Bruce

As usual your views are pretty well on the mark.

One exception though, is your para on "monitoring employee emails for terrorism tidbits".

The Commonwealth body with most to gain from an expanded computer internet culture is the electonic "spy" organisation the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD). The DSD's area of responsibilty also includes being "the national authority on communications and computer security."

The DSD's part is central in the Commonwealth's new attempt to regulate internet security. The DSD's website http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/infrastructure_protection.html includes the following on its responsibilty of:

"Protecting Australia's National Information Infrastructure (NII)

...The NII is the grouping of information networks essential to our society's well being.

It comprises telecommunications, banking and finance, transport and distribution, energy and utilities (electricity, oil, gas and water), information services, and other critical government services including defence and emergency services.

Many of these infrastructures were built quickly to meet demand and in some little priority was given to their security. With the recent explosive growth of the Internet, society has become more interconnected and the skills of users have increased substantially. Whilst this brings many new benefits to society, it also leaves the NII more vulnerable to attacks from hackers, criminals, terrorists and foreign powers. [does this wording ring a bell?]

...The Australian Government has recognised this emerging threat and has adopted a five-point strategy for the protection of the NII:

- Policy development to include Commonwealth, industry and the States and Territories;

- Information collection and analysis;

- Defensive measures, including both protective security measures and awareness raising;

- Response arrangements ranging from technical responses to single incidents to crisis management arrangements; and
Contingency planning covering both incidents and the wider impact of incidents.

DSD is working with the private sector and other government departments to progress these strategies."

Thats the policy reasoning and sketchy action plan. I might get round to writing an article about it once this Chinese Olympic security issue temporarily simmers down.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/

Bruce mentions that Immigration does not have a top notch Minister. So, when the ALP won Government, why didn't Tony Burke get the job? I thought he did a very good job as Immigration spokesman up to the election.

What's the problem with Immigration - is it a portfolio that has a hot kitchen that no one wants to run or is it about Ministers and senior public servants wanting to swan around and have an easy life by taking the path of least resistance? Or maybe both?

choke choke, I'm choking on my sandwich.

Bruce Haigh

Listen mate. Have you a short or selective memory?

Rudd without help from his mates picked his own ministers. Remember how all his media lackeys hailed his leadership in changing Labor tradition.

When you criticise his selections for underperforming should point the finger at him for his choices and by the way that fiasco 20/20 was all Rudd's idea.

Evans should have bitten the bullet already and sacked Andrew Metcalfe and another 100 or so people in DIAC that I could name without question for being criminals of the lowest order. These criminals used false documents to deport people to the wrong countries, locked up innocent people because they didn't know the law, denied refugees status in go-slows because Ruddock wanted them to and so on.

Metcalfe and many others should be the subject of a nation wide Royal Commission into their crimes and that should have been the first thing he did.

For example I still get nonsense from the department that the Bakhtiyari family were legally sent to Pakistan even though Pakistan told us in January 2005 that it was not true, they had no legal papers and were not from Pakistan.

IN fact investigations by Senator Kirk show that no-one from Pakistan ever talked to the family but the Afghan ambassador did confirm they are from Afghanistan as did ASIO way back in June 2000.

I have the documents that show it was a sick hoax perpetrated on this family right down to making up a paper to claim the baby born in Adelaide was born in Quetta while he was in jail in Adelaide. Pretty criminal if you ask me.

Then we had Alvarez who was deported on false documents made by DFAT without permission and they all get away with these crimes.

I don't know the answer but I reckon Fitzgibbon needs more than a few months to repair the mess made by the many defence ministers in the Howard mob who just did nothing at all.

Marilyn,

What you call a crime is a matter of definition. In fact, most of the problem is a cultural one in the Department rather than out-and-out criminality. I don't work in Immigration, but I bet this is how it works: the senior managers hammer a particular splinter of the law to the the nth degree (because of cultural pressure built up around the latest organisational fad) while completely disregarding other aspects of the law which, if they were followed, would balance out the experiences and treatment of people like the Bakhtiyaris. The senior managers could, and do, hide behind the law and say "look at how good I am doing my job, blah, blah". Meanwhile they are wilfully ignorant of the situation of others and of the effect their one-sided take on the application of immigration law has.

The only way you are going to fix this situation is not to scream like a Banshee from the sidelines, but to come up with some constructive suggestions about how things could be improved. Then you need a Minister who has some clout, a sense of fairness and the ability to knock the block off rogue operators in the Department.

I've seen your posts before where you were utterly toxic towards Howard and his Government when they were in power. When you do this to a proud, powerful person like Howard, all you get is the exact opposite effect - a bit like the French resistance killing a member of the Gestapo, and the Gestapo killing 100 people in the village in retaliation.

Bruce,

While you are at it, you might take a look at the Attorney General's Department. I think it has a competent minister; but the Deaprtment itself retains much of the culture fostered by his predecessor. Good examples are its submissons and evidence to the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Commmittee on the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill last week, and last year, its evidence on B-Party warrants. It works closely with the AFP on such matters. Did it play a role in the public release of the proposal for employer surveillance of employee emails?

I have no idea how to reform a public service department, so all I can do is scream like a banshee also--that is, point to the immorality, contravention of international law and sometimes downright evil of what is done. At one stage there were calls for professional ethics education (not just training). What happened to that?