Aussies bring in email SMS monitoring laws

THE AUSSIE Federal Government has blessed new security laws that will mean authorities can monitor the emails and phone text messages of people suspected of planning terror attacks. Under the rules, police and spy agencies will be allowed to intercept emails and text messages and to listen to voice messages on phones of people it does not like without the need to get a court order.

Other changes being planned will allow Howard's conservative government to protect secret information that might be brought forward during a trial on terror charges, and would modernise laws on the use of surveillance devices.

While most people would question the need for such draconian powers, the Aussie government is sure that following its election victory it has a mandate to protect citizens from terrorists.

It is all to do with the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival... damn I am channelling George Orwell again. µ