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No free speech for you Australia

AUSTRALIA’S COVERT WAR ON FREE SPEECH, ONLINE ANONYMITY AND INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORMS

The Federal Government has outdone itself with the new “Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill 2021.

The Bill removes every inbuilt protection around privacy and free speech, contained in the original Act.

If passed, the new laws will force social media companies to unveil the identity of anonymous users when presented with a court order to do so.

This means social media companies like Facebook and Twitter will be compelled to collect and verify the “identity and relevant contact details” of all their Australian users, and disclose them to authorities when required.

And so will their much less connected or wealthy competitors in the independent and alternative media platforms, like Parler, Gab, Rumble and Telegram!

Another change will be the new requirement for foreign social media companies with more than 250,000 Australian users, to establish an Australia-based ‘entity’ or subsidiary; placing them under the direct control of our power-hungry government, and its ‘enforcement’ agents.

While Facebook, Google and Twitter may be happy to police its platforms on behalf of the Australian government, it is questionable whether independent platforms like Telegram and Gab, will be.

Telegram in particular, has built a loyal following worldwide for upholding the principle of free speech and protecting its users’ identity in the face of enormous pressure from elites everywhere.

As usual, the pretence for this latest intrusion on the rights and liberties of Australians, is that it is all being done for OUR benefit – as if we are children.

The PM waxed lyrical on the need to introduce these laws, to “keep our online world safe”, for “kids and families” to protect them from the “horrific abuse and harassment and stalking online”.

The hypocrisy is nauseating, especially given the Bill has nothing to do with ‘trolling’ – whatever that actually means – or online bullying.

Even the AG Department’s Defamation Taskforce secretary said that the term “anti-trolling” might be a tad misleading, given the bill’s contents are “about defamation”, NOT trolling, and “it is not intended to address broader types of online harm”.

The right to remain anonymous is fundamental to the right to free speech and to hold dissenting opinions.

It applies every bit as much in the digital world as it does in the physical one.

As the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said: “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.”

Anonymity protects the vulnerable citizen from reprisals by government, industry and individuals; reprisals that can take the form of job loss, financial penalty, legal harassment and even physical injury and danger to family.

Unfortunately, the right to remain anonymous has been under steady attack in Australia for two decades now.

This attack has turned into an absolute barrage since February 2020.

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Whittling away freedom

SIR ZELMAN COWEN ON “THE RIGHT TO BE LET ALONE”

Sir Zelman Cowen was regarded as one of Australia’s foremost experts on constitutional law.
He was also Australia’s Governor General from 1977 to 1982 and the long-time mentor of our Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, who was groomed for the Prime Ministership from a young age.
In 1969, Sir Zelman delivered a series of lectures in which he argued for the right of all individuals to be “let alone”.
“Unlike democratic society, totalitarian organisation claim secrecy for the regime, and full surveillance over the lives of groups and individuals.”
“I reject this utterly.”
“A man without privacy, is a man without dignity.”
A free society “…protects an individual’s solitude, his intimacy in various groups of his own choosing, his anonymity, his ability to be lost, without identification, in a crowd, his reserve, his shutting himself off from unwanted intrusion”.
“TO ME, THE CLAIM TO PRIVACY IS CLEAR BEYOND DOUBT; I SEE IT AS ONE OF THE TRULY PROFOUND VALUES OF A FREE SOCIETY.”
In his final lecture, Cowen warned that:
“The invaders of privacy are a massing army: they come from government and officialdom, from commerce and industry and from the mass media…”
“Intrusions into privacy have become so intertwined with the pursuit of ‘objectives’ that it is increasingly viewed as essential in our society…ESPECIALLY EFFICIENCY, and each intrusion has been accepted as reasonable, or useful”.
LET ME SAY THIS AGAIN….!
“Intrusions into privacy have become so intertwined with the pursuit of ‘objectives’ that it is increasingly viewed as essential in our society…ESPECIALLY EFFICIENCY, and each intrusion has been accepted as reasonable, or useful”.
“The fear that Big Brother is watching and listening threatens the freedom of the individual no less than prison bars do”.
“The development of wiretapping procedures, of devices for eavesdropping and bugging, the growth of information gathering systems which allow vast masses of information to be collected in centralised and easily accessible locations is intolerable”.
“The computer with its insatiable appetite for information, its image of infallibility, its inability to forget anything that has been put into it, may become the heart of a surveillance system that will turn society into a transparent world in which our homes, our finances, our associations, our mental and physical conditions are laid bare”.
“A developing horror is telemetry, which has led to the creation of “radio pills” that, if swallowed unknowingly, turn the victim into a human transmitter and he can be tracked wherever he goes”.
“Bureaucratic zeal and THE PURSUIT OF EFFICIENCY” Cowen said, “have blinded men, to the need to preserve the basic dignities and freedoms of their fellows”.
“TO MAINTAIN THE ROLE OF A FREE MAN IN A FREE SOCIETY, WE MUST INSIST ON THE RIGHT TO BE LET ALONE”.
(The great man must be turning in his grave to see his own protégé actively pushing a centralised National Digital Identity and programmable Digital Currency which will end Australians’ claim to privacy and the ‘right to be left alone’ permanently).
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