Australia

Australia
Location	Oceania
Leader	Prime Minister of Australia Incumbent: Malcolm Turnbull Since 15 September 2015
Type	nation state
Subgroups	• High Court of Australia • Australian Signals Directorate
Member of	Global Counter Terrorism Forum, OECD, UKUSA
Subpage	•Australia/1975 coup d'état •Australia/Deputy Prime Minister •Australia/High Court •Australia/Prime Minister
A large island nation in the southern hemisphere which is pioneering universal surveillance of its citizenry.

Australia is a nation state in Oceania to the west of New Zealand. It has been particularly aggressive in universal surveillance. In December 2018, it passed laws which claim the right to compel both "local and international providers -- including overseas communication giants such as Facebook and WhatsApp -- to remove electronic protections, conceal covert operations by government agencies, and help with access to devices or services."

Mass Surveillance

A 2015 bill claimed that the government had a right to carry out very broad warrantless mass surveillance of electronic media, including banning warrant canaries. The powers claimed were so broad that they have been called "nearly unlimited".

Under the 2012 Defence Trade Controls Act law, “supplies of technology” come under a censorship regime involving criminal penalties of up to ten years imprisonment. One commentator has suggested that it has potential to "[catch] open source privacy software, information security research and education, and the entire computer security industry in its snare."

As of 2017, Australia was continuing to expand mass surveillance, spending $18.5M on iOmniscient, a system which "works by analysing images recorded by existing CCTV cameras.”

The Australian Department of Home Affairs said in December 2018 that it would take "considerable time and resources" for it to determine how many agencies across Australia's three tiers of government have accessed metadata held under the nation's data retention laws.

Cashless society

In December 2016, the New Zealand Herald reported that "Australia could scrap the $100 note". Earlier in the year some researchers were predicting that Australia would be a "fully cashless society by 2022"

In December 2017, Australian banks began to freeze the accounts of bitcoin users.

Police

"Victoria Police officers faked more than 258,000 roadside alcohol breath tests, an exhaustive audit by Professional Standards Command and statisticians has uncovered."

Minerals

In 2015, it produced 12% of the world's Uranium.

History

Full article: Australia/1975 coup d'etat

Sir John Kerr, who on the CIA's orders invoked "reserve powers" and dismissed the Australian Prime minister

In 1975, the CIA used Marshall Green, to carry out a coup d'etat to remove the independent minded Gough Whitlam from power, who had been criticising US foreign policy. As of 2018, the coup was still not widely recognised as such, and widely referred to (for example by Wikipedia as a "constitutional crisis".

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Malcolm Turnbull	“The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”	Malcolm Turnbull	14 July 2017

 

An ambassador to Australia

Nation state	Start	Description
US/Ambassador to Australia	1940

 

Events

Event	Date	Description
2014 Australia turboprop drug bust	8 July 2014	35 kg of heroin were accidentally found by local police aboard a CIA plane
Australia/1975 coup d'état	15 October 1975 - 11 November 1975	A CIA/MI6-backed covert "constitutional coup" to remove Gough Whitlam whom they saw as a loose cannon.
Children Overboard affair	2001 - 2002
Port Arthur Massacre	28 April 1996	A mass shooting incident in and around Port Arthur Tasmania on 28 April 1996

 

Groups Headquartered Here

A Group Headquartered Here	Date	Description
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation		Tied to Anglo-American intelligence
Australian Signals Directorate
Centre for Policing Intelligence & Counter Terrorism	2005 - Present
Defence Signals Directorate
Monash University
Reserve Bank of Australia
University of Sydney
Westfield Corporation
Zinc Network	2012 - Present	A "communications agency" that partnered with the Institute for Statecraft to propose a network of 56 NGOs in a bid for £9.75million of funding from the UK/FCO.

 

Job here

Event	Job	Appointed
Steven Raeburn	Producer	2015

 

Citizens of Australia on Wikispooks

Title	Born	Died	Description
Tony Abbott	4 November 1957
Julian Assange	3 July 1971		A "hacktivist" of mysterious background, whose website, Wikileaks, has been the conduit for a lot of whistleblowing. His opinion on 9/11 is particularly notable.
Neil Brown	22 February 1940
Clyde Cameron	11 February 1913	14 March 2008
Ivan Glasenberg	1957
Michael Jon Hand	8 December 1941		"One of Australia's most wanted fugitives" now living in Idaho, USA.
Michael Hourigan	1957	3 December 2013
John Kerr (governor-general)	24 September 1914	24 March 1991
Alexander Kouzmin	1946	8 May 2011
Andrew Liveris	5 May 1954
Frank Lowy	22 October 1930
Keith Officer
John Pilger	9 October 1939		John Pilger, an Australian crusading journalist, has achieved fame in spite of a refusal to kowtow to the establishment by avoiding controversial issues.
Mike Smith
Arthur Tange			A member of the Australian Deep state who played a role in the 1975 Australian coup d'état.
Alan Westerman	25 March 1913	18 May 2001
James Wolfensohn	1 December 1933

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Utopia	interview	15 November 2013	John Pilger
File:WikiLeaks-Australian-suppression-order.pdf	legal document	19 June 2014	High Court of Australia	Australian Supreme Court secret super-injunction preventing the publication of information about a corruption case involving 17 named individuals including senior Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese politicians and Reserve Bank of Australia directors