3 December 2013

ASIO raids Bernard Collaery? (with Brandis statement)

3 December 2013 | johnboy

The ABC has word of an ASIO raid here in Canberra:

A lawyer representing East Timor in its spying case against Australia says his office has been raided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Bernard Collaery says two agents seized electronic and paper files this afternoon from his law practice in Canberra.

He says the agents identified themselves as working for ASIO, and would not show his employees the search warrant because it related to national security.

East Timor has accused the Australia Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) of covertly recording Timorese ministers and officials during oil-and-gas negotiations in Dili in 2004.

Mr Collaery also believes that a key witness in the Timorese case – a former spy turned whistleblower – has been arrested in a separate raid in Canberra.

UPDATE: The Attorney-General has confirmed the raids but is less than convincing as to their motivations:

I confirm that today, ASIO executed search warrants at addresses in Canberra, and documents and electronic media were taken into possession. The warrants were issued by me on the grounds that the documents contained intelligence related to security matters.

I have seen reports this evening containing allegations that the warrants were issued in order to affect or impede the current arbitration between Australia and Timor-Leste at The Hague. Those allegations are wrong.

I have instructed ASIO that the material taken into possession is not under any circumstances to be communicated to those conducting those proceedings on behalf of Australia.

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IrishPete9:44 am 06 Dec 13

bigfeet said :

IrishPete said :

I quote: “ASSISTANT: They were filming it, explained to me that they were from ASIO and there were AFP officers there too. Gave me a notice that was obviously some sort of warrant, had bits blacked out on it so they weren’t allowed to give me a copy of it. They explained to me they were there for security reasons.”

Oh…so they did actually show a copy of the warrant after all.

Define “show”? Not being allowed to keep a copy of it, even though it had the supposedly secret bits blacked out, doesn’t cut it my book. There is no doubt a legally acceptable definition of “show” in these circumstances.

Mr Collaery and his staffer were both being interviewed, these were not written prepared statements, so their words may not have been entirely consistent with each other, and we don’t know which is more accurate. Personally I would have thought the barrister himself would be the more reliable source, given his qualifications, but he wasn’t present and there may have been some “Chinese Whispers” at work.

How is anyone supposed to challenge the legality of a warrant that they haven’t been give a copy of? Or are you suggesting that the legailty of a warrant from a politician (the Attorney General) shouldn’t be open to challenge?

I presume the blacked out bits would have been the references to Woodside, Downer, “confiscate anything that might incriminate me or my mates” and so on…

This incident is extremely reminiscent of the illegal detention of the Guardian reporter’s partner at Heathrow Airport and the confiscation of all his electronic devices, containing material that the authorities knew was already copied all over the world already anyway. It achieved nothing but intimidation but, more importantly, made intelligence agencies and police look like they are out of control, acting illegally, incompetent, heavy handed and (in the Guardian case) UK authorities are at the behest of the USA intelligence agencies. .

At this rate can we expect the ASIS whistleblower who had the late attack of conscience, to be locked up in isolation the secret cell in the basement of the new ASIO bunker, to conveniently commit suicide (like Mr Zygier in Israel)?

bigfeet6:28 am 06 Dec 13

IrishPete said :

I quote: “ASSISTANT: They were filming it, explained to me that they were from ASIO and there were AFP officers there too. Gave me a notice that was obviously some sort of warrant, had bits blacked out on it so they weren’t allowed to give me a copy of it. They explained to me they were there for security reasons.”

Oh…so they did actually show a copy of the warrant after all.

CraigT6:08 am 06 Dec 13

IrishPete said :

I wasn’t going to make too big a deal of the fact that the current ASIO chief was the ASIS chief at the time of the bugging (and might have something to hide), and the former ASIO chief is now George Brandis’ Chief of Staff (a political position, not a public service one; and Brandis’ mate Downer has something to hide too). But since First Dog On The Moon has raised all this, I will suggest that you don’t need a tin foil hat to smell conflicts of interests here, possibly worse.

IP

They’ve now taken a bite of something that is going to prove very hard to chew.

The first rule in making a threat is to make it credible:
BRANDIS: “no lawyer can invoke the principles of lawyer-client privilege to excuse participation, whether as principal or accessory, in offences against the Commonwealth.”
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-defends-asio-raids-on-lawyer-over-spy-claim-20131204-2yq98.html#ixzz2md3xlFpq

“Mr Collaery challenged Senator Brandis to make his remarks outside Parliament.”
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/intelligence-agency-failed-to-investigate-spying-claims-lawyer-bernard-collaery-claims-20131204-2yr3m.html#ixzz2md3fBi9J

IrishPete10:37 pm 05 Dec 13

bigfeet said :

Pork Hunt said :

How can anyone have faith in a system where they knock on your door, say they have a warrant but can’t show it to you?
What a crock of s***.

This is nothing new or sinister. A search warrant can be (and has always been able to be) issued to police (and presumably intelligence agencies from this example) completely verbally. They can be done by phone, radio, Skype, face-to-face or almost any other means.

Its just that usually the easiest way is for the police officer to present their reasons in writing to a judge and then the judge signs the authority.

But it is just as lawful if they give that authority verbally.

.

.

and from AM http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2013/s3904457.htm

I quote: “ASSISTANT: They were filming it, explained to me that they were from ASIO and there were AFP officers there too. Gave me a notice that was obviously some sort of warrant, had bits blacked out on it so they weren’t allowed to give me a copy of it. They explained to me they were there for security reasons.”

Of course she might be lying. I mean, why would she not want to be named? That’s only the prerogative of ASIO agents.

I wasn’t going to make too big a deal of the fact that the current ASIO chief was the ASIS chief at the time of the bugging (and might have something to hide), and the former ASIO chief is now George Brandis’ Chief of Staff (a political position, not a public service one; and Brandis’ mate Downer has something to hide too). But since First Dog On The Moon has raised all this, I will suggest that you don’t need a tin foil hat to smell conflicts of interests here, possibly worse.

Skidbladnir10:36 pm 05 Dec 13

Oh Masquara, you ignorant fool.
Privacy isn’t about having “nothing to hide”, and nor is it about being forced to “show us everything you have and we’ll tell you if none of it is interesting yet, but we’ll keep a copy just in case”.
Privacy protection is about recognising that your personal & corporate privacy interest isn’t something subject to a value trading bargain of cost/benefit or a security harm minimisation strategy.

The metadata surrounding the listing of transaction, locations, and parties are all you want for finding the pattern in stories.
Assembling narrative and plot can be left until later, if we care.
Actual transcripts are way too detailed, and more often than not, really boring.

E.g.
She has a prepaid plan, the most popular one among her demographic.
She makes no calls before 7am on weekdays.
Friday and Saturday nights have previously been quite busy in terms of calls from friends, but recently that pattern has died off.
People her own age frequently call her on Saturday mornings for up to 25 minutes.
Most mornings she receives a call or two.
Most days she starts by sending a few SMS to friends and coworkers, sometimes receiving one or two calls when she is at Woden Interchange.

One day she calls her doctor’s office, and at 11am she calls her one of her most frequently contacted friends.
At 1130 she calls a man who, since three months earlier, has been largely contacting her after 10pm.
20 minutes later she receives an SMS while at a cafe.
Ten minutes later, she calls ACT Family Planning.

Each individual call is fairly innocuous. No one call is representative of a larger pattern.
But with a big enough constellation, you can infer enough narrative and plot without needing detail.

You might not be afraid because you aren’t (knowingly) contacting terrorists, but the good have everything to fear when their data patterns end up in the wrong hands. And its made worse if you consider that the party you provided data to were trustworthy at that point in time, but they may later share that data with parties you didn’t want informed.

Your government might not want to hurt you, but it certainly can without meaning to.

(PS: If you have nothing to hide then you’re incredibly boring. Can we all see your credit card bills just to make sure? Can we photograph you naked, own the photograph, and share it with your neighbours?)

IrishPete10:30 pm 05 Dec 13

bigfeet said :

Pork Hunt said :

How can anyone have faith in a system where they knock on your door, say they have a warrant but can’t show it to you?
What a crock of s***.

This is nothing new or sinister. A search warrant can be (and has always been able to be) issued to police (and presumably intelligence agencies from this example) completely verbally. They can be done by phone, radio, Skype, face-to-face or almost any other means.

Its just that usually the easiest way is for the police officer to present their reasons in writing to a judge and then the judge signs the authority.

But it is just as lawful if they give that authority verbally.
.

Will the Police State apologists please do some background reading before leaping to the defence of the ASIO raid?

I suggest you start with the ABC PM reports (and probably AM and World Today as well). Here’s the first one: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3904298.htm

I quote: “BERNARD COLLAERY: The agents who effected the warrant refused to give to my senior law clerk of my practice a copy of the warrant, saying it contained national security secrets.”

That means a written warrant existed but they refused to show it. Of course, you may prefer to claim that no written warrant existed, in which case they were lying to Mr Collaery’s staff.

Masquara9:18 pm 05 Dec 13

Leaving aside the specifics of this case, I’m perfectly happy for the police to take my phone call metadata. That’s because I am not calling terrorist sympathisers, or meth dealers. If capturing metadata is keeping us safe from terrorist attacks, I have nothing to hide and I am all for it. The security agencies are not investigating the specifics of our phone calls – they aren’t interested unless the data adds up to terrorist or gang activity.

bigfeet8:30 pm 05 Dec 13

Pork Hunt said :

How can anyone have faith in a system where they knock on your door, say they have a warrant but can’t show it to you?
What a crock of s***.

This is nothing new or sinister. A search warrant can be (and has always been able to be) issued to police (and presumably intelligence agencies from this example) completely verbally. They can be done by phone, radio, Skype, face-to-face or almost any other means.

Its just that usually the easiest way is for the police officer to present their reasons in writing to a judge and then the judge signs the authority.

But it is just as lawful if they give that authority verbally.

LSWCHP7:29 pm 05 Dec 13

Pork Hunt said :

How can anyone have faith in a system where they knock on your door, say they have a warrant but can’t show it to you?
What a crock of s***.

Correct. This is outrageous. A day of shame for this country.

I never thought I’d see the day in Australia when government goons are quite openly harassing people and confiscating property without producing a warrant, in a blatant attempt to conceal government malfeasance and cover the arses of the rich and powerful.

It’s the sort of crap you read about in tin-pot third world dictatorships, and you shake your head and say “Thank God we live in a democratic western state where this would never happen because we’re protected by the rule of law”. Not any more, it would seem.

I thought the Abbott government would be just another government, in the sense of being irrelevant to the day to day activities of ordinary people. I didn’t like a lot of their policies, and I hold Mr Abbott in low regard, but that’s as far as it went. I was prepared to put up with them because that’s how a democracy is supposed to work.

But what I feel when reading this sort of crap is profound anger. I don’t want the f*cking Gestapo knocking at my door or anybody elses at 3am, so for the first time in my life I think that I may need to join a political party, and do something to actively oppose these people. Of course, there’s every chance that actively opposing this government will increase the chances of the goons coming around, but a man’s gotta draw the line somewhere.

I must admit though, that it’s nice to have soothing and reassuring voices like Baggy on the scene to explain that everything the government does is in our best interests and for our own safety, and there could be no possible trace of corruption associated with anything they do because all politicians and all government goons are paragons of virtue who obey all laws and moral principles all of the time.

So, if you believe him, when the hard faced men in suits come to visit, just bend over forward and splay your buttocks, because their cause is righteous, and you must’ve done something, sometime, somewhere to deserve it.

Pork Hunt5:56 pm 05 Dec 13

How can anyone have faith in a system where they knock on your door, say they have a warrant but can’t show it to you?
What a crock of s***.

pajs3:03 pm 05 Dec 13

Baggy said :

pajs said :

Baggy said :

IrishPete said :

To the man on the street, or the pub test, it looks like the intelligence services are off the leash, or the leash they are being given is too long, and some daft “convention” is simply pouring petrol on the fire. Make the buggers subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, secret scrutiny if it has to be.

IP

The entire operation (due to media) will likely be subject to scrutiny from the IGIS, as well as the ANAO as well as the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (which, by the way, is largely secret). So, you have your wish already, the buggers are subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.

Sensational media reporting doesn’t help Joe at the pub have an idea of the facts of oversight. The Australian intelligence community is most certainly NOT off the leash, in any way shape or form.

I will make a suggestion though, and will retract if found wrong – I expect that not a single journalist who has written about this story has contacted IGIS, and would in fact go so far as to say that not one is even aware of her or her office.

Start retracting, I’d suggest: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australian-intelligence-watchdog-accused-of-failing-to-act-on-claims-of-east-timor-bugging-20131204-2yr45.html

I like the bit about the whistleblower having previously contacted the IGIS.

The journalist did not contact her office, merely repeated Mr Collaery’s claim that the witness had done so. He did, however, claim the office is “poorly resourced” and I’ve been unable to source that, or the other claim of complaints against IGIS for failing to investigate complaints. I’d like to think a journo would at least try to check the veracity of the first claim, and that he did – but just failed to mention it in the article.

It’s unclear whether the journalist knew of IGIS before interviewing Mr Collaery.

So, I’ll retract it, although there remains no evidence anywhere of a journalist contacting IGIS regarding this story.

The last sentence of the article reads: “IGIS did not respond to questions.”

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johnboy3:07 pm 05 Dec 13

I like this take on it:

http://t.co/oos5ap99Sj

Reply Hide replies

Baggy2:52 pm 05 Dec 13

pajs said :

Baggy said :

IrishPete said :

To the man on the street, or the pub test, it looks like the intelligence services are off the leash, or the leash they are being given is too long, and some daft “convention” is simply pouring petrol on the fire. Make the buggers subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, secret scrutiny if it has to be.

IP

The entire operation (due to media) will likely be subject to scrutiny from the IGIS, as well as the ANAO as well as the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (which, by the way, is largely secret). So, you have your wish already, the buggers are subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.

Sensational media reporting doesn’t help Joe at the pub have an idea of the facts of oversight. The Australian intelligence community is most certainly NOT off the leash, in any way shape or form.

I will make a suggestion though, and will retract if found wrong – I expect that not a single journalist who has written about this story has contacted IGIS, and would in fact go so far as to say that not one is even aware of her or her office.

Start retracting, I’d suggest: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australian-intelligence-watchdog-accused-of-failing-to-act-on-claims-of-east-timor-bugging-20131204-2yr45.html

I like the bit about the whistleblower having previously contacted the IGIS.

The journalist did not contact her office, merely repeated Mr Collaery’s claim that the witness had done so. He did, however, claim the office is “poorly resourced” and I’ve been unable to source that, or the other claim of complaints against IGIS for failing to investigate complaints. I’d like to think a journo would at least try to check the veracity of the first claim, and that he did – but just failed to mention it in the article.

It’s unclear whether the journalist knew of IGIS before interviewing Mr Collaery.

So, I’ll retract it, although there remains no evidence anywhere of a journalist contacting IGIS regarding this story.

ScienceRules9:00 am 05 Dec 13

Baggy said :

IrishPete said :

To the man on the street, or the pub test, it looks like the intelligence services are off the leash, or the leash they are being given is too long, and some daft “convention” is simply pouring petrol on the fire. Make the buggers subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, secret scrutiny if it has to be.

IP

The entire operation (due to media) will likely be subject to scrutiny from the IGIS, as well as the ANAO as well as the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (which, by the way, is largely secret). So, you have your wish already, the buggers are subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.

Sensational media reporting doesn’t help Joe at the pub have an idea of the facts of oversight. The Australian intelligence community is most certainly NOT off the leash, in any way shape or form.

I will make a suggestion though, and will retract if found wrong – I expect that not a single journalist who has written about this story has contacted IGIS, and would in fact go so far as to say that not one is even aware of her or her office.

You are so right, Baggy. We should be embracing the notion of the secret police raiding private Australian citizens for the “greater good”. Nor should they have to show those pesky warrants (which are after all only a left-wing trope to slow down the forces of justice).

I for one will be sleeping much more comfortably in my bed certain that the powers that be are fighting for the freedoms we used to enjoy. Neither do I feel that they have the need to trouble my little head with the details which I’m quite certain are far too complicated and secrety for my mere citizen’s brain to comprehend.

My only worry is that the account doesn’t seem to indicate if the kindly officers were armed. I certainly hope that they at least had ballistic vests and MP5s to ensure their freedom-protecting actions weren’t in any way compromised by a secretary armed with a stapler.

And thank you so much for just being there, Baggy, to reassure us all.

IrishPete9:23 pm 04 Dec 13

Baggy said :

Robertson said :

Baggy said :

Given that the IGIS is a very capable and intelligent woman, both she and her staff fill me with confidence, and that Mr Irvine will be expected to justify every action his staff took to her office, I have no doubt that there is a perfectly valid reason for the raid. It’s not worth the hullabaloo that it would cause if it was not justifiable.

I am sceptical.
Think about the bugging of SBY’s phone. No apparent gain and massive consequential damage.

Scepticism is good.

No apparent gain – bear in mind it was in the days following terror attacks against foreigners, primarily targetting Australians but as always killing more locals, and IIRC there were strong sentiments that the Indons weren’t exactly helpful in conducting the investigation. Also note that what’s apparent or not apparent to the general public is dependent upon what information can be published – we may have obtained a bonanza, or maybe SBY’s secret bbq sauce ingredient. However, the operation wouldn’t have gone ahead without a good reason.

Further, the massive consequential damage stems from a leak within the American intelligence community, not Australian. It’s not something we have any control over, however we should be carefully considering what information is shared and the format in which it is presented. Unfortunately the American intelligence community is enormous, and it’s inevitable that you’ll have the odd crank out for a bit of publicity who is willing to break NDAs and laws (whether those laws are right or wrong).

Ah yes, shoot the messenger.

No, the massive consequential damage is from the action in the first place. If the leaked information was untrue you can be damned sure the “convention” on not commenting on intelligence matters would have been thrown overboard faster than fictional child from an asylum seeker boat.

To the man on the street, or the pub test, it looks like the intelligence services are off the leash, or the leash they are being given is too long, and some daft “convention” is simply pouring petrol on the fire. Make the buggers subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, secret scrutiny if it has to be.

ABC interview a lectured from ADFA this evening, though they were very careful not mention ADFA – he was from “the UNSW Canberra campus” haha. He was sceptical about the conspiracy theory reasons for the raid, but was damning about the timing and the damning about the claims (if true). As an ex-intelligence operative (military) his views need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Which views need salt, you can choose.

Whatever the motivation, yesterday’s actions were extremely unusual and suspicious, and it would be more than sad if the Abbott government is ushering in a new era of ASIO activism.

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