CitizenFour: Why it’s already the movie of the year
By Alex Schlotzer, EFA Board Member Less than two weeks after its Australian release, CitizenFour today received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film had previously won the British equivalent (BAFTA) as well as a long list of awards from film festivals and critics societies. I was fortunate enough to catch the Melbourne […]
Ludlam demolishes data retention bill
At the end of January, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) held two days of hearings into the government’s data retention legislation (transcripts here and here). These hearings were at times a testy affair, with a number of Coalition members particularly being openly antagonistic to privacy advocates, including EFA’s Jon Lawrence (see […]
Five things we learned about the Government’s data retention regime in 2014
By Alex Schlotzer, Board Member – Electronic Frontiers Australia Right now the Government is proposing to introduce a mandatory, society-wide regime for the retention of communications data (‘metadata’) for two years. In the latest public hearing into the Government’s proposed legislation a number of important matters were revealed by the Attorney-General and Australia’s law enforcement […]
EFA’s 2015 Wish List
As 2014 draws to a close, and EFA approaches its 21st birthday next month, we’ve been thinking about what we’d like to see happen in the year ahead. The Australian government seems intent on passing a series of laws (in addition to some they’ve already rammed through the parliament) that pose serious threats to civil […]
Carly Nyst & Julian Burnside on surveillance
On Saturday 11th October, EFA co-hosted an event in Brisbane with QCCL, which featured Carly Nyst, Legal Director of Privacy International, and leading human rights barrister, Julian Burnside AO QC, who was just yesterday awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. Listen to the audio from this event.