Australians kept in dark over privacy law

27 Jul 10 | Uncategorized

There’s a moment in political satire The Thick Of It when beleaguered shadow minister Peter Mannion showcases the stereotypical attitude of politicians towards the general public: “I’ve met them.” he says, “They’re fucking horrible”.

Unfortunately, the Australian government has decided to demonstrate that this attitude isn’t just comedic invention. Displaying similar disdain for the great unwashed, they’ve refused to divulge their proposals for a new law to monitor phone and internet traffic (broadly similar to the UK’s discarded Communications Bill of 2008, which was memorably described by Index on Censorship trustee Ken Macdonald as the precursor to “an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information”).

What’s even odder is that the Australian government’s  justification for their decision involves claiming that publication would lead to “premature unnecessary debate”: it’s unthinkable, evidently, that citizens in a parliamentary democracy should be able to monitor or discuss the legislative process.

The document in question has in fact been opened to the public, but has had more than 90 per cent of its text redacted. In its current form [pdf], we get a cover page, some general blurb on the theme of data retention, and then page after page of squiggly black marker pen. In an attempt to remove anything which might offer any kind of insight, the government have excised the contents page, parts of the glossary, and even an innocuous introductory section answering the question “How important is communications data?”. In what may be some kind of bleak bureaucratic joke, they’ve kindly retained the margin numbering for the reams of blank paragraphs and bullet points which follow.

What’s really depressing about this decision is not the inane practice of agreeing to release a document then obscuring all of its content, but that the only justification offered for such action is the avoidance of public debate. One might reasonably expect the deletion of sensitive materials if there are issues of national security at stake, but no one’s suggesting that this is the case here. Deleting material for the sake of saving the government from having to explain it to the electorate is pretty dubious. Indeed, I’m not sure whether any kind of democracy should view public discussion as “unnecessary”; likewise, protestations over privacy seem to ring fairly hollow when the laws being outlined potentially involve the infringement of individual privacy on a huge scale.

If this decision is indeed about convenience rather than necessity, then it displays exactly the kind of arrogant superciliousness lampooned by The Thick Of It. How terribly impolite of us, this judgment seems to say, not to recognise the nuisance we cause for politicians by wanting details of the laws they’re planning to introduce. How needlessly we frustrate them with calls for freedom of information, public discourse or democratic accountability. It’d all be much easier, much simpler, if we just gave up claims to involvement in their work and simply allow them, under cover of darkness and marker pen, to decide what’s best for everyone else.