Coppers hire private dicks as online snoops Down Under

THE AUSSIE government is accelerating its move to be little China of the pacific by hiring private detectives to snoop on the websites of war campaigners, environmentalists, animal rights activists and other protest groups.

A Melbourne private intelligence firm specialising in "open-source intelligence" has been hired by Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the federal Attorney-General's Department to monitor and report on the protest movements' use of the internet.

Now the Aussie press have got wind of the scheme which includes exploring websites, online chat rooms, social networking sites, email lists and bulletin boards to gather information on planned demonstrations and other activities.

So far the monitoring has not broken any laws but the problem is that the data gathered is going straight to the branch of the government which deals with terrorists.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald "threat assessments" or " intelligence reports" from the company include material derived from academic journals, speeches, media reports and publicly accessible company data.

Apparently they read the INQ too, because we are a hotbed of terrorism, hackers, badger baiting and likely to use sarcasm in a built-up area between 6pm and 6am.

A Victoria Police spokessnooper said all the information was publicly available and accessed lawfully so there is sod all anyone can do about it [I think you paraphrased that a bit. Ed]. µ

L'Inq
Sydney Morning Herald