Free speech is a very different subject than the rights of journalists.
Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech. And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach. It's what keeps our very multicultural society together.
What happened with the recent investigation of journalists is about the Australian government's right to see the drafts and sources for articles that involve investigating national security matters. And in general harass and intimidate journalists to discourage such articles in the future.
You can fix the second problem by enshrining the rights of journalists in legislation without having to make it a freedom of speech issue.
There's a chance of running into problems when you try and define 'journalist', though. If a journalist is someone employed by a major news corporation then you are going to disadvantage the independent journalists with not much more than a website, a good number of contacts in their address book, and a sizable Twitter following. If different rights and responsibilities are allocated to government-approved journalists than to independent journalists or regular citizens, then someone in that government is going to have to hand out the 'officially a journalist' card.
I might like the government in power today and I might really like them to deny the official journalist protections you envisage to the journalists from the outlets I think are biased and lean the wrong way. However, because there is a pretty good chance that, in a democracy, the other guy is going to win, I wouldn't look forward to those same restrictions being placed on the journalists I like to read. Hence, the best thing is to protect everyone's freedom to write and publish, to question authority, and to speak.
We could probably look to the rest of the West for inspiration, they've been navigating these grey areas in the interest of accountability for a while now.
It's still a developing science though, see the conflict over "was Assange acting as a journalist?", and the different decisions taken by different US administrations on that particular case, but it will still be kneeded out in the courts which is where we usually decide things like this which are open to interpretation.
> Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech
I'd argue that Australians, by and large, don't know that they don't have a legislated right to free speech similar to what they have in the US. This is evident by the shock surprise and outrage from Australians every time there is an action that stifles free speech.
> And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach
Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment.
> It's what keeps our very multicultural society together.
Australia has a very mono-cultural society. The "multi-cultural society" meme attempts to liken having a kebab shop on the corner to having conflicting cultures in the same area, which to me (as a non-Anglo Australian) doesn't make sense. Australian values and culture is quite evidently very specific (freedom of religion, freedom of dress, freedom of expression, etc) and we - both legally and as a society - reject any culture that conflict with this.
Perhaps the only other culture that is allowed in Australia is traditional Aboriginal culture, where we quite literally have a second set of laws to accommodate it.
That said, freedom of speech doesn't have any impact on this at all. I'm not sure where the link you're supposing comes from.
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In general, what happened[0] was intentionally misreported by the ABC.
1. The AFP obtained a search warrant for the ABC offices.
2. The AFP notified the ABC that they were coming to investigate in advance, however the ABC reported it to be a "raid."
3. The ABC dedicated a five camera film crew to follow the AFP around throughout the process.
4. The AFP had the explicit goal of finding out who the source was for revealing classified security information.
That's it.
It wasn't a free speech issue -- and it wasn't a journalistic rights issue.
I'd just like to put it out there that I very much agree with everything you said, and would have tried to write a similar post had you not already said everything better than I would have. Particularly the idea that Australia has a very multicultural society; we don't. We have lots of immigrants, but very limited cultural clashing such as is seen in, eg, the US where they actually have to manage all the different cultures they keep incubated. Ironically the fact nearly everyone is first- or second - generation immigrant promotes somewhat homogeneous culture although that is a gross generalisation as all generalisations are.
That said, there is one other point that deserves to be kept in focus - why exactly does the Australian government need to classify the fact that they are killing unarmed men and children. That shouldn't be classified information; if someone is killing unarmed children on my behalf I'd like to know about it tyvm.
I'm curious about the monoculture point. I reflexively disagreed with your parent post when they said it but now that someone else has agreed I'm second guessing.
Where is your line for where a culture starts and stops? Do we really need to be managing some kind of clash/conflict between the Greek suburbs or communities of Melbourne and the Lebanese, Hispanic or Italian ones for their cultures to be considered different?
Because they drive on the left and follow Australian laws have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population?
These communities are speaking their own languages, importing/selling their own ingredients and products, cooking their own foods, watching their own style of entertainment, practicing their own religions, socialising at unique times and locations, listening to their own music and raising their children in a style informed by their community's historical norms.
If you (and GP) formed your opinions outside of the major eastern cities, or haven't really ventured into the outer suburbs I could see how you could arrive at monoculture, but otherwise I think by requiring a "clash" you may be setting too high a bar for your definition of culture.
If you visit Oakleigh (I think Melbourne is still the city with the highest concentration of Greek people outside of Greece) and see the same culture that you see in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, which has the same culture that you see in Mareeba I'd be very interested in hearing more.
The freedom of religion is explicitly within a Western cultural and political framework.
For example, there is a long history of Islamic jurisprudence that also allows for freedom of religion - as long as Islam remains the 'established' religion, and other religions remain on a lesser footing. This is not obviously compatible with the level of separation of church and state in the West - but Muslim immigrants who might prefer a more theocratic system are obviously in the minority.
> have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population
Chinese civilization has had a markedly non-democratic political tradition for a couple thousand years, and many mainland immigrants lack a strong preference for democratic society. Similarly, Thailand has strong lese-majeste laws to protect the dignity of the king and royal family. These political traditions are pretty alien to the modern West, even though Westerners three hundred years ago would have found them utterly normal.
Culture is not just what you eat or where you worship, but encompass habits like 'How do we treat other groups?', 'How should we be ruled?', or even 'Is it morally acceptable to break laws (like evading taxes)?'
Immigrants are only allowed to act out certain cultural beliefs—the ones that don't threaten or conflict with the dominant culture.
I appreciate the comment, but I'm not sold at all. It's a stretch to say you can't have two cultures in a lawful society unless they have different laws or one of them is breaking them.
This is the first time I've really seen this argument, and it still feels like it depends on a particularly hard-line definition of culture if it asserts that a community has no culture if they aren't attempting to disrupt the equilibrium and establish their own nation-state.
While I can definitely see how political and legal structures can be informed by culture, necessarily including them as essential requirements is definitely not how culture or multicultural societies have been defined in any other interaction I've ever had.
Actually, the historical Millet system under the Ottoman empire went quite a bit further towards 'multiculturalism' under some dimensions, with different communities literally getting their own systems of laws.
But this strongly conflicted with the nascent notion of the unitary nation-state, much to the Ottoman (and Austrian) Empires' later detriment.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that there aren't multiple cultures in the West - just look at Amish or Hasidic communities as examples - just that they are still forced to abide by majority rules, which necessarily means that their cultures are somewhat abridged and shorn of their full representation. And note how small these communities are compared to the majority.
It's a rather different story in countries with multiple cultural groups with comparable demographic power, such as the former Yugoslavia, which was torn apart by these divisions.
Put under a different perspective, you can make a rather strong case that cities and rural areas are now different cultural zones in the US, and the intractable political conflicts over abortion, marriage, and even tax policy are byproducts.
> Where is your line for where a culture starts and stops?
In my view, culture is pretty fundamental, and when we run across a culture alien to us, it's quite disconcerting. And so a monoculture is one where you never run across any truly "alien" ideas.
You can have kebab shops and Thai restaurants, and churches and mosques and synagogues, and people speaking different languages, but as long as everyone agrees on the fundamental underpinnings of society, it's still a monoculture.
Australian culture is very open to everyone, so long as they are fundamentally Western in terms of their views on democracy, criminal justice, religious tolerance, women's rights, corruption, LGBT rights. That's so ingrained that when you point this out, there's usually a pause, and then an incredulous "well, yeah, both those are the only correct opinions!", or sometimes even a confused query as to whether any other ideas even exist in the modern world. I have the same gut reaction (I mean, obviously democracy is good, right?), but I also know that there are cultures out there with different views.
If Oakleigh has a lot of Greek people in it, you can probably get some rocking moussaka, but that doesn't mean it shares the same culture as modern Greece does. Consider, for example, the large difference in corruption between Greece (and much of the rest of southern Europe) and Australia (and much of northern Europe): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index If that survey was done on Melbourne suburbs, do you think they'd be fairly uniform, or would it look more like the map of Europe?
So can you name a multicultural city according to your definition?
I get the feeling your sentiment comes from never having lived in an actual monoculture, so what is multicultural just feels normal to you. Krakow and Vienna are very different compared to Berlin and London to name examples.
> So can you name a multicultural city according to your definition?
Dubai perhaps. The clash between the rich, western expat communities, the rich native communities, and the poor mostly Asian labourer communities is severe, and there are actual disagreements about basic norms.
> I get the feeling your sentiment comes from never having lived in an actual monoculture
I have absolutely lived in what you are calling monocultures. I've lived in small rural farming towns with a populations of less than 800.
Where we disagree is in the meaning of culture. Adding a chinese restaurant to a small town doesn't make it more multicultural or diverse in my view.
> Dubai perhaps. The clash between the rich, western expat communities, the rich native communities, and the poor mostly Asian labourer communities is severe, and there are actual disagreements about basic norms.
Except those groups never interact with each other. The implicit statement in a city being multicultural, is that as an inhabitant you will interact with these different cultures. I've never been to Dubai, but I strongly doubt you are going to get close with any Arabs or Asian labourers if you live there. I know someone who moved to Jerusalem, I was thinking maybe you would pick that city as an example, but I've heard that again the different communities live very separate lives, and they actively avoid interacting with each other.
Why do you say that the ABC intentionally misreported the situation? An ABC journalist live-tweeted the execution of the search warrant and claimed that he was the first to live-tweet an AFP 'raid' [1], which I think is valuable public interest journalism. I thought the reporting was accurate, although the journalist's commentary does presume that the media deserves special treatment, because of its role in our democracy and the potential chilling effect of the law as written on whistleblowers. This is a fair assumption and it's obviously popular with journalists, but I think the ABC would publish a contrary view if a credible writer wanted to put it forward.
Well, for one, it's not a raid. The fact that it has been presented as such is incredibly misleading. Then they tried to suggest that it was linked to the Australian government, spreading conspiracy theories about the timing - asking why it happened after the election and not before[0].
The AFP didn't wake up one day and send armed men to storm a building. After two year's worth of investigation, they gathered enough evidence to request a search warrant for a single ABC office which was granted. They then notified the ABC that they were on their way and entered without conflict to find and collect the data they wanted to take. Nobody was arrested, nobody was beaten, nobody was threatened. Nobody was even insulted during the process. The Australian Federal Police are not even allowed to access the data until ABC's lawyers have reviewed the entire process within a two week window.
I'm not sure how much more democratic that can be.
It's difficult for me to comment on this because I feel like I'm coming across as if I support an overreaching government. I support an extremely small government but one thing that catches me out is national security. The only role a federal government should play, in my view, is national security and I don't see a problem when they're doing exactly that in a way that dots all the i's and crosses all the t's.
National security is important, but so is whistleblowing, and the ability for journalists to protect their sources. There’s a trade off here between, and it’s worth looking at this from all angles to ensure that the AFP have the right intentions.
I accept that the word 'raid' isn't ideal, but I don't think it's 'incredibly misleading' when accompanied by photos that make it quite clear there are no armed men storming the building. What word would you suggest? 'Search'?
I don't think it's fair to characterise the reporting as 'spreading conspiracy theories' either, just for quoting a media spokesperson who 'described the raids as "disturbing" considering they have taken place so soon after a federal election.' This attributed comment was followed by quotes from the AFP and the relevant minister asserting their independence.
>Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment.
No but...
Valid defenses include: the statement is true. The statement is the speaker's opinion. And even if those fail, it must proven that it was spoken with malice. So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.
Also a defence under Australian law, as long as the speech falls under the concept of "fair comment and criticism", which is the same rule the US follows (albeit interpreted quite differently).
> it must proven that it was spoken with malice
NOT a defence under US law, unless the plaintiff is a public figure, which is a category defined quite narrowly in the US.
> So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.
There are a lot of libel suits in the US, many of them are won by the plaintiffs.
The difference in law is less than you seem to think, and what differences exist are mainly on the extent that opinions ("I think Joe is an asshole") should be protected; both countries agree that factual claims ("Joe murdered his wife") are not. And offhand, it's hardly clear that Australia had drawn the line in the right place.
Many, many western / European countries would find a “raid” on a journalistic organization to reveal a source a massive, massive journalistic rights issue. It would cause mass protests here in Germany...
Australians don't share the same political will and motivation as the Germans. By large we are a politically apathetic country with no strong leadership or vision for the future. We don't value personal liberties and personal freedom because we don't understand what it means not to have them.
We would rather be bubble wrapped and protected by the state than exercise personal responsibility.
I have lived in both countries long enough to see this.
Yeah if the last election result wasn’t a perfect demonstration of voter apathy and disengagement I don’t know what would be. Having said that, that’s just the majority - the rest of us are very engaged I promise! Just uselessly, impotently quiet.
The succinctly fits with almost every conversation I've had with Australians I've run into while traveling around Asia.
As an American I've immediately been thrown off with "why are you/they allowed to do that" or "there aught to be a law" or "I have nothing to hide-type conversations.
It's just a flat out different personal liberty viewpoint than I have. That's not atypical, but the quickness I find myself disagreeing is.
I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't consider threats to national security to be something that is a journalistic rights issue.
That said, in this case we haven't had a magistrate order a journalist to reveal who their source was, so journalistic source confidentiality hasn't been breached. Instead we saw a portion of a slow, deliberate and year-long investigation by the federal police with no pressure placed on the journalists themselves - either in the form of arrests or coercion to reveal secrets. So this still wouldn't be a journalistic rights issue.
I think most journalists would argue that they should have the right not to have their email searched by police to discover a source's identity, even if, as a matter of law, they don't.
The problem is the misuse of classifications to keep the public from finding out things which are in the public interest but embarrasing to the government.
The raids are the furtherance of the suppression of public interest material being made public through the media, so that is absolutely a free speech and journalistic rights issue.
Understand that this disagreement is over definitions/interpretations, not statistics.
The question is whether the populations are separated into heterogeneous cultural communities, or rather are integrated into a more homogenous society.
In my experience (having spent effectively all of my >40 years living in Melbourne) is that it's a bit of both, but that cultural disharmony is not a problem.
Freedom of expression and the right of government to retaliate against whistle-blowers do not seem such different subjects to me. They are at least highly interconnected, in what seems to me a fundamental aspect of democracy: that it allows for an informed public to make their decision through the ballot.
That doesn't mean that those freedoms need to be absolutely unfettered, but limits on them need to be transparent and well motivated.
They are obviously overlapping, but they are definitely different due to the nature of disclosure:
The press will be able to disclose otherwise 'privileged/private' information that one wouldn't be able to otherwise publish in terms of 'free speech', if for example it's evidence of a crime.
i.e. 'classified material' doesn't fall under 'free speech'. You can't just publish that stuff willy nilly.
But if some of that material betrays evidence of a crime, then it's 'fair game' in most modern jurisdictions it seems.
The difference between the 'press' and 'everyone else' is, in 2019 still super vague, specifically in the relevant area of being compelled to testify about sources etc. at least in the US, there's no clarity in the law, and some conflicting rulings.
I think the idea is that they're special in that they're performing actions in the public interest, and perhaps also some notion that it's a two-way deal: journalists for example aren't expected to dox in-field security services agents, under-cover operatives etc.
That sounds like a slogan, not something founded in reason.
No country has freedom of speech; it is heavily regulated... everywhere. The world hasn't collapsed yet.
How it's regulated probably matters; granted! But let's not get too apocalyptic about the issue. Not every regulation will turn everyone into mindless drones overnight.
And for the flipside: speech is only worth protecting because it's powerful; it's influential. You can insert the cheesy line about power and responsibility yourself...
It's a natural and good use of regulation to turn consequences for others into consequences (both good and bad!) for the person triggering them. Communication is not, and should not be, an exception.
Sure, it's a slogan, but you don't really have any arguments against it. The nature of the argument is slippery-slope, or syllogistic: If freedom of speech disappears, then freedom of religion goes with it. There's actually a tight binding between these two in the USA, since the same clause of the Constitution protects both.
No country has ever had truest freedom of speech. That doesn't mean that freedom of speech is bad; it could just as well mean that no country has ever been out of the hands of aristocrats for long enough to forge a freedom of speech which trumps their desire to be immune from the lower classes. But you're critiquing a position which has not yet existed and implying that the world will collapse if that position is realized, again without evidence.
The phrase "turn everyone into mindless drones" is telltale; it shows that you currently believe that people are not mindless drones. To the contrary, though, it's even easier to imagine that people have been gaining more freedoms through the centuries, and that people are turning into more mindful creatures, with less droning behavior. Even if progressivism is wrong, certainly the communication technologies that we have invented have given the everyday person a power of speech that empowers them beyond what their ancestors had.
Speaking of power, the cheesy line I'll choose today is that power and responsibility are formally dual in any category of social relations; if X has power over Y to do Z, then Y has responsibilities to do Z for X. And yes, freedom of speech is an insistence that this power not be abridged from everyday citizens. That's not a bad thing at all; beyond the progressive metanarrative, the slow and steady task of decentralizing and dividing power amongst people is important.
To summarize, you are suffering from tropes three through five from the list of censorship tropes. [0]
I'm saying that the whole concept is a distraction. It's like talking about absolute zero when somebody asks you to turn down the thermostat. It's simply not constructive.
The original linked article is better in that regards. At least we're talking about a specific instance, and considering what you want to deregulate (police, australia, warrants, government broadcasters, etc.).
If you have specific tropes from that link with specific reasons they apply and believe the reasoning is sound and applies here, I'd have a little more respect for that link . Merely calling something a trope does not affect validity; it's just name calling.
Also: you seem really eager to assume you have any idea what I think. I don't think you do! All I'm objecting to is the fundamentalism.
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I totally see the value in protecting speech; I just see it as a means to an end, not a divine calling. Communication isn't always constructive and clarifying; it can also be misleading and destructive. It can also be divisive (which sounds more negative that I intend - the positive flip side being forming a group identity perhaps?). I think intentional, malicious deception is almost universal regarded as not worth protecting, but where do you draw the line, and just as critically: how to you draw that line? I think there's a lot more value we as a society could gain from communication in general if we'ld try to improve here. Noise matters; incentives, not just restrictions and penalties matter; network effects matter. Regardless of where you live, but definitely in the US: the legal framework doesn't appear to be well equipped to deal with all that. If you will: it's a good attempt... for hundreds of years ago, but it's just not good enough anymore. These are rules that largely predate facebook network bubbles; predates game theory (certainly as a political force as in the 20th century); predates all forms of mass media that actually reached the masses (sure, there was a printing press - but what percentage of the populace did that really reach?).
Also, I want to make one more point, about how this discussion we're having matters. Because while I might quibble about the notion that freedom of speech is universally a good thing with no risks to be mitigated, I agree with the general notion. So for the sake of argument: let's assume you simply want to reap the benefits of that free flow of information. Got to protect that, right? It turns out the concept is hard to pin down exactly, and you need some approximation of exactness for a legal text to be a useful in practice. A law nobody can agree on what it means isn't going to work and certainly won't work as intended. So you do your best, and protect something; some definition that is close to the "ground truth" of the communication that is valuable to protect. Is that a perfect approximation? Almost axiomatically: no. And what's the worst thing (well... one seriously bad thing at least) you could possibly do to undermine the effectiveness of that protection? You could assume that it's great and that it works. Because that's when people stop being critical. There are all kinds of reasons people want to subvert rules like these, many selfish, some perhaps ideological. And after 200+ years of bending the rules, I think it's fair to be a little critical of the assumption that whatever ideas people had when they wrote those protections have survived undamaged to this day; not to mention that it's risky to assume that whatever ideas they had back then couldn't be improved upon in hindsight, and furthermore risky to assume that even perfect execution 200 years ago would be a perfect fit now.
And boy, have we tinkered over the years. Lobbying used to be considered a kind of fraud - in essence, the very opposite of the speech intended to be protected. Now it's protected itself. Freedom of speech would have applied to natural persons in 1791. Yet without textual change it now applies to corporations. And please don't think of this as good or bad - even if it's largely good, it's definitely change. Non-governmental restrictions and regulations on information transfer (e.g. NDAs or the reverse where you hire somebody to say something) would have been largely irrelevant back then (at least compared to now); and no surprise then that they're not addressed (AFAIK, at least). And even the prohibition on governmental restrictions are not terribly robust: the distinction between prior restraint, threats, and post-publication punishment is technically comprehensible, but conceptually pretty dubious. You don't need prior restraint if you treat whistleblowers the way we do today - anybody sane will shut up by themselves.
The US does not have a completely free flow of ideas. It has some a specific limited instantiation thereof. Not all communication is beneficial, nor is a government or court system all-powerful, nor is a legislative branch perfect; so limited protection is the best we should hope for. But.. not necessarily these exact limitations. If you say the US "has" freedom of speech or otherwise imply that it's good enough, or if you imply that the definition of speech is a given: you're undermining the underlying point of freedom of speech.
And spiritually: isn't the whole point of freedom of speech that a lively debate helps find the best solution to various problems? Then we should vigorously apply that tool to freedom of speech itself.
I'm not saying freedom of speech is a bad idea. I'm saying it's not perfect, and it never can be. But if we're not open to the imperfections in both the concept and our implementation, then not only will we be fail to reach perfection, we're going to stray very far from it.
Outside of the US, the world hasn't a great personal freedom track record (including Europe)...
disclamer: I exiled myself from Europe due the lack of objective personal freedom and opportunity. "Liberte, egalite, fraternite" has long been forgotten.
Well, the question of how you determine who is a journalist and hence gets these rights protected is still a difficult one. When is someone eligible for press credentials?
The US has a version of free speech that is more open than others and a good example for others (speaking as someone not from or in the US). You can say things in the US that would get you brought into a human rights tribinal in Canada. That could land you in jail in Germany or expelled elswhere. You do have limits around other's rights and terrorism but they try to strike a balance like most western nations. But the fact that free speech is a right by default is very different from other nations where its easier to censor if the view isn't morally acceptable.
And one day a right wing government will shut down left wing speech they call "hate speech" or "harmful" and your "reason" will take flight to the winds.
> Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech.
Most Australians don't know that there is no legislative or constitutional protections for everyday free speech rights they exercise. The High Court has had to stretch the constitution's wording to breaking point in order to rule in favour of more freedom on the side of the public.
Maybe we don't want American-style free speech, but maybe we want some other variant of free speech protections such as in any other developed country (we are the only developed country which doesn't have any free speech or privacy laws on the books). The entire argument of not having constitutional language for free speech was that English common law was sufficient. I think that view has been shown to be incorrect.
> And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach.
There are no legal protections for this kind of speech in Australia -- so if they're quite happy with it then they do want free speech laws. Also, America has libel laws restricting freedom of speech in specific ways (as does every other country which has free speech laws).
Australia is over 90% Caucasian, and almost all of that is English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. Due to Australia’s strict immigration controls, the large proportion of foreign born is disproportionately of European ancestry compared to the foreign born in the US. Likewise, because the US has a longer history of immigration, many people who aren’t immigrants nonetheless are members of a visible minority group. Thus, while Sydney has more than 40% of its population born abroad, versus under 20% for Chicago, to American eyes Sydney looks very white and homogenous by comparison to Chicago.
Australia is usually a canary in the coal mine for the effectiveness of resistance to repressive speech laws in the Five-Eyes countries.
The Spycatcher affair in the late 80s is the first one I can remember, although I am sure there are other, earlier instances that the commentariat can point to.
Teens watch Youtube more than TV. Youtube has been far more censorious and disregarding of Free Speech than anything the Australian Government has done.
The Australian TV series "Secret City" (available on Netflix) and featuring a plot on gross abuse of power by the security establishment, is looking increasingly like a documentary.
Australia used to have a very good record on individual rights, but in the past 20 years has headed towards authoritarianism. I guess PC/Statist/Collectivist culture has infested Australia too.
Speaking as an Australian I'd put the key difference between Australians and Americans this way: Americans feel like every surface is a slippery slope. Australians don't.
It's why Americans (many anyway) resist even toothless firearm regulations, for example. "If they take away our bump stocks then before you know it they'll take all our guns and we'll have no defense against the tyranny of government!"
While I certainly don't support raiding the ABC, for example (as opposed to News Corp, which needs to burn to the ground followed by exiling every Murdoch on Earth to Tristan da Cunha), an important question to ask--which I haven't seen the answer to--is did the AFP obtain the source of the leak from the raids or not?
If no then things are pretty complicated, for David McBride at least. He himself wasn't (and isn't) a journalist. He did obtain classified material in his capacity as a lawyer for the Defense Department, which is a bit of a double-whammy. Even if you can get passed the classified part, having your lawyer make unauthorized disclosures of professional work product (essentially) is a problem.
Even in America this would be a problem. It was certainly a problem for Chelsea Manning.
As a Canadian, my perceptions of freedom of expression in Australia were probably first set by seeing Australians on gaming forums asking foreigners to buy them copies of Left4Dead. It was rated for ages 17+ in Canada, but by Australian law, all video games had to be suitable for children—there was no adult rating. So, the Australian release was censored.
It's a relatively minor thing, but when I was playing I would occasionally think, "this is illegal in Australia? Really?" I took it as an example of how Australia's governance really is different.
Americans think every surface is a slippery slope because our society is deeply polarized and the slide down the slope is always a real threat. For example, out of the largest five EU countries, four (Germany, Italy, Spain, and France) have abortion laws generally limited to first trimester, with mandatory waiting periods and counseling being typical. (Germany still has them, France recently got rid of the waiting period.) On paper, those restrictions would be among the strictest in the country if they were in the US. (Alabama and Georgia currently have a 22-week limit, until the heartbeat laws take effect next year.)
But as you can see with the recent push in the US, the goal for a large contingent of people in the US really is the outright elimination of elective abortion. Liberals, correctly, recognize the slippery slope and categorically oppose restrictions, even ones that are common in Europe.
The same dynamic holds for gun control. In liberal circles it’s common to deem the second amendment “obsolete” and declare there is no reason for private gun ownership. Prior to Heller DC law banned ownership of handguns (except ones grandfathered in), and requires rifles and shotguns to be kept disassembled. Licensure procedures have been used as effective bans, with municipalities almost automatically denying applications for a license. Second Amendment advocates, quite reasonably, don’t trust “reasonable restrictions” because they know that the end goal is prohibition.
A few discrete arguments. First, I don't think it's fair to 1. paint slippery slope paranoia in such a negative light, nor 2. paint all Americans who fear downward trends as being right wing gun nuts.
Let's look at a convenient example from history. The progression of america over the last 200 years is a progression of executive power, and the results have really been a mixed bag. Wilson and Lincoln's powers during wartime, the antiquities act, the 16th amendment, the new deal, wickard v filburn. There has _definitely_ been a slope there, and I feel like a lot of the debates surrounding our current situation as a country could have been preempted many decades ago with a closer eye to this trend. (Obvious examples: Our use of torture as decided by administration lawyers, bulk surveillance, military action exceeding constitutional limits)
Second, on the differences between national sentiment.
Even putting my fears about the future aside, I can say australia has long since crossed a threshold I'd consider unacceptable _in the moment_ in terms of govt. control and censorship, even as early in the 90's with the game censorship, which, to be evenhanded, they DID address to allow MA rating, although a _decade_ later, and still followed by heavy banning of individual games. So to my eyes it's less about slippery slopes and more just an acceptance of a higher level of govt. control. As with my examples of executive power above there are certainly factions in the US pushing for similar in the same way there are Australians opposed, so there's clearly not "some uniquely american bias towards paranoia". My gut feel as well with many of those defending the 2nd amendment is that it's become a tribal thing where the rote arguments that get paraded around are just the rallying cries at this point. (And I say this as someone who would broadly falls on the "less regulation" side of things)
To be precise, Your final point about compromise of a lawyer's role seems reasonable and I don't mean to speak on that as I don't have background to comment; this was entirely to address the characterization at the front and defend the position a little.
And his court date is already set. That's what confused me regarding the raids; the AFP already knew who the leaker was before conducting the raid on the ABC. Given that I'm a bit confused as to why the AFP needed to raid the ABC given they already had all the info required to move for a trial and conviction. Finally, the leak happened in 2017 and yet they're only now getting around to raiding the ABC?
Is there anything more stereotypical than an Australian lecturing Americans on the slippery slope of gun control?
Preface... In Australia 1997 there was a gun confiscation (buy back if you wanna call it that, but be honest) on any gun deemed suitable for defense. It coincided with an almost double number of police per capita. Crime fell! Unfortunately for that argument crime fell by a greater rate in the USA over the same time period, no gun ban, no major increase in police per capita.
We talk about the slippery slope being real, because we have so many examples of it being so:
- Capacity of magazines... No magazine limits country-wide, then in areas... 100 round drums banned, large capacity firearms regulated as destructive devices, a brief period where they tried to say “no larger than what the gun was designed for”, 30 round magazine limits, 15 in New Jersey in Colorado now, 10 in ban states like California Maryland Connecticut, New York went 7 with the mostly failed SAFE ACT, Canada has 3 and 5 on rifles depending on situation and I’ve already heard that come up in interviews in the USA. There is no number ever safe enough to satisfy people who argue for disarmament. Goal has always been to the define an arbitrary number and re-define it later. It’s the very system of getting you to accept an arbitrary number in the first place.
- Want to go again? The SKS rifle, a Soviet precursor to the AK-47... no restrictions in the USA, after an SKS is illegally converted to full auto and used in a shootout with police in California… CA decides this gun is unusually dangerous (it’s not), state wide sales of SKS rifle’s are halted, a registration program is instituted, despite assurances grandfathering will remain allowed, not long later that registry is used to door to door confiscate those rifles. Something the felt comfortable doing because of the small number of registered owners. A single crime with and illegally converted gun directly led to the confiscation of a rifle that is typically less dangerous than common alternatives.
- You gave the example for bump stock ban. Ok, The 1934 National Firearms Act defines that a machine gun is a firearm that fires two or more bullets for every one press of the trigger pull. Bump stocks do not fall under this category in any way, the trigger must be activated multiple times for multiple shots. The ATF approves a product called the Atkins Accelerator; think of it as a bump stock with a spring for 22 rifle, later after approval the ATF decides because it’s spring operated it is a machine gun, they ask for registration, use the registration for confiscation (as is always the plan) - but not of the stock! Only the spring in it. Many years later bump stocks become popular the ATF examines and okays them because it meets no definition machine gun, has no spring for automated actuation, and does nothing an experienced shooter can’t do without the help of that stock. And here we are again, now the ATF has decided that despite no bump stocks being used in crimes, no spring, and despite previous approval, they are now illegal. With no registration there has been no confiscation. Last I heard the number willingly turned in is in the low hundreds, with of hundreds of thousands sold. Possession of a previously legal plastic injection molding, with no change in law, only opinion, has now made you a felon.
- More examples would include ammo shape and metal contents under the entirely arbitrary guise of “armor piercing”, the NFA itself, import restrictions, ITAR continually evolving, the “approved handgun lists” that states have adopted but intentionally failed to maintain, etc
Might have better luck arguing that the slippery slope regarding guns isn’t real, if we didn’t have so many examples of it being so.
EDIT: ok, if you're talking about Australia then I'm not refuting your data. But I can understand why a country that sees news of a mass shooting abroad would ask itself whether that could happen to them too and whether they might want to do anything about it.
Well, ok, Vegas... Well... You would have me there! Except that the ATF in FOIA requrest reported that they were aware of no crimes that involved bump stocks [0]
Aside from that, I could probably ask how the media was confidently able to report bump stocks were used - but that NOT A SINGLE official report or released info mentions them as being used. Only media coverage.
Everyone should be extremely skepical of the extreme limited amount of confirmed information released on Vegas. Not implying any sort of conspiracy at all, but there is clearly something atypical with that event.
But hey, maybe the ATF and the Criminal Enforcement System of Records is wrong!
edit: For additional info on Vegas. The ATF says up front they were never authorized to examine the firearms in the Las Vegas shooting (highly irregular). They can't say they were R/DIAS, Lightening links, illegal sear conversions, crank trigger, bump stocks or just shot quickly. [1] That data on still should have been added to and appeared the CESR though, which it does not.
My personal opinion is that the photos released show bipods - Bump stocks don't work from bipods!
Since you seem to know more about this than I do: could one deduce what was used from the audio recordings that I'm sure lots of people have made? I imagine some combination of rate of fire and pauses between bursts and other factors could tell if it was "real" full-auto fire.
I listened to the audio a handful of times. There is so much echo and microphone clipping that I couldn't determine.
I agreed with bump stock at first because it did seem to be erratic timing. It didn't seem like real auto. But after a few more listens, it's hard to tell, the echo gets really confusing.
I've been on ranges that I would swear a guy has a burst trigger pack but it's usually just echo or some effect of the supersonic crack and/or shooter's position under canopy.
The ATF did say there were no sear hole for a real auto trigger sear/group. An R/DIAS or Lightening link should have a fairly stable rate, but not always. There is typically a some tuning that goes into those per lower (shims, machining, glue, etc).
I'd absolutely believe trigger crank over bump stock. That was it ended up sounding like to me. Seemingly increasing ROF then stop.
IDK. If you set me down on a bipod, I bet I could fire as fast as that video with a competition trigger. It would sound similarly sporadic to what was in the video, for what that's worth! I guess that's the larger point, even if it was bump stocks, it didn't make much of a difference.
I'm skeptical of the things not mentioned in that event. But, I just know the photo released showed bipod rifles at the window and bump stocks don't work well with bipods. You need the gun to recoil into your finger which means it can't be supported / attached to ground at the handguard.
There's an implied freedom of political speech. The rest can be regulated by law. By the way the way Americans view the constitution as some sort of divinely bestowed natural law document is highly unusual. For example the Australian constitution is literally an act of Parliament.
This comment looks like it got voted down, probably because the tone sounds a little patronising to what it characterises as the American view. But nothing it says is to my knowledge inaccurate or even a twisting of facts.
The constitution of America is explicitly stated to be a statement of natural law.
This view is highly unusual.
The Australian constitution IS literally an act of parliament to my understanding.
Freedom of speech IS only intimated by the courts and is not explicitly stated in any part of the Australian constitution.
"The constitution of America is explicitly stated to be a statement of natural law.
This view is highly unusual."
It's not highly unusual, see my comment below: it's normative.
As for 'natural law' - well, the Canadian constitution essentially indicates that our rights are bestowed by the 'Supremacy of God' [1] which is kind of like 'natural law'.
Your comment below doesn't demonstrate that constitutions being considered statements of natural law is normative at all. Constitutions far outdate the very concept of natural law, and your comment doesn't contain any evidence that this has become the norm in modern times.
I dunno if I accept that the Canadian constitution does or not, it doesn't matter, one other country would not tip the balance.
> Constitutions far outdated the very concept of natural law
Really? I would trace the concept of natural law at least back to Aquinas (13th century) if not antiquity. Constitutional law as part of a secular democracy, on the other hand, I wouldn't trace back much further than the U.S. Constitution, or at most its 17th century predecessors. Magna Carta wasn't really a constitution.
Considering the ancient Greeks basically made a hobby of discussing what the ideal constitution is, I would say the concept is far older than even the first twinkling of the concept of natural law.
(My comment below this one was meant to be directed as to the existence of speech laws, not the US constitution's position on 'natural laws')
It's basically wrong to suggest that somehow the US's constitutional assertion indicating certain rights are 'natural' is somehow problematic - or even unique.
The 'existential and inalienable rights of human beings' have been recognized not only in constitutional and legal forms throughout the world, but in various other texts and declarations.
As I mentioned, the Canadian constitution refers directly to divine providence. (Which is another way of saying 'natural rights')
The 'Basic Law' in Germany starts with this text:
"Conscious of their responsibility before God and man,
Inspired by the determination to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law."
This is definitely an existential assertion.
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights starts like this:
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world"
So they refer to inherent dignity which is essentially another way of saying 'natural right'.
The Constitution of the Russian Federation:
"We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common fate on our land, establishing human rights and freedoms, civic peace and accord, preserving the historically established state unity, proceeding from the universally recognized principles of equality and self-determination of peoples"
Once again universally recognized principles yada yada ...
Poland:
"We, the Polish Nation - all citizens of the Republic, Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty, As well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources, Equal in rights and obligations towards the common good - Poland,"
Greek constitution starts like this:
"THE CONSTITUTION OF GREECE In the name of the Holy and Consubstantial and Indivisible Trinity"
(Admittedly, it doesn't quite specify those things as sources of rights or provenance)
Not surprisingly, most Arab state Constitutions defer to 'God' as the source of their ultimate authority, but again maybe unsurprisingly, don't dwell a lot on 'rights'. But from the 2012 Syrian constitution: "Freedom shall be a sacred right" - again alluding to the transcendental nature of certain rights.
Shall I go on?
Note that Australia (the nation in question here), and a whole host of other nations which do not specifically hint at the existential nature of human rights in their own texts, are in fact signatories to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which legally enshrined the quote above. So that's going to add Sweden, UK, Norway etc. etc. as well to a very formal declaration of the 'natural rights' of people.
So finally - the US's assertion of 'natural rights' is a) not an odd, special or contentious thing b) common enough in the world, constitutionally and legally that we can't really say that this nature of their Constitution is very unique.
You're the one who directed me to that comment, so don't throw your hands up and act like you considered it irrelevant to our conversation.
We actually disagree less than you think though.
I'm not making a value judgement about whether constitutions which treat themselves as a statement of natural rights are a bad thing. I actually think it is probably a good thing.
That doesn't make it normative though. It's very uncommon, whether we wish it were more common or not.
As to the evidences you put forward, thank you for putting in the effort. I would say though that you view these things through the lenses of assuming natural rights are really intuitive and a universal value. Anything that these constitutions you listed out say which smells even remotely like a way of saying natural rights you assume that's what it essentially means. But only someone who assume natural rights are a basic human value would consider most of those to be even approaching the idea.
I'll give some examples:
Your Canadian example: Could also be interpreted to mean that the constitution does not supersede divine law, that is, where the rights enumerated conflict with church doctrine, church doctrine is supreme.
I'm not even saying this is my interpretation, I'm just saying it's a plausible interpretation once one stops assuming that natural law in the sense in which it applies to the US constitution is a universal value.
Your Germanic example: It just makes reference adopting the law of the constitutions. This is probably the biggest stretch of them all. There's absolutely no acknowledgement of even the concept of a right or a natural law, in the passage you cited.
One doesn't even need to get rid of the assumption that a concept of natural law is universally shared to fail to see it in that passage.
The UN declaration of Human Rights: Not a constitution, but the closest to a declaration of natural law. However "universally recognised principles" does not equal "natural law". Not even really that close tbh. However it does make mention of "inalienable rights" which is actually the stronger phrase for this being a recognition of natural law.
However again. Not a constitution.
Polish example: Makes reference to a common good and universal values. Not inalienable natural rights, especially once one considers that it balances rights with responsibilities. Natural rights aren't really balanced by responsibility, they just are. But it's not a huge stretch.
Greece: Sometimes it seems like you think any reference to God is a recognition of natural law and rights. It isn't. Hell, even references to rights aren't a recognition of natural law, certainly not in the American sense. The Divine Right of Kings had plenty to do with religion and the concept of rights, but little in common with the natural law, inalienable, universal human rights we're talking about here.
As to your Australia example and its callback to the UN example: Never make the mistake of thinking that rights always refer to natural law and universal, inalienable values. The concept of rights goes back far further, and encompassed things we would consider absolute violations of our modern conception of rights. One can take a purely legalistic view of "right, privileges and responsibilities" which does not rely on anything but the letter of the law. And again, this is not a constitution. Australia HAS a constitution, and its clear why you didn't use IT as an example.
So finally - the US's assertion of 'natural rights' a) certainly odd in how explicit it is, and I would say qualitatively different from most b) uncommon, if in nothing else, how explicitly stated it is, but again, I would say qualitatively different from much of the world.
Again, I would say your blind spot is in assuming that natural law and natural rights are something intuitive and universal, so that any time you hear something even slightly approaching it in language, you assume that's what's being referred to, but that's just not the case in my opinion. I think your perception is coloured by your assumption from the get-go.
> For example the Australian constitution is literally an act of Parliament.
While that is historically accurate (you could even say it's an act of the UK Parliament too) -- it is unlike any other act in Australia. Parliament cannot amend it by themselves, and Parliament's legislative power is derived solely from the Constitution.
Every country with a codified constitution considers their constitution to be the supreme law in their country and has special rules for amending it -- that's simply what a constitution is! Yes, Americans do love to fetishise their constitution but that's a social distinction not a legal one.
If you look at countries without codified constitutions (New Zealand or the UK for instance), then there is a much stronger argument that their entire concept of their law is just a series of acts of Parliament and there is no supreme law. But Australia does have a codified constitution.
> There's an implied freedom of political speech.
Which is incredibly limited in scope.
> The rest can be regulated by law.
Which could be trivially amended by later governments. And newsflash -- we don't have laws for freedom of speech in this country. We're the only developed nation in the world that is in this situation.
It would be almost misleading not to mention that the implied freedom of political communication is very limited and doesn't have even close to the depth and breadth of jurisprudence that 1st Amendment arguments have in the US.
The argument at its most extreme that various unauthorised disclosure criminal provisions could be invalid for IFPC reasons is outlined here:
But it's shaky at best. Who is to say that the nature of Special Intelligence Operations and the restrictions on their existence don't justify having no public interest exceptions to disclosures about them, for example? The paper makes this point accidentally (via a Wotton v Queensland analogy, at 362). I just don't see the current applications as being strong enough, especially where the legitimate object of the legislation is national security.
There isn't. The High Court's decision on political freedom of speech is ridiculously limited in scope and doesn't apply to the vast majority of actions most Aussies would call "free speech". I also want to point out just how much the High Court has been forced to stretch the wording of the constitution in order to grant rights which are "obviously present" in our society:
* The amount of decisions which had a basis on "on just terms" had such a massive effect that almost every piece of legislation drafted in the past 50 years has a special provision saying that it should not be interpreted to violate the "on just terms" section of the constitution.
* The freedom of political speech comes from the High Court's reading of the preamble of the constitution, and the fact that it mentions Australia as being a representative democracy. They then ruled that in order for a representative democracy to exist you must have freedom of political speech. We're very lucky that our High Court is ruling in favour of the public's freedom rather than against it, because some people might see that as reason to question the legitimacy of the High Court (which would end very badly).
As others have said it's not really about free speech. What a citizen is allowed to say in public isn't effected by this.
It's not anything particularly new either. Governments have always been pissed off by civil servants leaking things, and there have always been vindictive who rather than find the disgruntled employee and fire them, will lash out in the worst possible way and create more disgruntled employees.
What's changed is technology. Before someone had to tap explicit telephone's, someone had to listen to them. The journo's are just waking up to the fact that when the Australian government gave themselves the power to force the telco's to record the "meta data" about every phone call and web access and store it for two years, and granted themselves unlimited warrantless access to said data keeping your sources from the government became a little more difficult. Not a whole pile more difficult mind you - but you suddenly had to be computer savy. You had to know to use a mail provider out of Australia's jurisdiction. You had to use encrypted communications whose end points didn't reveal who you were talking to. It not complicated, and nothing that Wikileaks hasn't been doing for years, but it's definitely new.
Then we moved onto stage 2 - the Access and Assistance bill, in which the government gave themselves the power to force Microsoft / Google / Apple's / Facebooks of this world to silently install bugs on your phone / computer / tv. The raids being discussed by the article were covered by a warrant that specifically allowed them to delete and change data on the targets computers, which is decidedly weird when you think about it. [0] Surely they aren't planning to present data in court when there is a possibility they planted or modified it? Obviously that wasn't the intention. However replacing keyboard drivers and the like with something that does log data does require you to modify & delete data - so my guess is they were covering their arses. These seems to be little doubt they were planting bugs.
Avoiding the seeing eyes implanted by Assistance and Access bill is a damned sight harder than avoiding meta data collection. Again, not impossible - but now you have to avoid software that knows who you are. Software that is dispensed from centralised app stores that insist on identifying you and your device first is a definite no-go. Android is out, Apple is out, Microsoft is out. In fact most of the computing infrastructure they are comfortable with is out. Linux distributions are OK and open source communication apps like Signal are OK - but only those that have thought about and implemented evil maid protections.
It's all doable, and it's all cheap and once you do it you are even safer then you were pre Assistance and Access bill. But geeze you have to be really tech savy to get it right, and right now they are just waking up to the fact their lives and sources are an have been open book because they didn't do it.
As an aside, if this is the first time we've seen the Assistance and Access bill in action, it's poignant to note despite all the rhetoric of it being needed to keep Australian's safe from terrorists and paedophiles, it was in fact first use by the government against it's own citizens - public servants and journo's in this case.
The United States drone-killed Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen, because of his speech. I don't disagree with that action, but it does illustrate that there are limits, even in the United States, despite claims to the contrary.
> The United States drone-killed Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen, because of his speech.
The Wikipedia article gives a different picture. According to US government, "he was centrally involved in planning terrorist operations" and "Yemeni government tried him in absentia in November 2010, for plotting to kill foreigners and being a member of al-Qaeda".
The United States has become an oligarchy over the last few decades. It's basically the worst Western country that you could use as an example of freedom right now.
Unfortunately, people, particularly those who subscribe to a certain ideology that is (was?) popular in tech circles do tend to lecture others about free speech, using the United States as a gold standard.
Some years ago I was still a student in Iran. I was watching a satellite tv show as an Australian military officer appeared on screen and looked into our eyes and in an intimidating way told in Persian "Australia will not be your homeland" apparently to discourage seeking asylum there.
Fast forward years ahead. Every year I keep hearing more bad news from them. Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in Manus Island (as if this huge land isn't made of migrants in the first place), attack on cryptography, war on whistleblowers, wierd announcements as part of five eyes alliance, and etc. Somehow those moves all point toward a dystopian mindset.
Thank you for sharing your story. It is important that Australians understand the way the messages our government sends to the outside world are perceived by the people targeted by them.
Was the message specifically about seeking asylum after traveling to Australia by boat?
Australia does accept Iranian refugees (and refugees from other countries) if they travel to Australia legally (ie by plane, with a visa etc).
There is a strong public dislike of refugees coming illegally by boat, largely due to political fear mongering over safety (many drownings) and potential for terrorists to enter Australia.
The steep climb in asylum seekers arriving by boat after about 2008 was the main starting point for the current political stance against "boat people".
The rest of your points re over reach of government control is alarming to many Australians. However, as these laws don't have a direct impact on most Australians (yet), there is general apathy by the public.
As an Australian our treatment of (some) immigrants is a national disgrace.
I would like it if our government gave more consideration to legitimate refugees instead of the completely selfish attitude that you describe.
Rich immigrants coming by plane are welcomed in massive numbers, while the tiny numbers of poor refugees forced to risk their lives on boats are used as some kind of political pawns/dog whistle for racists and held in secret concentration camps in my name. It's disgusting.
Also our laws are already a dystopian nightmare. Look at the AABill that was introduced recently.
I think the problem is with the attitude. It would be better to quote a law or give a neutral comment, instead of this looking down style. Furthermore, it is not nice that they show this ads in one country and ads to attract tourists in other countries.
Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech. And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach. It's what keeps our very multicultural society together.
What happened with the recent investigation of journalists is about the Australian government's right to see the drafts and sources for articles that involve investigating national security matters. And in general harass and intimidate journalists to discourage such articles in the future.
You can fix the second problem by enshrining the rights of journalists in legislation without having to make it a freedom of speech issue.