Book review: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden (2019)

Writing a memoir allows Snowden to demonstrate things about himself that go to the question of his character. This tactic makes it evident that what he did – reveal the US intelligence community’s unlawful, and frankly ludicrous, acquisition and use of the electronic data of everyone on the planet, what they called “bulk” collection – was something like an inevitability.

Courage is rare to come across but there’s no question that Snowden is a man of exceptional courage. He also has an unusual personality. This is a man who kept copies of the US Constitution on his desk at work so that he could give them away to other people in the office. He took his job seriously and expected others around him to do the same. Unfortunately, many of them let him down.

One thing that emerges from reading this book is the way that Snowden’s hacker roots helped him make the decisions he did. It wasn’t an accident that he decided to buck the system; the need to do so from his earliest years – in order to learn about computers and digital networks – instilled in him a healthy dose of libertarianism. In a sense Snowden is a kind of literalist. The copies of the Constitution on his desk were as much a part of his education as a citizen as were his years tinkering about with the computers his father – who worked for the US Coast Guard – brought home.

Snowden is also a good writer, although he did benefit from the help of at least two people (a circumstance he notes in the book). From time to time there is a folksy expression that proves that Snowden, rather than someone else, was driving the bus. There is something old-fashioned as well as familiar about this kind of writing, in the sense that it draws the reader close to the author, as though the two of you are sitting in front of a fireplace in the evening after dinner having a congenial chat. The chapters are short and the pacing is solid. There is enough colour to give the reader a rounded view of each person without overburdening the reader with information.

Overall, I found the story of Snowden’s life to be well-told as well as interesting. I have tried reading official histories of spy agencies but the two I started to read were impenetrably dull. They seemed to have been designed for academics, or other types of specialist, people with an inexhaustible capacity to struggle through acres of opaque prose. This is a shame. It’s not surprising however. Often when you phone a government agency – or even if you email their media department to ask for information – you will have to wait an age before you get to speak to a human, or else you will get an email in reply that hides more than it discloses. Large organisations almost universally lack the human touch.

Snowden does away with all the crap and gives you what you need to understand his story. And because of the time period covered in the book – it starts in the 90s – this memoir also has elements of history that can be very revealing about the times it talks about. The way that young people (like my own brother) became enamoured of everything digital is worth several histories, at least.

The book is also full of the author’s native intelligence. Snowden appeared to me, as I was reading, to be very sensible (as we all are in our own ways) to the nuances and subtleties of existence. Here is someone, I thought to myself, who is conscious of the impact that his own actions have on others. I wish him all the best for the future. Whatever that holds for him.

We already know the story, of course, or we do if we watch at least some of the news. The story so far, in any case. But even when you know how things turn out, the journey to reach the ending of this book is still thrilling. Congratulations to Edward and to all of the people who helped him, including Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

There are others in this class of people who gave Snowden assistance in his hour of need, but you can buy the book if you want to find out more. I will say however that Snowden does leave out some details from the account he makes in order not to unnecessarily compromise the security of the organisation – the National Security Agency (NSA) – he was working for when the time came to carry out the acts that enabled him, carefully and deliberately, to remove documents from his workplace. Part of the curtain remains in place, preventing the reader – whoever he or she is – from seeing everything. But at the level of sophistication I am talking about, only specialists would be able to understand what any disclosure would mean. The substantive outlines of the crime Snowden committed are adequately rendered.

Protecting whistleblowers and journalists' sources in the digital age

As well as Paul Farrell from BuzzFeed we had on the panel host Julie Posetti, Peter Tonoli from Electronic Frontiers Australia, and Elise Worthington a journalist at the ABC who works on investigative pieces. The hashtag for the evening was #protectsources.

The Panama Papers release was enabled using encryption, and was unprecedented in history in its scope. But in India they are creating the biggest biometric database in history using iris scans. India’s equivalent of the high court says that privacy should be enshrined in law. In Australia, the government is introducing biometric passports that will mean that you won’t need a paper passport anymore and the authorities will use iris scans at airports. In 2013, after Edward Snowden’s leak the UN started to get worried about the undermining of fundamental human rights, and contracted Posetti’s work unit to study the environment for whistleblowers and journalists’ sources. The UNESCO study took place over a 10-year period covering 121 countries, and involved 134 survey respondents, and made 33 recommendations.

A creeping effect was noticeable, not just dramatic changes. There is a struggle between the right to feel safe and that of free expression. Journalists are now going back to analogue tactics to protect sources. Often discovery occurs at the point of first contact.

Farrell said that we’re lucky in Australia because the potential cost for whistleblowers was not as severe as it was in some parts of the world, but he said we’re still in a precarious position. He said it was increasingly easy for government agencies to go after journalists’ sources. Worthington said that journalism relies on protecting confidential sources. It is the responsibility of journalists to educate the public and sources on the best ways to contact you. Tonoli said that you are only paranoid if they’re not out to get you. Non-anonymity, he went on, is a problem in social media because of Facebook’s true-name policy and Twitter's verification mark. He added that there is a red flag for journalists who use the secure browser Tor.

Worthington said that she had dozens of people contact them for a 4 Corners story and she had gone to the trouble of setting up a separate device without a SIM card that stays in one location: a dumb phone. She had 30 people contact her on Signal and of them 80 percent had never used Signal before. There is an appetite for these methods of communication in the community, she said. Farrell said that using Signal reduces some of the barriers for first contact, and that mobile encryption is easier to achieve therefore better. Tonoli said that Signal is not just used by whistleblowers but also by normal people in the broader community.

The panel then discussed the issue of the different levels of security that belong to sources. Knowing at what level people who want to contact you are working is important. Worthington said you don’t know what level you’re working at and so it is easy to leave a trail. You need a way to find out easily who people are. Tonoli said that Signal is pretty secure but that the organisation that owns it has in the past been subpoenaed by the government.

Posetti went on to say, pointing to the journalism that Farrell had produced, that the Australian government had started to treat offshore refugees with the same sensitivity as subjects that have traditionally been considered to be part of national security. Farrell noted that he had covered a story once about the Australian authorities turning back boats and had found subsequently out that the AFP had launched an investigation into his research. Then, he started writing about this. He discovered that the AFP had illegally accessed his phone records. Worthington said that there is good reason to be paranoid. She added that during the Panama Papers investigation she had found that the encryption that they had to use was quite cumbersome but it was critical otherwise they would never have got access to the information. She worked on the project full time for a month then part time for six months.

Tonoli said you should use method with a small digital footprint. Send a letter, for example, if you are a whistleblower. For journalists, he said you should put your Signal information on your Twitter bio. Farrell noted that law enforcement agencies have finite resources, and are not interested in a lot of these communications, but he added that using Signal is a good starting point. Tonoli said you need all journalists to use encrypted methods to get herd immunity. Worthington noted that the encrypted data deposit method called SecureDrop is very expensive to implement. Farrell said that as a journalist you should make yourself as accessible as possible for the community. He pointed to the Tails operating system that you can boot from USBs and DVDs. Tonoli noted that the Tails operating system has tools that let you anonymise images.

There were some no-shows for the evening hosted by the University of Wollongong at their Sydney Business School at Macquarie Place, next to Circular Quay. Peter Greste was sick and unable to attend, the ABC’s Caro Meldrum-Hanna was on assignment and couldn’t make it, and Gerard Ryle from the ICIJ couldn’t make it because he was just off the plane.

From left: Peter Tonoli, Elise Worthington, Paul Farrell, Julie Posetti.

On journalists and their privacy in the era of mass surveillance

This event was held as part of the Sydney Ideas program and featured (from left in the photo in the blogpost) Gabor Szathmari a founder of the organisation CryptoAustralia, Paul Farrell a journalist at BuzzFeed, Julie Posetti who is head of digital editorial capability at Fairfax, and Benedetta Brevini a senior lecturer in communication and media at the University of Sydney. Brevini did the honours as compere.

Farrell kicked off the evening last night, which was titled ‘Journalism, Resistance and Metadata’, by providing some background about his own career. He studied journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney, and has worked at the Guardian. He is also co-founder of the Detention Logs website and was the lead reporter on the Guardian’s Nauru Files. In 2014 Farrell said the Guardian was still soliciting stories via email, but added that the police had routinely investigated journalists’ stories to find their sources.

“It’s challenging to be confronted with evidence of mass surveillance,” Farrell said. “It’s a structural problem for people doing journalism.” Farrell found out by accident that the AFP had in fact even accessed his own phone records. But he did note that journalists had been successful in securing amendments to the federal government’s metadata laws.

Posetti comes to her job at Fairfax after a stint in Paris, where she worked on a large study funded by UNESCO during 2014-15 that involved input from journalists and editors in 121 countries. Privacy is a global crisis, she said, with legal frameworks being eroded everywhere. She said that there’s a need to strengthen laws protecting journalists and their sources. Acts of journalism should be shielded from surveillance, data retention, and handover of material connected to confidential sources.

She said that she understood that using an encryption tool could be a red flag for authorities, but that protecting sources is an ethical consideration. “It’s almost impossible to protect sources,” she said. But the killing of sources was a distinct possibility in many parts of the world. She noted that in some countries where the repercussions sources can face if their activities are discovered are very severe, journalists are reverting to analogue measures to avoid detection. “Really basic measures,” she said, such as meeting in obscure locations like parking garages. “You can revert to analogue methods but you have to be smart.” In some countries, she said by way of example, the authorities use facial recognition technology to identify sources. She also said that in order to protect their sources some journalists stretch the timeline between accessing the source and publication.

Szathmari said that he senses a power disparity between the offensive side (the authorities, who can conduct mass surveillance) on the one hand, and journalists on the other. “It makes sense to go back to the basics and leave the phone at home.” He suggested that journalists should use SecureDrop and GlobalLeaks for first contact. Posetti advised opening a Signal account in order to be able to use encrypted communications to talk with sources.

Farrell said that there is “an almost willful misunderstanding about these tools”. Older journalists, he opined, seem to relish a complete lack of understanding about them. Brevini added that there’s a lack of care, in some cases, for sources.

As to how to get laws protecting journalists and their sources strengthened, Posetti said that journalists now have a responsibility to report about these issues “in ways that allow citizens to appreciate what is happening”. Journalists are obliged to explain to the public the likely outcomes if we continue down the current path.

Szathmari illustrated some of the problems facing journalists and their sources by talking about the case of Reality Winner, a US intelligence contractor who was charged with leaking information about the US election to The Intercept, a US media website. The documents were printed at the NSA, handed over to The Intercept, and rescanned, then published on DocumentCloud. But the printer at the NSA left a trail, because all printers add a series of microdots to printed documents. The NSA was able, by examining the microdots, to identify the exact printer the documents were printed on, and the approximate date they were printed. This information led them to Winner.

Szathmari said that to combat this kind of sleuthing by authorities there is now a PDF redaction tool that converts documents to PDFs but which also removes the printer’s microdots. Journalists can use the tool in order to “clean” documents received from sources, so that the documents can be safely made accessible to the public. CryptoAustralia was started in 2015 and ran workshops with the Walkley Foundation in Sydney last year. Their next meeting is on 20 September.

Snowden makes me think about dropbears

This is an image from a news story dated in the first week of August but it's all that we've got as to the location of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, now hiding in Russia. Is this guy standing next to a car really Snowden? What we do know is that Snowden has animated Americans, including such people as President Obama and Republican Senator John McCain, to talk publicly about the scale of the problem of massive state surveillance of private communications. All of your emails, your social media posts, your Skype calls - well, basically everything you say online - is being collected and screened for evil intent by faceless men and women sitting at computer screens in Utah.

Overseas, Simon Jenkins in the UK has compared his country's response to the Snowden revelations unfavourably compared to the US.

Britons are not only subject to massive unwarranted surveillance, surveillance that is insecure and unaccountable. They are also at the mercy of intrusive institutions which, for the time being, their politicians will not and cannot control. When push comes to shove, Americans do this better.

They have the Fourth Amendment in the US, while there is no similar legal instrument in the UK. The UK security apparatus - comprising MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - is deeply involved in the global surveillance program Snowden uncovered earlier this year. The UK is part of the "Five Eyes" group of nations - the others being Canada, New Zealand and Australia - and in response to Jenkins' spray their own security oversight committee head, Malcolm Rifkind, has admitted that "the whistleblower Edward Snowden has raised 'real issues' about safeguarding privacy in the 21st century". Jenkins says Rifkind is a "patsy".

Now dropbears are mythic creatures inhabiting the Australian bush that are routinely trotted out in the palaver around the nightly campfire to scare 12-year-olds. But given the reality of the cooperation between the Five Eyes nations in terms of security activities you have to wonder at the silence that has cloaked whatever participation there has been - and undoubtedly there is cooperation between ASIO and ASIS, Australia's security bodies, and the NSA - around the globe in countries other than the UK. Given its location, Australia is well-placed to provide unique access, for example, to undersea communications infrastructure such as cables used for internet traffic. Situated in Asia, furthermore, Australia has a long history of providing the US with assistance with its signals operations; Pine Gap for instance.

So far we have not seen any dropbears emerge here to betray Australia's intelligence services but the question lingers like the smell of smoke and char on your clothes after a night spent around the campfire. One would hope that it's only a matter of time, but then again given Australia's supine spy agencies and even more toadyish politicians, I don't think I'll be putting anything on hold in anticipation of revelations. ASIO and ASIS might reliably believe that they are too-small targets for Snowdenish uncoverings, and are likely unconcerned for the moment that their own forms of blanket surveillance of citizens' communications will be brought to light.

Growth of the secret state a global problem

It appears that US authorities were given a heads-up about the UK's planned detention of David Miranda as he was passing through Britain's Heathrow Airport last week. Now, European media have complained to the UK's prime minister, David Cameron, about this unreasonable use of anti-terrorism legislation, being to target journalists. In related news from the Guardian, it appears that the police watchdog has been trying to get information from UK police about its use of the legal instrument in question, schedule 7 of the UK's 2000 anti-terrorism law.

Legal means remain an avenue for the IPCC to take as the police continue to procrastinate and refuse to hand over the relevant information.

The story also mentions measures being considered by the Internet Engineering Task Force, a body that makes internet standards, to use encryption on internet transactions, thus making it harder for entities such as the National Security Agency to snoop on people's internet use. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has passed information to Miranda's partner, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, used to work for the NSA.

Elsewhere, it turns out that the NSA is the US's second-largest employer, with 850,000 on its payroll, placing it just behind retailer Walmart in importance nationally. It's hard to see how the NSA can continue to operate given the size of its workforce, which must function as an inbuilt weak-spot in its system of information control, given that individuals with a conscience, such as Snowden, are likely to continue to emerge in its ranks.

US president Barack Obama has disappointed many supporters because of his record of working against the interests of whistleblowers, a group of people who continue to perform an essential function in democracies worldwide, and also, no doubt, in countries where due to historical precedent or due to adverse contingencies, democracy does not exist. Many have rightly criticised the US president for failing to acknowledge the importance of the actions of individuals who possess a conscience in the effective operation of democracy, given the increase in covert government activity since 9/11.

In Russia, the secret state has already taken over operation of many parts of the state apparatus, giving rise to egregious abuses of power by state actors, corruption on a wide scale, and unreasonable targeting of individuals who show an unwillingness to cooperate with the secret state. The secret state continues to grow in other jurisdictions. Operating partly as the NSA in the US, the secret state has emerged as a severe burden that actively works against the interests of individuals, and that is working to subvert traditional systems for the check of authoritarian power, such as the media.

Targeting Greenwald and Poitras shows the US is in looneyville

After I read the story of how Edward Snowden's releases of information about the US National Security Agency occurred with the help of video-maker Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald, I wasn't surprised to read today that Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was stopped and questioned by British authorities as he travelled home to Brazil from Europe.

Not surprised, but still deeply offended.

Barack Obama is turning out to be a total looney when it comes to whistleblowers, ignoring the right to free speech cemented in the US Constitution, which protects the media from unwarranted actions by government authorities. Obama's record on whistleblowers is dismal. It got worse with the court case against Bradley Manning. With whistleblower Edward Snowden, Obama's administration has hit new levels of sleaze.

From the point of view of any right-thinking citizen, the actions of Manning and Snowden can only be viewed as impressive. The US government has entered looneyville by continuing to target and harrass journalists - and even their friends - in much the same way the Chinese government targets the families of human rights campaigners and democracy proponents in that country. Truly, the US government has jumped the shark, and has ended up somewhere over on the dark side where people die in secret in dark and unhealthy conditions, far from the people they love and absent recourse to any legal assistance. This is the territory frequented by Argentinian death squads and tin-pot dictators who have flourished - often with the help of the US government - in many countries around the world over the past 40 years.

Obama risks being viewed by good citizens as a zombie-politician, someone who survives by eating the brains of careless travellers and small animals. The detention and questioning of David Miranda means that absolutely noone is safe from the predations of this megalomaniac president and his legions of spooks, whose tentacles can reach into any home and even into the pockets of friends of reporters who dare to expose the criminal activities of a government gone mad with impotent rage as the contours of the world shift inexorably following the great wave of nationalism sparked by WWII. The US is behaving like a surly teenager who throws a tantrum when people stop listening to his blatant fabrications. Obama does not see that the fourth amendment was designed to protect people from just such a leader as he is turning out to be.

Obama's NSA debate redefines the term 'bizarre'

Public debate about US President Barack Obama's national security measures - including the recent revelations about the country's NSA communications analysis and monitoring, and drone strikes - is redefining the meaning of the term "bizarre" because of the thick cloak of secrecy that militates against transparency, making it utterly impossible to discern truth from official spin. The New York Times had a good go today with a story on its website ('Threats Test Obama’s Balancing Act on Surveillance') but the contrary forces at play result in some strange quotes, and this verbal throwing-up-of-hands from the newspaper's editors:

It is yet unknown who exactly was killed in Yemen during the past two weeks. Therefore, it is hard to judge the recent strikes against those standards the president laid out in May. Specifically, did the dozens of people reportedly killed all pose a “direct and imminent threat”? And, with American officials fearing that an attack could happen at any moment, just how much care was taken before each strike to determine that no civilians were in the missiles’ path?

Earlier in the story we have this quote from Obama:

“I will not have a discussion about operational issues,” he said.

But later in the same story we have this from the president:

“Let’s just put the whole elephant out there, and examine what’s working,” he said.

It's too strange. Admittedly, that first quote refers to drone strikes and the second quote refers to the NSA's activities - which have come under intense scrutiny in the press, making it incumbent on the president to at least appear to be open and transparent. But where even the existence of the NSA's colossal data mining activities were unknown until the Guardian's reporting Edward Snowden's disclosures, we're unlikely to get much satisfaction even from the top press vehicle in the country.

Hence the strange creature from a Medieval bestiary that accompanies this post: a combination of a rabbit and a snake; a creature like this seemed to me to be the only way to quickly illustrate the kind of fantasy-world of government spin and government obfuscation these issues produce. As the NY Times' headline shows, we're dealing with a trade-off between the legitimate public right to know and (what we're told is) an operational imperative to spy - on everyone, everywhere.

War always results in the reduction of the rights of the individual. The suspension of habeus corpus, for example, is a common outcome of war. Similarly, national constitutions globally are being ignored in order to "protect" people from (unknown, unknowable) threats by millions of people. Snowden was a rare man of conscience in a crowd of obedient functionaries. The strange kinds of official utterances and the odd stories appearing in the press are a product of the bizarre situation we find ourselves in, now, as the world changes shape inexorably. It seems that the first thing people do with new wealth is buy guns to protect their interests. The mere pursuit of wealth appears, in this context, rather anodyne. The urge to guard one's honour - and so prop up the basis of personal identity - seems to be rather unattractive, then. Let's hope there will arise institutions adequate to satisfying the (apparently) conflicting needs of people in all countries. War is a price too high to pay for repose.

Movie review: Underground: The Julian Assange Story, dir Robert Connolly (2012)

Alex Williams as Julian Assange in the movie.

Yesterday there was a tweet containing a link to a web page with material about the launch in Sydney's Paddington of the Julian Assange movie Underground. The event featured director Robert Connolly, US movie critic Eddie Cockrell, Julian's mother Christine Assange, actor Alex Williams, and Cassie Findlay of the WikiLeaks Party national council, and there are some enthusiastic videos where some of these people get to talk (Williams looked decidedly reluctant to do so when confronted by the woman with the camera, probably because you'd want to keep the politics out of what is after all the first big bash following your acting debut, although Williams did go on to say he supports WikiLeaks). A bit later Christine Assange tweeted news of the first Australian screening of the movie on a commercial TV channel - and "commercial" turned out to be on the money; there were ads every few minutes, with program managers eager to squeeze as many dollars as possible out of this sure-to-be-popular show.

While the ads were deeply irritating the movie turned out to be very good qua movie. Rachel Griffiths as Christine Assange and Anthony LaPaglia as Ken Roberts, the Federal Police detective charged with bringing the hackers to justice, were very good indeed. Griffiths especially, to me, seemed to have "got" Christine Assange's way of speaking and her view of the world. LaPaglia leads a quickly-assembled team on a hunt without precedent in Australia at the time, in 1989, and there is solid drama in the police work. Benedict Samuel as the tech guy on the team, Jonah, is credible too. On the side of Assange, Laura Wheelright plays the beautiful Electra, although it seems that her main role is to get pregnant and then lose patience with the young Julian's irrepressible urge to connect in the online world, an urge that doesn't abate after their child is born.

In the beginning of the movie the chase scenes, where Christine seeks to flee her strange partner and his cult, The Family, are well done. This element of the story becomes meaningful later when Julian's little brother is almost abducted and Julian and Christine confront a Victoria policeman about the police's lack of action in stopping the cult from operating. The scene makes the police look ploddish, and so that impression can easily be contrasted with Roberts' relentless hunt for Julian and his hacker mates, who after all only sought access to computer networks and never stole or damaged anything. Julian's unwillingness to take the advice of Prime Suspect (Callan McAuliffe) and insert a worm into the military network Julian had hacked conforms with Suelette Dreyfus' book, Underground, on which the movie is largely based. From the point of view of the hackers the police response is out of proportion to the crime, while the police had ignored Christine's complaints year after year about the abuse of children by the cult she and her two boys had had to repeatedly escape by relocating from home to home across the country.

But in other respects the movie departs from the script as set out in the book. Julian's meeting with the journalist - a sloppy, careworn specimen well played by Simon Maiden - that is so important in the movie, and of course in real life, does not appear in the book. The idea that Assange at this early stage, in 1989, sought to publicise the material that he found online is correct by the logic of 2013, or even 2009, but its appearance in the movie is a piece of teleological wishful thinking. Likewise for Julian's dramatic, pathos-laden plea when Roberts finally comes into his room and puts the cuffs on him, that he "just needs more time". It becomes a kind of mantra. I even heard someone in the movie accusing Julian of wanting to become a journalist, but I don't remember now who said it. In Dreyfus' book at no point is there any kind of expression on the part of Assange of a wish to publish information found online during the hacking sessions. The scriptwriter and the director are rewriting history here.

And this is an important point because just before the credits the movie tells us that what Julian had been doing with classified US military information in 1989 - in the lead-up to the first Gulf War - was strikingly similar to what he would go on to launch later, in 2009 - "twenty years later" - with WikiLeaks. We are led to believe that the only reason he did not do so earlier was because of the custody battle and Julian working as a single father, raising his child. The way the movie went about this piece of magic surprised me and contradicted my understanding of the book, which I read some time ago, admittedly. But I did read it from cover to cover.

Supporters of WikiLeaks, like me, will find a lot to applaud in this fresh-looking movie. I found it mostly credible and certainly interesting. Because I grew up in a big city and went to university at a young age I can identify with the squat dramatics. And because I had in my family someone who was deeply involved in computers from a young age I can grok the hackers. What many WikiLeaks supporters will hope, however, is for the movie to function as a kind of press release and in that guise it will surely be successful because it is well-made and vibrant. It's just a shame that the creators have over-egged the "journalist" thing with a few strategic misrepresentations. Correct me if I'm wrong, there's a comments facility on this blog.

Another one bites the dust: Jemima Khan drops Julian Assange

Clip from the New Statesman story by Khan
on the website of the publication.

The way I see it, it's essentially a clash of cultures. Jemima Khan, a prominent Brit who is the associate editor of the publication New Statesman, as well as a writer, has published a piece in that journal criticising Julian Assange. As many, including Khan herself, will be happy to point out the list of those who have abandoned support for Assange is not getting any shorter. The falling-out seems to have hinged on a few instances of non-communication Assange has been guilty of when Khan has asked Assange to comment on a number of issues. Khan also says she wants Assange to stop avoiding the Swedish extradition warrant, and go to Sweden to answer the allegations that are active there. There's also a film Khan was involved with that WikiLeaks supporters attacked.

Most damningly, it appears, Khan accuses Assange and his camp of subscribing to the Dubya-era tenet: "with us or against us." Khan wants more shades of grey. She wants questions answered. She wants to make up her own mind. She finds Assange's apparent aloofness puzzling. So she attacks him.

But she fails to understand the culture of the world in which Assange grew up and developed both his ideas and his persona. The hacktivist culture Assange comes from is extremely harsh when it comes to taking a strong position on a subject deemed important enought to warrant it. Defending a position, in that culture, is a matter of the deepest honour, and any means necessary to do so are adopted. The tone of debate is extremely harsh and personal attacks are routine. Because most communication takes place via the written word in chat rooms and in social media, the people involved have developed highly effective communication styles. They are logical, ruthlessly so. And indeed it can appear that "with us or against us" is the rule by which they live.

It's necessary, of course, to acknowledge that WikiLeaks supporters daily have their hands full on this count parrying the (sometimes) outrageous attacks of persons who hate their cause. They get so used to fighting fires, one imagines, that any person who questions motives or challenges facts just risks getting caught up in the maelstrom of verbal activity that plays out minute by minute on the internet.

Khan, for her part, has been involved for many years in journalism, where there is (in the best cases) a fundamental requirement for objectivity. In a sense, it will be those journalists who hold to this ethical requirement of professionalism who will be most easily alienated by a hacker like Assange, especially one who believes that there are, indeed, "dark forces" at play in his case. I don't think that Khan appreciates how stressful Assange's work has been, and I don't think that Assange - who oddly enough professes to be a journalist (and whose supporters take it as fact) - understands enough about the way that truth is arrived at in journalism. If you question a stated fact from a hacker or question their motives, then of course their first reaction is going to be to recoil and attack in turn. But if you avoid questioning by a journalist then the journalist's first reaction is to presume that you have something to hide, or that your motives are not entirely pure.

It's sad that Khan has taken the position that she has, and in such a public manner. But I understand her motivation. It's also sad that Assange continues to plug away at the "journalist" myth, which is of course something of a defence for him especially regarding US law and legal precedent, while obviously knowing very little about journalism itself. And it's sad that the two cultures - hacktivist and journalist - are being polarised in the case of WikiLeaks, since it would always have been ethical journalists who would be the most useful defenders of Julian Assange and his extraordinary digital creature.

Online activism and online theft are two different things

Part of the fallout from the death of Aaron Swartz is a slew of news stories critical of US laws dealing with theft of digital property and the way they are applied by the US administration. Two days ago Crikey's Bernard Keane got his light sabre out for a bit of mortal combat with the Man, telling us about the "exemplary punishment" being meted out to people like Swartz and Assange - Keene glibly ropes together true activism such as Assange has practised with the far more humdrum theft that Swartz had his hand well-and-truly in - and asserting that "authorities are wildly overreacting to the threat posed by online activism". Again, Keene talks about true activism such as Assange practises, and the bogus kind of activism that Swartz foolishly dabbled in, as if they are the same thing, when they're not.

Comparing Kim Dotcom with Julian Assange? Madness. The loonies in the Pirate Party might spin the tale in this way but more intelligent and discerning observers can see that stealing digital copyright material such as academic papers, pop songs, or news stories is as unlike the service Assange set up to facilitate the activities of whistleblowers, as chalk and cheese. Or an orc and a hobbit. Or whatever.

But it doesn't stop there, and likely won't, as bleeding-heart journalists (such a soft-centred bunch of idealists, they are, really) come to do battle against the forces of evil. Today, we've got Fairfax economics journo Peter Martin in the Sydney Morning Herald warning us that "[Swartz's] suicide should ring alarm": "Legal anvil hovers over the unwary tech user," Martin yells, as though those in geekdom, like Swartz, were merely "unwary" rather than actually very determinedly working to steal information from an online repository. Kim Dotcom was also hardly "unwary".

These people are thieves, unless you subscribe to the fuzzy kind of thinking that seems to be rife in geekdom, where corporations that own digital property are a kind of hellish vampire intent on sucking the lifeblood out of innocent consumers. Believe me, I've come across this kind of thinking on numerous occasions. Copyright holders such as Disney are irrelevant "middlemen" who add nothing to the final product and whose services, therefore, may legitimately be dispensed with by heroic geeks on a crusade to free information from such damned shackles as publishers and entertainment companies apply to work they help produce. It's such a load of hogwash, and you shouldn't shed too many tears over those who openly flaunt good laws, such as the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that Martin points to, and which was used to prosecute Swartz.

Aaron Swartz as knight-errant? Wrong crusade, buddy

It's late and I'm tired but this question of what Aaron Swartz's death means continues to preoccupy me so I can't sleep. Before trying to do so tonight, I read a new article published in Australia by the Global Mail, one of my favourite websites. The article was written by Suelette Dreyfus, who is probably known to some people as the author of a book about Julian Assange's hacker days. It's a great book, and so Dreyfus is someone that I need to pay attention to. In the article, Dreyfus tells a story about Swartz when he met a US politician, and it's a gripping tale. She also points to SOPA and does a bit of probing about how that law would have functioned as a kind of censorship. Censorship of the web is certainly a big issue, one of far greater import than the kind of undertaking that Swartz was prosecuted for, which was the stealing of academic papers. Censorship should be a concern for everyone, and Dreyfus makes a great case for continuing the effort to ensure that it doesn't happen today.

Now, I spent a fair bit of time looking at SOPA early last year, and this is what I deduced, from reading stories about it, that it meant:

What the law is about, in effect, is distributing responsibility for breaches of the law of copyright. At the moment, the copyright holder holds all of the responsibility. What the entertainment companies are saying is: we want the middleman to also take on part of the burden of making sure that the law is not broken.

What might happen in the real world is that a copyright holder might tell a middleman, such as YouTube or Twitter, about an offending video or an offending link. The middleman would then immediately take it down – not wait until it had confirmed that a breach of copyright had actually taken place. Because of SOPA the middleman would act quickly, fearing that its entire domain could be taken offline. It seems to me that SOPA giving this kind of muscle to copyright holders is not such a bad thing.

Personally, I didn't find anything in those stories to alert me to censorship, so I have to take Dreyfus' word that this is what the US government intended to achieve. From my point of view, the law was a protective measure designed to stop people stealing their product. This, of course, continues to be a problem not only for big companies but also for individual creatives, many of whom work with big companies in the production of their work. Many do not, also, but online theft is also a problem for these people. Getting back to Swartz, many people in comments to my earlier blog posts made a fine distinction between the kind of material Swartz was targeting - where the public funding of reserach had made the publications he targeted essentially public domain, if you like - and the kind of work I'm talking about here. The problem is that I do not think that the majority of people are able to make this distinction. It's either "All theft of all material is ok," or "Theft of material should be prevented using the law". Most people do not even register the name Aaron Swartz on their mental radar. Hackers stealing information are either cool or they're criminals. Making a fine distinction an important part of a case to defend Swartz is, I think, unworkable given the nature of the public sphere. That's just the way it is.

Ok, so there will be people in the world, especially those in the geek community, who will be really revved up and ready to go on the back of what I've just said, but I want those people to just hold their horses and wait until I've finished. The way I've framed the issue is both credible and realistic. Your nice distinctions do not get through to the majority of people and that's all there is to it. Get over it and listen.

I also want to just gently grasp those enthusiastic geeks by their shoulders and turn them so that their attention is pointed away from the big companies that have been so active in trying to defend copyright material using laws like SOPA. Don't start telling me that copyright is too long or too onerous, for a start. Copyright is designed to protect the individual creative, so leave that one alone. And don't start telling me about middlemen in big companies who add no value and who are just vampires sucking the blood out of the poor consumer. Publishing and entertainment companies are free to organise themselves as they see fit, and it's just hubristic of anyone outside the industry to start to make judgements about their corporate structure. When a bunch of geeks successfully puts together a movie, a play, or a novel that people want to read, and fund and develop it themselves, then I'll start to listen to their views on the value that production companies can add to any particular work of art.

Now that I've steered those enthusiastic people away from the publishing and entertainment companies, I want them to look outside the glass box that they sit in alongside the individual creatives. Outside the box are lawmakers, public servants - a lot of them with very senior rank - and other people who are attached to government. Take a look at them because they're of a different order to the executives who work at publishing or entertainment companies. Those people out there are the ones who you need to focus on because the power they wield is many orders of magnitude greater than that which the CEO of Disney has at his command. I want you people to look at those guys and try to find ways to keep them accountable. They are the problem, not the execs in Mercs with 2-million-dollar houses in Malibu. And that's what Julian Assange was focused on.

On the point of Julian Assange, I wonder if more cannot be done by people in the geek community. As far as I can see there has been no appreciable effect from the efforts of Anonymous or any other vigilante hacker group, in terms of liberating Assange, setting up another WikiLeaks, or helping WikiLeaks to receive payments. The rival group that was talked about some years ago, to include people who left WikiLeaks, has not eventuated. Assange is still stuck in a ridiculous London apartment building. And Mastercard and Visa are still preventing individuals from donating money to WikiLeaks. Why?

Assange's Mexican stand-off has its gothic notes

The Embassy of Ecuador in London is in this building.

The ABC's Leigh Sales apparently said on her evening report last night that Julian Assange was wanted in Sweden on "rape charges", which just goes to show that if you throw enough mud some of it will stick. People who have followed the Assange debacle closely will know that no charges have been laid and that the WikiLeaks founder is merely wanted by Swedish authorities to answer questions. Such people might also know that the nature of the Swedish case against Assange is lamentably tainted by political partisanship; most of those involved in the case are active Social Democrats, which is the party that originally brought in Sweden's harsh rape laws. On top of this Assange has volunteered himself for questioning via videolink from London on a number of occasions; Sweden says "No, you must be in camera".

Suspicious minds might say that Sweden wants to use Assange as a trophy case to promote awareness of its new laws at home. Beyond that, however, there are strong indications that the US wants to extradite Assange to its territory in order to prosecute him for espionage; a secret grand jury has undoubtedly been convened in Virginia, a notoriously pro-defence state that would supply a reliably compliant jury to convict Assange if he were brought to trial there. It is hard to blame Assange for resorting, in mid June, to requesting sanctuary at the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He has been there ever since. Yesterday, the government of Ecuador said that it will grant political asylum to Assange. Immediately, the British authorities said that they would not grant safe passage to Assange so that he can leave the country.

It's a Mexican stand-off with added gothic elements, not least of which is the grotesque architecture of the Ecuadorian Embassy itself, a garish pile of red brick and white detail with turrets and special architectural features that belong to an earlier era than ours. It was probably built in the late 19th Century, a time when the gothic mode experienced a revival in Europe to match a vibrant historical consciousness that went along with the continent's economic prosperity, and a privileged sense of destiny. That's a sense of self-worth that is more readily attributed, now, to the United States.

Which is a serious opponent to have, and Assange's personal standing within the global community is taking severe hits, with one writer recently saying that he was the weak link in the WikiLeaks organisation. Which is a bit odd considering that Julian Assange set up WikiLeaks in the first place and is the organisation's only public face. You can't win, it seems. Perhaps the tension is just getting to be too much for global punditry; there have been a few imaginative souls who have envisioned a Jason Bourne-like escape from the gothic embassy, with Assange, guns blazing, taking out police officers guarding the building's exits. Supporters have rallied to the cause with fresh vigour, however, and one man even stationed himself outside the embassy throughout the night holding a video camera to provide a live feed to a global audience.

What remains certain is that all the drama has had a negative impact on the WikiLeaks organisation, which has been notably silent of late. Few new releases of documents have emerged. This situation must be of concern to WikiLeaks personnel, since WikiLeaks guarantees its contributors timely release of documents. So WikiLeaks' enemies are anyway achieving at least part of their goal by default; if you create enough disturbance you will shut down the machine.

Less certain is what the end result of Assange's successful asylum application will be. Watch now for aggressive demonstrations of intent from both British and Ecuadorian authorities, who will be exchanging public comments over the following weeks. If not longer. For the moment, Assange is once more a kind of sideshow feature in the global media, caught in an uncompromising web of clashing forces. It's important not to forget the reason why he is so notable. Freedom of information can be radical in nature. We all benefit when information is allowed to circulate freely.

Labor is failing its progressive base on key issues

Where does 'true' lie for Labor?
Perfectly level or obviously Left?

Julian Assange has made the Australian government look pretty silly by applying to Ecuador for asylum. While Australian foreign minister Bob Carr has gone out of his way to proffer support for an Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, imprisoned by Libyan authorities recently, similar advocacy on behalf of Assange has been consistently lacking. Most recently, a letter received from Australia's attorney-general, Nicola Roxon, was characterised by Assange supporters as  a ''declaration of abandonment".

Ms Roxon wrote: ''Australia would not expect to be a party to any extradition discussions that may take place between the United States and the United Kingdom or the United States and Sweden, as extradition is a matter of bilateral law enforcement co-operation.''

She also took the opportunity to advise Ms Robinson that ''should Mr Assange be convicted of any offence in the United States and a sentence of imprisonment imposed, he may apply for an international prisoner transfer to Australia''.

The Labor government here is falling over itself in its desire to alienate its progressive supporters. The Assange thing is just the latest in a string of signal policy failures, including Gillard's reactionary stance on marriage equality and also Carr's department's silence on the troubles in West Papua.

Julia Gillard told the Labor Party earlier this year that a conscience vote would be permitted on gay marriage. But because the Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has not reciprocated with the same offer to his MPs any division in Parliament on tabled laws covering the matter would certainly fail. It is time for Gillard to reverse her policy and cause Labor to take a definitive position on marriage equality.

As for West Papua, notable in the public sphere in Australia was a recent segment broadcast by Sky News in which Professor Peter King, an academic from Sydney University, Greens senator Richard Di Natale, and a West Papuan activist resident in Melbourne, Ronny Kareni, participated. It's the longest segment on West Papua that has been aired in Australia to date, and Helen Dalley, the Sky News presenter, evinced a noticeable level of scepticism about the nature of the conflict in the two Indonesian provinces in question, where ethnic Melanesians have been oppressed by the Indonesian army for decades.

Indonesia's media ban in West Papua is working. Unlike for Syria, unlike previously for Libya, there is no public consensus here on the failure of Indonesia's rule and so the onus rests on people who object to it to make their case in the international arena. An Australian government position on West Papua would quickly reverse this dynamic, but that looks unlikely at this point in time. More people will have to die, and activists will have to manage to smuggle out more video footage showing criminal behaviour by the Indonesian army, in order to convince middle Australia of the justice of their cause.

Truly, Labor is caught between two worlds. As the manufacturing sector diminishes in Australia, Labor's traditional heartland shrinks. By trying to shift to the Right to capture sufficient votes within Australia's political Centre, Labor is giving up ground to the Greens on a daily basis. The more errors they make in the eyes of progressives, the less sincere they appear, and so they risk sparking a total collapse in their support base.

Is Assange a journalist?

He says it in Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography (2011) repeatedly, that he's a journalist and that WikiLeaks is a media organisation. And he said it again a few days ago when he was interviewed for the ABC's evening Radio National, during which interview there was a degree of animosity on the part of the interviewer when Assange said, again, that WikiLeaks is a media organisation. The interviewer seemed to bridle, and it's in that reaction that I find the motivation for this post. Is Assange a journalist? Is WikiLeaks a media organisation?

You don't need to look hard to find evidence of editorial judgement, although WikiLeaks says it guarantees people who submit information that said information will be published promptly. And there's plenty of evidence that material is edited prior to release. The amount of work that's documented by Assange and others in the organisation is obvious. Preparing documents for release involves redacting information that might lead to any person mentioned in the documents receiving unwanted attention. "Unwanted attention" means, of course, in this case, a threat to their life. And preparing the Collateral Murder video for release involved adding subtitles, cleaning up the sound quality, and other things besides that made the item as strong as possible for viewers. So there's plenty of evidence that people involved in WikiLeaks perform editorial work on material they receive.

Then the material is published online. Publishing is what media organisations do. WikiLeaks also works with "journalists from other media organisations", they would claim, such as the Guardian and the New York Times. Assange said in the recent radio program I mentioned that WikiLeaks works with many fine journalists from around the world. But publishing organisations do not receive the same level of protection from prosecution as do media organisations.

When material is published, WikiLeaks always prepares an introductory web page describing what is in the release and offering readers some measure of interpretation so that they can quickly begin to read the material profitably. This introduction constitutes journalism in that it is editorial content that contains the aggregate knowledge of a person, and in that it is written for clarity  and ease of access. But compared to the large volumes of information WikiLeaks releases contains, it is a minimal effort.

As a journalist myself I at least wonder whether what Assange does can be described as journalism. He certainly provides leadership even if he doesn't write much. Journalists are basically people who know how to write and who write non-fiction in a way that facilitates, to the greatest degree, access by ordinary people to the material they are convering. It might be better to label WikiLeaks a publisher and Assange the chief editor.

What WikiLeaks does is so unusual and unprecendented it's no wonder that finding labels has turned out to be such a fraught business. In a sense WikiLeaks is an information broker. Not only that, but it relies on new technologies to facilitate the involvement of whistleblowers. The drop box WikiLeaks uses, that guarantees anonymity, is novel. When asked about his sources during the Radio National program Assange went quiet. Like a journalist would. A journalist must protect her sources for the same reasons WikiLeaks must: without this measure your operation fails because nobody will trust you any more.

Senator Assange of the Greens?

This story should get enough exposure without my blogging about it, but I think it's going to come off the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald later today. The paper's Phillip Dorling has spoken with Assange about his plans in politics, that were announced a week or so ago, and has written a story that talks about how that would work.

It might be useful here to say something about how voting works in Australia, especially as regards the Senate, or Upper House. In Australia, each state fields 12 senators. Senators are chosen by popular ballot, as are members of the Lower House. But senators are elected for a period of six years, rather than three. Half of the Senate is reelected at the same time as each cohort of Lower House members. Half stays on. This system is designed to ensure balance in the Senate, which is called in Australia the "house of review", so that no one party can garner an absolute majority of both houses of Parliament. That's the theory anyway.

The Senate is interesting because votes are not reallocated according to pre-established preferences. Preferential allocation of votes is designed to ensure a clear victory for one party or the other in each seat. This happens for Lower House candidates. So for example while the Australian Greens have only one Lower House member at the moment they command six senators in the Upper House. Their Upper House standing better reflects the fact that the party usually commands between 12 and 15 percent of the popular vote. In the Lower House ballot, their votes are assigned to another party because the Greens are generally unable to demonstrate that they can command an absolute majority in the seat.

That's enough about Australia's political machinery. More importantly, Assange has not announced which way his allegiance would fall in a Senate run, but in this story he says that he is considering an alliance with a party. Running as an independent is also a possibility, as is establishing a separate political party. If he were to run with the crowd it could only be the Greens he would choose to partner with.

Mr Assange was sharply critical of the federal government and the opposition, saying there was "very little difference between Liberal and Labor, especially once they get into government. Labor suffers more from cronyism, while the Liberals care more for big business".

Apart from this perception, the Greens are the only political party that has tried to support Assange during his current adversity. The Greens have been talking with the Swedish government, for a start. But also their policies vis-a-vis personal freedoms are closer to those of Assange than are those of any other party. Looking at it from inside the beast, I would say that the Greens are Assange's only viable and credible option in terms of an alliance.

Was Gillard put in power by Obama?

Which wheel is bigger?

Barack Obama nominated Jeffrey Bleich as ambassador to Australia on 11 September 2009. Bleich is a lawyer and an old friend of the US president, which was apposite as his legal skills have no doubt been well-exercised by US attitudes expressed since the fallout from WikiLeaks' Collateral Murder release. That happened on 4 April 2010, and it galvanised the US administration, which quickly moved to jail Private Bradley Manning when evidence apparently emerged that he had had a hand in the release. Manning remains in custody and his military trial continues. There has been movement in regard to WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, too.

Closer to home, there was a lot of movement when Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister on 24 June 2010. One of the major players in that transition was Mark Arbib, who had been a senator since July 2008 (he has now resigned), representing New South Wales. A diplomatic cable of 20 July 2009 released by WikiLeaks on 28 October 2010 details Arbib's rise to prominence and also acknowledges his usefulness to the US administration.

We have found that Arbib is an astute observer and able conversant in the nuts and bolts of U.S. politics. He understands the importance of supporting a vibrant relationship with the U.S. while not being too deferential. We have found him personable, confident and articulate. A strong supporter of the alliance, he has met with us repeatedly throughout his political rise.

The cable also notes Arbib's usefulness to Kevin Rudd: "Arbib successfully delivered crucial votes in Rudd's December 2006 defeat of Kim Beazley for the ALP leadership." But when the numbers started to shift, Arbib did too. It is also likely that Rudd's decision to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq, which took place on 31 July 2009, caused the US to alter its opinion of Rudd, leading to the recall of Bleich's predecessor, and leading to Arbib orchestrating the coup which would remove Rudd from office. Even more likely, it was the threat that WikiLeaks represented that led to the US recruiting Arbib's help. The US was losing patience with Rudd, as a 28 November 2008 cable shows.

The cable lists five "foreign policy mistakes" Rudd committed since coming to office in 2007. Australian newspapers have focused more on this cable's calling Rudd a "control freak" but the expression is attributed in the cable to "senior civil servants, journalists and parliamentarians". McCallum appears to be merely reporting what others have said. Rudd's weak point was in foreign policy. This combined with the Iraq withdrawal and the emergence of the threat of WikiLeaks, to spark moves by the US for regime change in Australia. A 13 June 2008 cable released by WikiLeaks illustrates US awareness of its influence:

Although long appearing ambivalent about the Australia-US Alliance, Gillard's actions since she became the Labor Party number two indicate an understanding of its importance. Poloffs had little contact with her when she was in opposition but since the election, Gillard has gone out of her way to assist the Embassy. She attended a breakfast hosted by the Ambassador for U/S Nick Burns who visited Canberra just days after the election. At our request, she agreed to meet a visiting member of the National Labor Relations Board, after prior entreaties by the board member's Australian hosts had been rebuffed. Gillard is now a regular attendee at the American Australian Leadership Dialogues (AALD), and will be the principal government representative to the AALD meeting in Washington at the end of June. (COMMENT: Although warm and engaging in her dealings with American diplomats, it's unclear whether this change in attitude reflects a mellowing of her views or an understanding of what she needs to do to become leader of the ALP. It is likely a combination of the two. Labor Party officials have told us that one lesson Gillard took from the 2004 elections was that Australians will not elect a PM who is perceived to be anti-American. END COMMENT)

The emphasis is mine. It is disturbing but perhaps not surprising that the US ambassador is able to succinctly express the underlying realities of US-Australian relations at the highest level. It is one thing to say that "Australians will not elect a PM who is perceived to be anti-American" and quite another to imply that good relations with US diplomats are the price of the support an Australian politician can expect from colleagues such as Arbib, who called Gillard in the same cable "one of the most pragmatic politicians in the ALP". The right stuff indeed.

Gillard was now prime minister and the US remained busy containing the fallout from Collateral Murder when the Afghan Diaries appeared on 25 July 2010. Less than a month later, on 20 August 2010, the sex allegations in Sweden against Assange materialised. Stratfor analyst Parsley Bayless confirmed the connection when he wrote on 1 December 2010 in an internal email released by WikiLeaks:

Also, Karen had a very good point about the sex charges. Weren't those dropped months ago after the initial allegations? What do ya know, after the US explictly warned him time and again to stop publishing the cables, it pops back up all of a sudden...

But WikiLeaks did not stop. On 23 October 2010 the Iraq War Logs appeared, followed by the Diplomatic Cables on 28 October. The US administration managed to get Paypal and the credit card companies to cut off the supply of money in December, but WikiLeaks has not gone away. It was clear that a friendly government would need to be found to extradite Assange upon request of the secret grand jury that has been established in Alexandria, Virginia, and tasked with prosecuting a case against Assange.

Gillard has been busy promoting US interests in this regard. In July 2011 the parliament passed what have been called the WikiLeaks Amendments. The law is called the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Act 2011. It significantly broadens ASIO’s remit by enabling ASIO to spy not just on foreign governments and entities that they control, or foreign political organisations. It lets ASIO spy on people or organisations outside Australia. The grounds on which spying would be allowed has also broadened.

Another law, the Extradition and Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Amendment Act 2012 was passed earlier this month. Jeffrey Bleich prefigured this move when, in a story published on 12 November 2011 while talking about WikiLeaks, he said:

We will have to see whether there is an offence against any person, and Australia will have to evaluate its own extradition obligations.

Extradition has now been made easier, with the 'political' defence watered down and placed under the control of internal departmental regulations. Any "terrorist" offence now automatically leads to extradition. There's more too. A proposed law, the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill, would make it easier for foreign law enforcement agencies to request data that relates to Australians, to be used overseas.

Senator Carr, meet Senator Assange

Foreign Minister Bob Carr delivers his
maiden speech in the Australian Senate.

It appears that the Australian Labor Party in government has adopted as policy the avoidance of public support for Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. I saw a photo yesterday of a letter to a constituent signed by Senator John Faulkner in which he said he would not make a media statement about Assange, but in which he reiterated that the government is providing consular assistance to Assange, as it would to any Australian citizen who found themselves in trouble overseas. This has been the government's line for some time and it looks as though it will not change.

In related news, yesterday Bob Carr, the new foreign minister, made his maiden speech in the Senate. Some of that speech has been excerpted from Hansard and published on the National Times website. It's interesting reading. Going back to first principles seems, for Carr, to be something of a standard modus operandi, and the speech is peppered with details taken from history to illustrate his main points. Carr has a Bachelor of Arts with honours in history from the University of New South Wales, after all. But he's also bookish. He reads widely and is considered something of an expert on US history.

I have been reading Christopher Hitchens' Hitch-22: A Memoir (2010), which chronicles aspects of the journalist's life such as his US naturalisation. It's not clear when Hitchens left the UK permanently to settle in the US to take up the offer of a job writing for a US magazine. But it is clear that he admired aspects of US political law and lore. Swatting for the test that all prospective US citizens must take, Hitchens went back to the bookshelves to read some of the foundational documents, including the US Constitution. This seems like something that Carr, too, would choose to do on a Saturday evening. Hitchens said he enjoyed the experience and I think it would be something that Carr would also prefer to do in place of some, more routine, passtimes.

Then there was Carr on the 7.30 Report last night going through his paces for the first time in front of the Australian public. Again, the new appointee demonstrated laudable fluency in respect of historical precedents for current politics. NSW residents would have been familiar with the former premier's easy delivery; hardly a pause between understanding the question and offering an answer. Carr is a practised performer in parliament and in the media. For bookish Australians he also promises to provide at least entertainment because of how he comes across publicly, if not satisfaction because of the matter of what he says.

One day Senator Carr may answer a speech in parliament by Senator Assange. Also bookish, if Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Biography (2011), which I have recently finished reading, is anything to go by, Assange commands a literary resource base that is possibly closer to that of Hitchens than that of Carr. But you never know. Well-read conservatives could plausibly point to the same texts as well-read radicals when making salient points during an argument with an adversary. The history of the West is replete with useful texts for those who place value on the concepts that tend to be used to define contemporary politics, such as freedom, democracy, and good government. Assange says that he is interested in improving government. I am sure that Carr would readily say the same thing, if asked.

Bob Carr sorry for Assange, but doesn't admire him

Is the casual Carr of the blog
to dematerialise utterly, forever?

It doesn't require much thought to regret that with Bob Carr's elevation to the federal ministry as foreign minister, his blogging is unlikely to continue. Started in May 2010, Thoughtlines with Bob Carr took a broad perspective, roping in for commentary a wide range of topics. Carr felt qualified to talk about everything from National Gallery exhibitions of Renaissance art to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. As a man with an interest in history and Western civilisation who was once a journalist, you should expect nothing less but it's to Carr's credit that he stuck his neck out for so long. Is his neck made of stern stuff? Now, those days of casual comment and counter-riposte are probably over.

As for Assange, Carr holds a composite view that seems to be at odds with the views of both supporters and detractors. For a start, he called Assange "an under-educated [egomaniac]" for WikiLeaks (post of 17 December 2010), which he regretted because "Lives could depend on ... confidentiality." In a post dated 13 February 2011, Carr explained his rationale more fully:

Daniel Ellsberg did not breach secrecy for its own sake. He was acutely conscious of the risks of disclosure and did not circulate documents betraying live diplomatic efforts to end the fighting. The Wikileaks dumped on the Web allow endless mischief. They can be data-mined and pattern-mined by the Chinese and private companies. Amoral – nothing in common with Ellsberg’s intervention aimed at exposing US lies about Vietnam and ending the killing.

Some might counter that the difference between the Pentagon Papers (what the material Ellsberg revealed is called) and WikiLeaks disclosures is merely a matter of scale, and that Carr's rearward view is tinted rosy merely by dint of the mellowing effect of time's passing. But Carr, it seems, believes that modern technology has changed the game, so that the potential for undesirable damage has now increased to a critical point. (Carr doesn't include a search tool on his blog, probably for the same reason; to find blog posts here you have to go to the monthly lists and scan.) Nevertheless, Carr takes a compassionate view regarding the treatment of Assange, although we must reason that the scale of his empathy is tempered by the association he makes between one element of the Assange case and a personal hobby-horse of his about a charter of rights (he doesn't think we need one). On 2 February 2012 Carr explained his thinking:

If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times. Australia, the advocates said, had an inferior rights record to Europe because all the countries of Europe were stitched up in its charter of rights.

...

And how do you explain the treatment of Julian Assange under European jurisdictions, that of the UK and Sweden?

He goes on to list his objections to the Swedish process in respect of Assange. The prosecutor is the same person as the judge, he scoffs. The hearing would be held in secret, without the presence of the public. The accusation (he says "charge" although there has been no formal charge) involves rape but the sex was consensual. The complainants talked together about revenge. "Hang on," Carr muses.

None of the above happens here. Would anyone disagree that Assange would be better off in an Australian court? In a system, that is, without a charter or a bill of rights?

Assange, in free-fall, needs people to speak out

Julian Assange, tall poppy,
London, November 2011

It's been said that Julian Assange is the most famous Australian currently in the world and you'd have to be pretty isolated not to at least ask yourself if that were true. For some, Assange has been a presence for several years. I remember watching him, via a live link, at a podium in some European country in 2009 talking about what he was passionate about, and because he is Australian I paid special attention. Jumping around on stage, Assange gave off a geeky vibe. Another reason to listen. Then there was what he was talking about. Yet another reason to pay attention. Pretty soon, people started to pay a lot of attention to Assange.

Julian Assange knew he was going to attract attention. He knew that he would be a person of interest for many people. One segment of his audience cheered at first, and this was the big media franchises: the New York Times and the Guardian in the UK. Here was this solitary crusader for free speech with strong opinions about right and wrong, but instead of the usual blogger or leftie protester, Assange was delivering the goods in a way that forced the media franchises to sit up and listen. Because he wanted to maximise the impact of the information WikiLeaks possessed, Assange decided to work with the media companies. For their part, the media cos chosen to participate in the preparation of material for publication were enthusiastic. At first at least. But Assange had his own way of doing things and it seems that he didn't pay enough attention to the needs of these companies. Never get between a reporter and an exclusive!

The same self-reliance that made it difficult for WikiLeaks to work with the media companies had enabled Assange to reach the point at which he had something that they wanted a part of. But as a sole operator, Assange failed to ensure that he could rely on the media companies to support him if things got complicated, which they did when he was accused of rape in Sweden. Things got even more complex when a US Army private, Bradley Manning, was arrested for allegedly giving information to WikiLeaks. Because of this new event the US government began to put together a case against Assange in Virginia. They put Manning in solitary confinement and then they put him up before a military tribunal, hoping to extract information from him that would implicate Assange in the process of leaking the material that caused such a sensation when it was released in early 2010.

It's all a bit cinematic, in fact. Everyone has let go and Assange is in a sort of free-fall, heading toward the crushing jaws of some infernal judicial machine that aims to inflict maximum harm. It seems the only link that is keeping Assange from falling is his successful appeal, in the UK, to take his case against extradition to Sweden to the Supreme Court in London. Of course, lots of people are baracking for Julian Assange, some of them people with a high profile. But the Australian government has failed to take up the suggestion that it approach the US government on Assange's behalf. One Greens senator has talked with the Swedish authorities. But the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, and the foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, remain silent. Gillard's contribution, when the merde hit the fan, was that Assange's activities were "illegal". The Australian federal police looked into it and said that, no, they were not. But the pollies here stay mum.

It's hard not to pass some of the blame onto the media. Assange was cool and they were happy to work with him when he had something they wanted for themselves. But he pissed them off and now they also remain largely silent as Assange dangles helplessly in space desperately holding onto that last link to the normal world. The media companies have placed their pride in the balance with the truth and found that their self-esteem is more important than are the principles that animated Julian Assange in the first place. Thanks for the footage and the lists and the stories but, sorry matey, you're on your own now. Their embarrassment, like the embarrassment the US government felt when the information WikiLeaks possessed became public, is of greater moment than are the values they - and the United States - routinely use to justify their actions: truth, justice, transparency, accountability.

Assange is being consumed by the organisations he has come into contact with, not the least of these being the global public. He is being martyred for his ideals, and while many people experience feelings of horror as he dangles in space, even more do nothing. As the days tick off on the calendar the silence in official quarters sounds more and more ominous to our ears. If they will do nothing and say nothing, it is up to us to at least say something so that people in positions of influence at least take a few moments to think about what they are doing. So that, if Assange does go to court in Sweden, they can hear us complain. And if Assange does go to court in the US, they can also hear us complain.

WikiLeaks counters corrosive effects of routine media management

It's really funny. News emerges that Julian Assange's case before Britain's High Court has resulted in a refusal by that body to prevent his extradition to Sweden. There's the prospect of appeal, but little hope that such action will be successful. Meanwhile, I go apeshit on Twitter - in all-caps - trumpeting the undesirability of Assange's extradition to Sweden to face rape charges. And then ... Nothing. Not a peep from anyone. No retweets, no replies, no comments. I get one share on Facebook, and that's it. All my energy wasted, all of it washing up against the crushing apathy of the general population like a moth crushed against the radiator grille of an articulated truck thundering down the highway at 100km per hour. It's depressing.

But why is Assange important? Why should we care, even now after the bulk of the scandals have passed over our heads and disappeared into the aether like a flock of migrating bloody swifts? I feel special, is all I can say in defense of the attitude I adopted on learning of Assange's failure in Britain's High Court. As a freelance journalist I have had my share of experiences with government spin doctors and, let me tell you, the reality in that low-level arena reflects the reality of high-level government secrecy in its most ominous form. Media management is pervasive, even if not always extreme. It may not always warrant headlines, but it's always regrettable. If you work as a journalist - especially if you work as a journalist outside the mainstream press - you soon learn the rules.

The term "facelsss men" is a bit overused in Australia, but in the case of media operatives it's quite deserved. These people will always try to organise things so that their operating unit - say, a government department - appears in the best light. I'll provide a few examples to illustrate how this works, and what it means for published stories - the same type of stories that everyday people rely on to stay informed of major (and minor) events. Here's why I went apeshit.

Example one is a government department that I contact because I'm writing a story. My angle is likely to be critical of the government. At least that's the way it plays out when I talk to the media guy. Anyway, I email a few questions to him and within half a day there's a response in my inbox. The response is written. There's no hope of going back to the media guy to ask for an interview. I'm never going to get it. So I incorporate the comments from the "departmental spokesperson" into the story. I do more work and find I want to go back to the department for further comment. The media guy shoots back an email in which he says, basically: "look mate, I've spent enough time on this request and you've got your answers, so piss off." I piss off, finish the story and submit it to the editor. It gets published.

Example two is even more hilarious. I'm working on a long investigative piece and for the purposes of gathering information, one day, I visit a facility of a government health provider - not a department, just a minor operating unit. The woman I talk with tells me, to my face and without prompting, that there is a conflict of interest between her unit's service provision and the fact that the unit is funded through gambling revenues that are channelled through a government deparment. I contact the media person and send a list of questions - as requested. Six months later I manage to line up the interview. When the woman I initially talked to - who I am now interviewing on the record - starts to venture into proscribed territory, the media person says "we can't talk about that" and the interview soon ends. I do not write this story. It's too hard with my limited resources.

Example three is another government agency, related to the discpline of science. I do an interview with a reseracher, after which I send her the draft story for comment. She marks up the draft with change tracking turned "on" and sends that back to me. I unreservedly incorporate all her changes (even ones within quotes that she had given me, on the record) then she tells me I have to submit the result to the media guy. I send it off dutifully. I'm still working on this story.

I could go on. There are many, many more examples of a like nature in my experience. Such tales of routine control of information destined for the media and for publication are too normal for a journalist to even comment on. In extreme circumstances - say, access to asylum seekers being controlled ruthlessly by the federal Department of Immigration or, another example, access to field operations that are being undertaken by the Department of Defense - the media management takes on a Mephistophelian character. The aim of all this manipulation (it can be just as simple as a request to "see the story before it's published") is to make sure that the government is portrayed in as positive a light as possible. In the worst cases the same tendency aims to cover up malpractice on the part of government operatives. This is where WikiLeaks steps in.

WikiLeaks deserves our support in the same way that good journalists do: they're on the side of the angels. Large, well-funded organisations are constantly managing messages that will appear in the media in order to achieve aims that are driven by internal policies. The scope of control exercised by these organisations over information destined for the media is overwhelming and so routine as to be beyond question. What WikiLeaks does is to question the dynamic that rules relationships between governments and the media. As such, it performs a unique and invaluable service from which all of us ultimately benefit, and it deserves out support. Support Julian Assange. Stop him from being extradited to Virginia to face a US grand jury. You owe it to yourself.