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It always does to ask the simplest of questions: how did we get here? Spooked: The Truth about Intelligence in Australia, shows how, In the wake of the 11th of September 2001 attacks against the Twin Towers, Australia became an extremely active combatant in the war on terror, particularly in the field of legislation. There was a remarkable burst of law making, with the country’s legislative performance eclipsing the relatively paltry performances of the UK, US and Canada, not only in the extent of these efforts in inhibiting the liberties and rights of every Australian, but in their sheer quantity. Dozens of pieces of legislation were passed. Turnbull would soon be following his predecessors, introducing yet more terror laws – a legal and political charade cloaking incompetence and failure with an air of busyness. As security specialist Dr Mark Rix wrote in Spooked, misuse and abuse of information, inscrutable but far-reaching information classification procedures and downright obfuscation had all become key weapons in the counter terrorism arsenal of a democratically elected government. He suggested that instead of a war on terror the legislation created a war on openness and accountability, such were the curbs on transparency and public disclosure.
Rix wrote: “The secrecy surrounding information, national security information, security, national security, international relations and law enforcement interests is baffling, all-pervasive and largely impenetrable. Successive Australian governments have successfully added to this secrecy and impenetrability. It is far less clear whether this has helped to make Australians more secure from the threat of terrorism. It is clear, however, that it has left them more vulnerable to the secret, clandestine and sometimes illegal activities of ASIO, which, surrounded in secrecy, founded on sloppy, all encompassing and unfathomable legislation, is subject to few if any requirements for openness, transparency and accountability. In the end, this can only lead to one conclusion: there really is no security in secrecy.”
Ultimately there will be no reason for attack, because there is nothing left to defend. Australia is becoming a totalitarian society by stealth, no better than the societies it is morally bankrupt enough to bomb.
Terrorist acts, most notably 9/11 and the Bali bombings, transformed our attitudes to the secretive world of intelligence, surveillance and security.
In this book a prominent group of writers including Michael Mori, Ben Saul, Anne Aly and Peter Leahy lay bare the facts about spying and security in post-9/11 Australia.
Spooked: The Truth About Intelligence in Australia cuts through panic and fear-mongering to ask hard questions: Is ASIO unaccountable? Is the money we spend on security worth it? Is cyber-terrorism an urgent threat? Are our spies up to the job, and how do we know anyway as we only hear about their failures? Is WikiLeaks good for human rights? Are we trading our privacy for a false sense of security? Spooked untangles the half-truths, conspiracy theories and controversies about the ‘war on terror’, and is a welcome antidote to misinformation and alarm.
Recent revelations from Edward Snowden have blindsided even the most cynical of us over the extent of the global surveillance network. We’ve heard news of millions of phone calls and emails being intercepted as well as eavesdropping on conversations of various heads of government. But it’s not just NSA spying – since the shocking events of September 11 2001, the world has seen huge policy changes in security and surveillance as governments try to address what they argue are unprecedented challenges to national security. Is this actually the case?
As terror messaging expert and one of Australia’s most prominent Muslim academics, now a member of parliament, Anne Aly wrote in her contribution to the book, Because They Hate Us: “It is relatively easy to dismiss terrorism as the conduct of mentally unstable individuals who are hell-bent on killing us — ‘the West’ — because of our values, our freedoms and our way of life. Frequently, terrorists are deciphered as psychopathic and filled with hatred. Or, as depicted by former Prime Minister John Howard, in addressing whether Australia’s ongoing involvement in the Iraq war had created a larger risk of future terrorist attacks: ‘we are a target because of who we are, rather than what we have done.’ However, isolating terrorism as a straightforward act of blind hatred against of blind hatred against freedom does have a negative side-effect: it can prevent any expanded, nuanced and insightful analysis of why terrorists use violence or the threat of violence and how we might best act to mitigate or prevent it.
Dr Daniel Baldino is a political scientist specialising in Australian foreign, defence and security policy including counter-terrorism, intelligence studies and government and politics of the Indo-Pacific at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle.
In 2000, he was a Research Associate at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar within the Security and Governance Program, East-West Center, Hawaii, USA. In 2015, he was a visiting scholar at The Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, University of Carleton, Ottawa.
He has also provided education and professional development programs at the University of Fiji.
He has produced numerous books and articles. His edited book (with Langlois, A and Carr, A) Controversies in Australian Foreign Policy: the core debates, published by Oxford University Press, was the winner of the Australian Institute of International Affairs’ inaugural publication grant.
He is currently the Western Australian chapter convener for Australian Institute for Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO).
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