Australia is facing it's biggest threat to domestic security - ever ! The forces of Jihad have made it quite plain that it is their plan to return radicalized young men to their home countries with the training to spread terror. We know that there are at least sixty Australians fighting on the front line of the war in Syria and the methods used in captured territory show no restraint. Those that surrender are promptly executed.
The members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security ( JPCIS ) have shown bipartisan support in assessing the risk and recommend increasing ASIO powers to meet this coming challenge. Hopefully, the needed legislation will not get bogged down in political point scoring and the important measures defanged because they do not meet social objectives held by individual politicians.
The sticking point is likely to be the need for mandatory data retention required of Telecommunication companies and Internet services providers. ASIO would like to see this being available so that when they get a lead they can check back and discover who the terrorist has been in contact with and unscramble the command structure to foil terror plots.
If that becomes law it will require the Telecommunications providers to establish expensive data bases and obviously those sort of costs end up being passed on to users - and the public. The controversy that has been roiling relations between countries over " information gathering " - which is the polite definition of " spying " - has the public jittery about " big brother " reading their emails and tapping their mobile phones.
The new powers needed have nothing to do with listening to phone conversations or reading emails. It simply records the number called on the phone circuits and the email addresses involved in each way traffic. That can be extremely valuable when a terrorist's cover is blown. Looking back along the communications trail can uncover network details that are impossible to hide. Without retention - that data base is lost.
What is so secret about the average persons use of telephones or emails ? Perhaps someone having an affair might be sensitive about that traffic and the criminal fraternity would certainly dislike the police knowing who they were calling, but the threat to life and limb from terrorists elevates the need for people like ASIO to have the tools to do their job. With adequate safety provisions, this information is safe from prying eyes.
Hopefully, the recommendations put forward by JPCIS will still get bipartisan support from the various political persuasions when it comes to a vote in the parliament. The peaceful lifestyle we value so dearly is at threat and if we do not take this threat seriously the oasis of calm in which we live will certainly be shattered by fanatics who wish to do us harm for religious purposes.
Political obstructurism would be a ghost that returns to haunt those politicians which put political gain ahead of keeping Australia safe !
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