Peter Coates, well said.

Sadly, as the following account of recent US revelations shows, the Obama administration cannot be trusted:

When President Obama delivered the keynote at Ohio State's graduation in the second weekend in May, who knew how ironic his words would be? "Unfortunately," he told the class of 2013, "you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems... They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices."

Well, turns out, the voices were right. Only now, the tyranny is no longer lurking around the corner--it's officially arrived. In an unfolding government corruption scandal that may very well eclipse Watergate, the IRS is finally admitting what some congressmen suspected all along: that the administration was using the agency as a hired thug to punish and silence conservatives.

The conspiracy, which started as early as 2010 and may have affected as many as 500 conservative and Christian groups, used the IRS to antagonize organizations seeking non-profit status. Unlike liberal organizations, which, in USA Today's words "got a pass," the IRS demanded reams of sensitive--and often irrelevant--information from tea party, religious, and conservative groups to intimidate or otherwise frustrate the President's opponents. According to Politico, agents asked shockingly private questions, ranging from donors lists (which were later leaked), Facebook posts, and media interviews to minutes from board meetings, résumés of officers, tweets, political blog posts, and even a list of student trainees.

"The fact is," President Obama told the crowd at OSU, "all too often the institutions that give structure to our society have, at times, betrayed your trust." No one knew how profound that betrayal was. Now that we do, it's our duty to ensure it stops.

The links for my previous post:

Transcript: Obama’s Commencement Speech at Ohio State
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/05/06/transcript-obamas-commencement-speech-at-ohio-state/

USA Today: "IRS gave liberals a pass; Tea Party groups put on hold"
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/14/irs-gave-progressives-a-pass-tea-party-groups-put-on-hold/2159983/

Politico: "The IRS wants YOU -- to share everything"
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=DA016CBA-5054-4D41-BC1A-3AFE4A86CED4

There is also the National Security Committee of Cabinet and a National Security Advisor within Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (ironically sharing the acronym NSA with the American National Security Agency):

http://www.dpmc.gov.au/national_security/index.cfm

All these groups share information as deemed necessary to perform their work and that was one of the important lessons to come from 9/11.

However, what can we trust coming from national security agencies. Last year an inquiry was told that national security agencies could be trusted with data retention as there was judicial oversight. Warrantless surveillance suggests there is no judicial oversight.

In fact in this article - http://delimiter.com.au/2013/06/12/attorney-general-rejects-metadata-warrants-law-enforcement-would-grind-to-a-halt/

- the Attorney-General in Australia said:

"...that Australian law enforcement in Australia “would grind to a halt” if police officers and other law enforcement agents were forced to apply for a warrant every time they wanted to access Australians’ telecommunications data."

While this statement is refreshengly honest, it highlights the lack of transparency on these arrangements and lack of public discussion.

It is remarkable that while governments become more secretive, with a growing aversion to providing access to information, the same cannot be said regarding the rights of privacy for individuals.

It seems the wrong way around in a democracy. Governments are accountable to the people who put them in office.

Thanks Raycom and pelican

Your value added comments help fill out the picture of oversight, lack of oversight and politicisation of national security systems.

Pelican - yeah, I did remember the National Security Committee of Cabinet after writing the article. I'd hazard a guess Gillard doesn't sit on it - with perhaps the National Security Adviser being the main PM&C Rep on it - then advising Gillard (between her hopeless electioneering stints).

A doubt was whether Stephen Smith, Minister of Defence, has responsibility for DSD's non-defence, domestic, tasks. Looks like DSD is being steadily civilanised with a name change pending - in recognition of its civilian security role - which includes closely working with ASIO and police forces.

Meanwhile Attorney-General Dreyfus looks like mild-mannered Prime Ministerial material for the future. About a week into the AGs job Dreyfus had to show a fair bit of humanity and diplomacy over the Ben Zygier tragedy.

Optimistic (hopefully not misplaced) that our system is not as extreme as America's. We can learn to avoid America's mistakes and excesses.

Cheers

Pete

Simon Breheny's observations in the media release, " US surveillance scandal a warning against Gillard government data retention proposal", on Freedomwatch (http://freedomwatch.ipa.org.au/us-surveillance-scandal-a-warning-against-gillard-government-data-retention-proposal/ ) are pertinent :

US national security and law enforcement agencies have obtained access to the data of those who use services provided by Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple.
The data collected includes source and destination email addresses, communication times, location information and IP addresses.

“This is exactly the sort of data that the Gillard government wants to force Australian internet service providers to collect and store on all their customers,” said Mr Breheny.

Mr Breheny told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’s inquiry into National Security Legislation that data retention “is completely lacking in proportionality, undermines basic freedoms and is in fundamental conflict with a right to privacy.”

“The Australian government and opposition should abandon any attempt to implement mandatory data retention to avoid a similar privacy crisis as is being seen in America,” said Mr Breheny.

Governments usually have bipartisan views on electronic surveillance matters, partly because of the long term planning, international alliances and billion dollar network costs involved. Hence Obama has continued the Bush Republican-conservative approach.

So its probably a bit unfair of Breheny to typify what is probably a steady surveillance buildup since 9/11 as a particularly Labor or Gillard thing.

Labor have problems but aligning long term programs with an overtly ideological approach doesn't make a whole lot of sense. For example China would no doubt have less electronic surveillance funding than Republican, scary Tea Party...or Democrat America.

Just look at US - China defence spending comparisons. Electronic surveillance budgets are usually buried in defence budgets.