USING THE COMMON bogey man of “anti terror legislation”, the Australian government says its pondering letting corporate bosses intercept their employees’ emails without their consent, effectively spying on them.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the proposed legislation on Monday, saying that it would help the government protect the country from cyber attacks on Australia’s national infrastructure, including the transport system, electricity grid and the stock market.

Not sounding at all reassuring, the deputy PM told the country, "I promise we are not interested in the email you send out about who did what at the Christmas party," adding that what was important was the security of Australians and their national infrastructure, "we want to make sure that they are safe from terrorist attack".

So how does spying on people’s private emails help accomplish this? Well, according to Gillard "making sure we've got the right powers to ensure that we can tell if there's something unusual going on in the system." But not at your Christmas parties.

Honest.

Unsurprisingly, Australia’s civil libertarians are up in arms over the proposals, with most being more than a tad concerned that the measures would do very little to help national security, and rather a lot to help companies keep close tabs on workers and use information about them for nefarious purposes (like firing them for what happened at the Christmas party, which the deputy PM isn’t interested in).

It’s not as if Australia doesn’t have legislation already in place to protect themselves. Current laws in Oz’s Telecommunications Act, lets security agencies monitor employee communications without consent, but the legislation is set to expire by June 2009.

Talking to The Sydney Morning Herald, Attorney-General Robert McClelland, explained that the government now thought it best to expand the b ill to include private companies in order to protect “key infrastructure” from cyber terrorism.

"At least 90 percent of networks exist outside government, but there's no powers for corporate network supervisors to intercept such communications unless they have specific authority from the employee," he said.

But McClelland promised that he would confer with privacy experts and advisors, as well as workers' unions before passing the new laws. So your Christmas party shenanigans might just be safe for another year. µ

L’Inq
Sydney Morning Herald

Reuters