This week, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the Australian government is actually guilty of some of the same privacy violations that the US government is now infamous for.
While speaking for the Progress 2015 conference in Melbourne by video, Snowden pointed out that Australia’s new laws concerning metadata actually open up the door for the type of widespread surveillance that is now commonplace in the US.
“What this means is they are watching everybody all the time. They’re collecting information and they’re just putting it in buckets that they can then search through not only locally, not only in Australia, but they can then share this with foreign intelligences services,” Snowden said.
Snowden was speaking of laws that were recently passed, requiring phone companies to hold onto their customer’s metadata for the government to use.
“Australia’s role in mass surveillance around the world is similar to the UK and the Tempora program,” he said, adding that the program allows the government to “collect everyone’s communications in advance of criminal suspicion.”
Snowden also pointed out that mass surveillance actually does not prevent terrorism.
“Nine times out of 10 when you see someone on the news who’s engaged in some sort of radical jihadist activity, these are people who had a long record. The reason these attacks happened is not because we didn’t have enough surveillance, it’s because we had too much, ” he said.
Last week we reported that a federal appeals court ruled that the controversial NSA spy program which collects phone records is actually illegal.
John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.
