Australia Under Surveillance: How should we act?

by Frank Moorhouse

ASIO has kept a file on Frank Moorhouse since he was seventeen. Now Frank has decided it is time to report on ASIO.This year ASIO has extended its surveillance powers, made the issuing of warrants easier and limited the freedom of journalists. At a time when the government has raised the terrorist alert level to ‘high’ we are facing the question of what degree of terrorist threat we are prepared to endure so as to retain freedoms of expression and what might loosely be called the ‘traditional privacies’. The paradox is an old is a secret agency needed for our safety as a democracy? If so, how does a democracy manage a secret agency without losing control of it? What constitutes an offence against national security? And what are we to make of WikiLeaks and socially conscious hackers and whistleblowers?Do we need a renewal of the bargain between the citizen and the secret agencies, as unreliable as it may be, as we all go into the glare and the maze of controlled and uncontrollable data collection and its consequences?We are entering a new era, where nothing can be assumed to be private, especially at the governmental level.More than ever before, our future is unforeseeable, but if in the unforeseeable we see a glimmer of dangerous things, perhaps we should remember that positive things can also be unforeseeable.

Genres: Politics, Australia

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2014

About the author

Frank Thomas Moorhouse AM (21 December 1938 – 26 June 2022) was an Australian writer. He won major Australian national prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing. His work has been published in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States and also translated into German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Serbian, and Swedish.

Moorhouse was perhaps best known for winning the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel, Dark Palace; which together with Grand Days and Cold Light, the "Edith Trilogy" is a fictional account of the League of Nations, which trace the strange, convoluted life of a young woman who enters the world of diplomacy in the 1920s through to her involvement in the newly formed International Atomic Energy Agency after World War II.

The author of 18 books, Moorhouse became a full-time fiction writer during the 1970s, also writing essays, short stories, journalism and film, radio and TV scripts.

In his early career he developed a narrative structure which he has described as the 'discontinuous narrative'. He lived for many years in Balmain, where together with Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes, he became part of the "Sydney Push" - an anti-censorship movement that protested against rightwing politics and championed freedom of speech and sexual liberation. In 1975 he played a fundamental role in the evolution of copyright law in Australia in the case University of New South Wales v Moorhouse. - Wikipedia

Reviews

[Stephie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't agree with everything Moorhouse had to say, but this book held my interest for the most part, and he did raise some interesting and important points. My attention did start to wane during the interview with the director-general of ASIO. I felt like the full transcript was unnecessary, as a lot of the interview felt weakly conducted and portions even seemed irrelevant. However, it is difficult to fully appreciate an interview through a transcript, as you get a lot more information about a person and their intentions by seeing them talk and their mannerisms.

Overall, this was a good book and easy to read. I do feel more informed about Australia's privacy concerns, but I would have liked if it could have gone into a bit more depth.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stream of consciousness discussion of the limits on state power and surveillance in a modern society. Morehouse's book is a fascinating collection of stories and thoughts on the topic.

Although there are some jarring errors - Michael Kirby was never the Chief Justice of the High Court - the book reads as three well structured and logical essays. While a bit light on the legal and technical sides (referring to anything technical as the domain of 'nerds'), the stories presented are compelling.

The failure to engage with the technical side of things is a bit frustrating, however - Moorhouse seems to assume ASIOs unlimited power over computers allows it to do almost anything. But then again, that's not the books point.

The book's point is to reintroduce contemporary to the concept of a liberal democracy, where rights conflict and security is paid for with vigilence.

Overall I thought the book was well worth a read, depiste it's limitations .