‘Get A Warrant’ — Pirate Party makes election pledge

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Pirate Party Australia is proud to launch ‘Get A Warrant‘ — a website dedicated to the Party’s pledge to wind back the ever-increasing surveillance powers of Government agencies, while outlining positive policies to take Australia forward.

While both major parties whip up hysteria to paint the other as untrustworthy and economically incompetent, their similarities run deep. An issue they have both artfully avoided is the bipartisan support for attacking civil liberties in Australia through growing warrantless surveillance regimes.

“We are pledging to ensure that all Australians have the right to privacy,” said Brendan Molloy, lead Senate candidate for NSW. “We are calling for an end to treating citizens as suspects, and Get A Warrant outlines our promise to the Australian people. If we are elected, we will push as hard as we can to promote a society free from the fear that the Government is always looking over our shoulders.”

“We will fight for a society free of unreasonable censorship regimes, and for a transparent government. A vote for the Pirate Party is a vote to pressure the Government to respect our right to privacy, and recognise their obligation to being transparent.”

‘Get A Warrant’ was launched against the backdrop of continued revelations of secret surveillance programs operated by the United States and its allies, including Australia. Pirate Party Australia has set out in plain terms what it will do to protect Australians’ privacy and roll back clandestine spy operations, while offering positive change to take Australia forward, such as legislative protection for human rights and civil liberties.

“Privacy is a fundamental right, one that is necessary for a free and democratic society to function. The assault on privacy supported by both major parties is a threat to our freedom we are providing a positive alternative,” Mr Molloy continued. “Get A Warrant highlights our pledge to defend and extend civil liberties, where Labor and the Liberals both utterly fail.”

A vote for Pirate Party Australia is a vote for privacy, a vote for liberty, and a vote for transparency. Visit http://getawarrant.org.au for more info!

Pirate Party promotes Fair Go for Fair Use Bill

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With the closure of submissions on the Copyright Legislation Amendment (Fair Go for Fair Use) Bill 2013, Pirate Party Australia urges all Parliamentarians to support this vital change to Australia’s copyright laws. The bill is for an “Act to provide for the better use of, and fairer access to, copyrighted information, and for related purposes,” and would introduce much needed provisions and protections to Australian copyright law[1].

Chief among these is the introduction of fair use: a broad, flexible copyright exception that would be similar to that in place in the United States. Under fair use, greater use of copyrighted material would be permitted based on certain ‘fairness factors.’ This would be an enormous boon to the digital environment where copyrighted material is being used in many different ways that are not strictly speaking legal.

“Australia has, through various treaties and trade agreements, been burdened by many of the negative aspects of US copyright law without introducing the positive aspects,” said Joseph Miles, Pirate Party Senate candidate for Victoria. “Under the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, the copyright term was increased to life plus seventy years, and yet Australia did not import with that fair use protections. A situation where Australians are subjected to a stricter copyright regime than even the United States should not be tolerated.”

“Copyright is a two-way street: it does not exist solely for the copyright holder’s benefit. There must be provisions for the fair use of copyrighted material by society. After all, it is Australian citizens who, through the Copyright Act, provide copyright holders with their right. This Bill will significantly level the playing field.”

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Australia involved in massive global surveillance regime

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The Age yesterday revealed the existence of a spying agreement between Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) and the Security and Intelligence Division of Singapore’s Ministry of Defence. Under the agreement, all communications carried along the undersea cable between Australia and Singapore are being intercepted by both nations, while the UK and US have been tapping other cables that carry much private Australian data[1].

A nameless Defence Intelligence Officer was quoted as saying that this access “gives the 5-eyes [intelligence alliance] and our partners like Singapore a stranglehold on communications across the Eastern Hemisphere.” The 5-Eyes Alliance consists of the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Pirate Party Australia is unfortunately not suprised by this development, given the ongoing exposure of various worldwide surveillance programs and agreements that have created an enormous web in which citizens of all involved nations have been trapped[2][3].

“We have stated previously that it appeared Australia was deeply involved in mass surveillance of its citizens and those of its allies, and now we have solid proof,” said Thomas Randle, Pirate Party Senate candidate for Tasmania. “All of our private communications are recorded for security agents in Australia and elsewhere to pore through at their leisure. The Australian people have a reasonable expectation of privacy and honest, transparent government, which is not being met. We are instead treated as suspects, our private data being secretly stored on the off-chance that we become of interest in the future.”

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Major parties fail to keep step with the digital reality

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Following Shadow Attorney-General George Brandis’ comments that the Liberal/National Party has not formed policy positions on mandatory data retention and copyright law[1], Pirate Party Australia calls the major parties out on their sluggishness. While these issues do not make good tabloid fodder, they cut to the heart of our modern, digitally connected society. Neither major party has taken a firm position on these issues that have an enormous impact on privacy and culture.

“With surveillance, data retention and copyright reform being significant issues at the moment, it is simply not good enough for the two major parties to drag their feet,” said Brendan Molloy, lead Pirate Party Senate candidate for NSW. “A policy set cannot be comprehensive and suitable for modern Australia if it fails to address the very real threat that data retention poses to our privacy. Given the amount of data that Australians provide over the Internet daily, protections are needed, and regardless of which party forms government after this election, we need their cards on the table now.”

“There have been massive shifts globally with regard to copyright laws, and the Australian Law Reform Commission is set to release a set of recommendations to make Australia’s copyright laws more appropriate for a digital environment. We urge both major parties to seriously consider these recommendations, rather than ignore them as was done to the Copyright Law Review Committee in 1996.”

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Pirate Party demands Australian government answers on spying involvement

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Revelations that New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) used data from the NSA’s PRISM program in their quest to prosecute Kim Dotcom indicate that Australian intelligence and law enforcement agencies may have similar access to the NSA’s surveillance data.

Pirate Party Australia urges the Government to investigate the possibility that Australian intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies have had access to the information that was covertly collected by the United States, and give the Australian public an assurance that intelligence collected by our allies will not be used against Australian citizens.

It has been revealed that the GCSB may have had, or continues to have, access to the controversial surveillance program that was exposed in May this year. The program is aggressively defended by its proponents as an invaluable tool for fighting terrorism, but has allegedly been used to target Kim Dotcom, the Internet entrepreneur whose New Zealand house was raided over a year and a half ago[1]. Regardless of the charges currently leveled against Mr Dotcom, there is no claim that he was, or is, a terrorist.

“If it is true that the warrantless mass surveillance program was used against Mr Dotcom, the claims that it is used solely to fight terrorism are invalidated,” said David Campbell, Pirate Party Senate candidate for NSW. “Instead, it shows that despite persistent claims to the contrary, PRISM’s scope extends well beyond terrorism and into broader criminal prosecution. It is entirely unacceptable that our intelligence agencies should be able to outsource their dirty work to foreign spy organisations,and the Government must take steps to ensure this is not occuring.”

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