news Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull appears to have completely changed his view on the revelations by Edward Snowden about US spying activities, telling the ABC yesterday that the NSA whistleblower had caused “enormous damage”, despite having only six months ago described some of Snowden’s revelations as having “very significant” implications.
In June last year, The Guardian published classified documents created by the US National Security Agency and leaked by Snowden, which stated that the NSA was able to gain “direct access” to the servers of companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Skype. The access allowed US officials to collect information including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats.
Subsequently, Snowden has leaked dozens, perhaps hundreds of other documents highlighting many other spying activities by other governments. The leaks have had significant implications for Australia’s relationship with neighbouring Indonesia and other countries, and have spurred significant pressure on Australia’s intelligence agencies to become more transparent and accountable.
In June last year, when the initial Snowden leaks occurred, Turnbull, then Shadow Communications Minister, demanded answers from the governments of Australia and the US, in relation to the scandal.
“Australians will be very troubled by the allegation in The Guardian and The New York Times that the US National Security Agency is engaged in large scale, covert surveillance of private data belonging to non-US citizens held by American companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Youtube,” said Turnbull in a statement at the time.
“I think Australians have always understood data housed on US servers is subject to US laws such as the Patriot Act, but the Guardian story about the so-called PRISM programme suggests there is extensive surveillance and interception of foreign citizens’ data without a court order and indeed without the knowledge of the internet companies themselves.”
“These reports have potentially very significant commercial implications,” the Liberal MP said. “There is a massive global trend to cloud services. The vast majority of the cloud service providers are US companies. These companies have, with US Government support and endorsement, been promoting their services globally, and have sought to allay concerns that data hosted by them would have less privacy protection than it would in Australia.”
“Today’s reports elevate those concerns to an even higher level especially since it has been alleged that foreign-owned data hosted by US Internet companies has lesser protection than data belonging to US citizens.”
However, asked about the ABC’s handling of material leaked by Snowden in an interview with ABC radio yesterday, especially relating to accounts of Australian spying activities on Indonesian officials, Turnbull appeared to change his view of the whistleblower substantially. We recommend you click here to listen to the full interview or read the transcript.
“… truthfully, I think it would have been wiser for the ABC not to have published that story with — broken that story, if you like, with the Guardian, because it wasn’t something that was the result of ABC investigative journalism; it’s not as though Sarah Ferguson had spent, you know, six months digging that up. This was basically presented to the ABC on a platter by the Guardian,” said Turnbull.
Host Mark Colvin pointed out to Turnbull that he had personally defended former UK intelligence operative Peter Wright in the so-called ‘Spycatcher’ case which took place in the 1980’s, in which Turnbull, then a lawyer, successfully stopped the UK Government from blocking the publication of Wright’s book exposing certain aspects of the UK’s intelligence services.
“Given your defence of Spycatcher, presumably you don’t believe that these things are beyond reporting,” said Colvin.
“… they’re two very different situations,” replied Turnbull. “I mean, the Snowden case is very different to the Peter Wright Spycatcher case. I mean, I just get this — just be very clear about this. Edward Snowden took what is reported to be millions of very current, highly classified documents, stole them from his employer, the NSA in the United States, and they are being dribbled out, and have done enormous damage.”
Turnbull additionally stated the Spycatcher case had been different from the Snowden issue because Wright’s book had largely been about intelligence cases “more than 30 years old”, although Colvin pointed out it also related to current affairs at the time it was published.
The Liberal MP’s comments represent only the latest time that a senior Australian politician has heavily criticised Snowden. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop last week told a US conference that Snowden had “shamefully betrayed” the USA and was “no hero”. In December, Federal Attorney-General George Brandis reacted to the revelation of what a Queen’s Counsel lawyer stated were borderline illegal surveillance tactics by the Australian Signals Directorate by supporting the agency and accusing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden of being an “American traitor”.
And in August last year, then-Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus made the public statement that Snowden and accused WikiLeaks collaborator Bradley Manning were not technically “whistleblowers”, claiming that the information they had released publicly related to no wrongdoing by government agencies.
However, globally, Snowden’s revelations about the electronic surveillance activities of the US National Security Agency have been welcomed by many. Most Western countries have set up inquiries into the extent of NSA spying on their citizens. In Australia, the Greens in December successfully moved a motion in the Senate to establish a formal inquiry into Internet surveillance, through a review that will take place into the controversial Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.
In addition, following the ongoing Snowden revelations, US President Barack Obama last week called for ending the government’s control of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans and immediately ordered intelligence agencies to get a secretive court’s permission before accessing such records.
Just this week, a former Norwegian Government Minister nominated Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize, stating that the whistleblower had “contributed to revealing the extreme level of surveillance by nations against other nations and of citizens”.
Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting
A sign the man can change?! Is this a good thing or a bad thing? :)
Malcolm appears to just be toeing the party line, again.
Not too surprising really.
Leopards do not change spots. But this is not important.
What ‘implications’ of his former stance have actually materialised? OMG – nothing has changed?
How can this be true – how can the governments still be sneaking into your lives, tracking your every move and data-matching your wealth, home address, DOB, partner, voting habits, buying habits who you donate to, what movies you see, what you Google… you get it. It gets very ugly past that last point….
Why has nothing changed and WHY will nothing change? POWER | CONTROL | REVENUE and the age old excuse “everyone else is doing it so we should to”.
Did Malcolm just get the Ice Queen Look from Julie or did he just realise that he really is a Leftie Plant in the Righty Fruit Basket and best not rock the boat too much…
I trust turnbull about as much as I trust Abbott.
that is to say, Every word they utter are self serving lies, out to ruin my liberties and destroy any chance of my children having a fair and decent future.
So we have some of the biggest and most controversial news on the planet, and according to Malcolm the ABC should not have reported it because “it wasn’t something that was the result of ABC investigative journalism”. LOL.
When a politician is toeing the line, it is pretty much inevitable that they’ll say the most stupid things – inevitable because it’s a stupid position to be defending.
Are you really surprised, mainstream commercial TV media here have given SFA coverage of snowdens claims, since they broke, likely cowtowing to their bosses in hollywood.
Like our pollies who are puppets to the U.S bully boys.
Julie Bishop, a woman I’ve admired for years, like Malcolm, is so far off the rails on this.
170 odd pollies say Snowdens a naughty boy, thats outwieghed by the hundreds of thousands of aussie voters who are outraged, pfft here I was thinking these wankers are voted in by us, for us… my bad.
Nobby
“Julie Bishop, a woman I’ve admired for years”
Gang of 4
One Nation – It matters not whether you agreed with them or not, the principle in a Democracy is the point
Pauline Hansen
Prison
Pauline still able to stand for office
+1
The fact he dragged the ABC’s name into the argument is also an indicator that there’s an agenda. It was unnecessary to mention the ABC but in doing so he’s played his, and his master’s, hand in letting us know exactly what’s at the forefront of their minds.
Malcolm is proving the old idiom that “power corrupts”, because, somehow, he’s gotten far worse since the Libs were elected.
Renai: Keep up the good work, and start making plans for the recruiting of ex-ABC journalists into the Delimiter fold.
I re-read the article, he was specifically asked about the ABC. My bad, disregard…
Malcolm seems to have a very selective memory in regards to what he thinks the Spycatcher case was about and how he actually defended it against the prosecution charges in the first place..
Though then again this is what political deafness/blindness does to formally intelligent and highly equitable people doesn’t it.
Just another example of the lack of morals of most politicians. They are elected to represent the people, not look after their own party and lie through their teeth that they now think X is the case because that’s what the party line is. Maybe they hard over their soul when they enter politics. Does Murdoch hold their souls until he is paid back for the wonderful campaigning he did to get them in?
The LNP polititions keep calling Snowden a “traitor”, and yet the US hasn’t charged him with treason at all, the specific charges are espionage and theft of government property.
You would expect that Bishop and Brandis would know this (one being AG, the other the Foriegn Minister…and both of them lawyers).
I can only assume one of two things:
1. They do know this, and are lieing about the treason charge to take some of the heat out of the actual allegations.
2. They are totally incometent, and don’t actually know about, but are shooting their mouths off anyway.
Either way, they should not be the positions of trust that they hold…
Snowden is a true patriot, he is merely telling we the people what mob bosses running the US are really doing.
The government is kissing Americas ass again. We now have Tony Abbott and Julia Bishop also doing the same.
What Snowden did is show how much these despots are spying on us. The US government seeks to spy on absolutely everything we do and nab anyone that’s got the shits with them.
This a complete Orwellian society and it must end.
Don’t confuse “America” with “The US Government”, I think there is a growing divide between their meanings.
But, yes, agreed.
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