Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Surveillance

  • AUSTRALIA

    The rise of global surveillance anxiety

    • Ray Cassin
    • 21 June 2013
    7 Comments

    Unease about the Australian Federal Police obtaining phone and internet records without a warrant coincided with a greater, global anxiety about the more troublesome surveillance activities of the US National Security Agency. The Obama administration's defence of the NSA has been as lame as Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus's defence of the AFP.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Legislating to counter grog fuelled violence

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 June 2013
    7 Comments

    The Northern Territory Parliament will soon debate a proposed treatment scheme for up to 800 problem drinkers a year. It will be a case of unprincipled, unworkable lawmaking unless the NT is more attentive to medical, legal and community opinion within its own jurisdiction and 'from down south'. Just because a proposal is novel doesn't mean it's a good idea.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    More asylum seeker deaths, more unanswered questions

    • Tony Kevin
    • 11 June 2013
    34 Comments

    The fact that the boat was seen as stationary on Wednesday should have alerted Border Protection Command to the risk of likely engine failure. Had they reacted more quickly, the 55 or 60 drowned people may have been rescued. Instead, their boat drifted helplessly westwards, away from Christmas Island, and at some stage capsized and began to sink.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    New maritime rescue failure leaves unanswered questions

    • Tony Kevin
    • 20 May 2013
    19 Comments

    On Friday, Fairfax reported on another ordeal at sea, over ten days between 27 April and 7 May. Only two people died, but the toll could easily have been far worse. The story as we know it so far raises disturbing questions about Australia’s adherence to its rescue-at-sea obligations.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Sports fans' idolatry makes monsters of heroes

    • Michael Mullins
    • 25 February 2013
    16 Comments

    The success of elite athletes is often accompanied by narcissistic behaviours that exploit and damage other people. This appears to be the case with Oscar Pistorius and Lance Armstrong. In seeking to curb such behaviour, we can call for greater regulation and surveillance. But we can also examine our own behaviour. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor excises its moral compass

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 31 October 2012
    12 Comments

    In politics, hypocrisy is a natural condition. On Tuesday, it became evident that refugee policy is the last thing that should be made by the Australian government. Gillard has now achieved something Howard could only dream of, and shown Labor can play the game of hypocrisy as well as any.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Obama and Romney's shallow thinking on drones

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 30 October 2012
    3 Comments

    Obama has overseen an upsurge in the use of unmanned drones. This is one aspect of foreign policy on which he and Romney agree. But drone use raises difficult questions about the conduct of war, and there is no room for complacency or superficial reasoning. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Human lives Australia could have saved

    • Tony Kevin
    • 05 September 2012
    14 Comments

    Australian maritime safety and border protection authorities could have saved the lives of most of the people on the boat that made two distress calls by telephone to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority early last Wednesday. Instead they passed the responsibility to Indonesia, which has none of the sophisticated resources and technologies that Australia uses - when it wants to - to locate and intercept incoming unauthorised boats.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Anders Breivik and the insanity question

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 29 August 2012
    27 Comments

    Sanity assumes purpose and responsibility; insanity its absence. This is hardly applicable to Breivik. His critique of Islam suggests a radical and violent conservative response. Conservative, Christian radicalism, that is not anti-Semitic, is on the rise in Europe, and Breivik is its foremost proponent.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Orwell in 2012 Australia

    • Fatima Measham
    • 16 July 2012
    2 Comments

    As word of the national security inquiry filtered through Twitter last week, one wit remarked, '1984 is meant to be a cautionary tale, not a manual'. The proposed reforms constitute a disturbing concession that our intelligence sector is not equipped to deal with the increasing sophistication of covert online activity, without resorting to questionable laws.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia follows US drone lead

    • Fatima Measham
    • 09 February 2012
    27 Comments

    Despite Obama's insistance that the use of drones in Pakistan 'is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists', civilian casualties are inevitable. Australia is also phasing in the use of drones.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2011: Revelations of a detention centre spy

    • Lyn Bender
    • 10 January 2012
    9 Comments

    Employed at the centre as a psychologist, I witnessed riots, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and severe depression. I realised I had a profound ethical dilemma: in being compliant to the administration, I was unable to ensure my duty of care towards these people. So I became a mole. Published 27 September 2011

    READ MORE