EFA launches Digital Rights 2016 campaign
EFA today announces the launch of the Digital Rights 2016 campaign. This generic and non-partisan campaign is intended to raise awareness of the importance of digital rights throughout the Australian community in the lead-up to the 2016 Federal election and beyond. The primary issues that will be addressed as part of the campaign are: Privacy […]
Attorney-General must properly resource Information Commission
EFA today calls on the Attorney-General to cease his absurd war of attrition with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Since announcing in 2014 that it intended to abolish the Office, the government has starved the agency of funds and has failed to reappoint two of the three statutory officer positions, despite the reality […]
AG must reject agencies seeking access to telecommunications data
EFA today calls on the Attorney-General to promptly reject the requests from most of the 61 agencies that are seeking to be provided with warrantless access to telecommunications data (metadata). It is less than a year since the parliament resolved to restrict warrantless access to telecommunications data to a carefully chosen list of agencies, and […]
Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
The governments of Australia, Germany, the UK and the US are destroying your privacy. Some people don’t see the problem… “I have nothing to hide, so why should I care?” It doesn’t matter if you have “nothing to hide”. Privacy is a right granted to individuals that underpins the freedoms of expression, association and assembly; […]
Governments undermining encryption will do more harm than good
Western governments, notably the UK and the US, are pushing the software industry to open “backdoors” into our encrypted communications. The argument touted by government agencies for nearly 20 years is that terrorists use strong encryption to hide their communications, therefore we should ban strong encryption. British Prime Minister David Cameron has been outspoken in […]