. Despite large amounts of research casting serious doubt on the effectiveness of imprisonment, politicians almost always find it is easier to "crack down" on crime than to examine alternatives. Similarly, the balance between the liberties of civil society and the counter-terrorism powers of the state is likely to be increasingly tilted in favor of the state. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> DonorsChoose. A simple way to provide underprivileged children resources often lacking in public schools. 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