Monday, May 17, 2010

Australia retaliates against Wikileaks

Wikileaks is a public interest website devoted to exposing information governments want to keep under wraps. Last year they leaked the Australian government's secret internet blacklist. The leak was deeply embarrassing for the government, as it exposed just how tawdry their blacklist was; alongside the material it was meant to be banning, it also included

Its a perfect example of the mission creep and false positives which mean that we cannot trust any government to block the internet. The government's retaliatory action - blocking Wikileaks - underlined the point. But today, they went one further, cancelling Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's passport. Assange is an Australian citizen. but he has now been effectively forbidden to travel overseas by his government, apparently because he embarrassed them.

This violates the freedom of movement affirmed in the ICCPR, to which Australia is a party. But the Australian government doesn't care, and as they have no equivalent of our BORA, that right is unenforceable. Which is another example of why they need strong, enforceable human rights legislation now.