My weekly Guardian column: Australians feel… very comfortable… with spying on our friends and enemies. During his visit to Canada this week, Tony Abbott, the prime minister,… backed… the Five Eyes intelligence sharing structure between America, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and Australia, saying “our intelligence gathering has got to be done in a way that is decent and fair…
Showing all posts tagged Edward Snowden
Three problems with the Fourth Estate
The blandness of the mainstream media, including public broadcasters, is all about the narrow level of “debate” allowed on issues of the day. Australian intellectual and academic Scott Burchill has written the following short essay on the problem and possible solutions: In what is misleadingly called the ”˜age of culture wars’ there are three aspects…
Edward Snowden, in Moscow, speaks calmly about earthquake he created
2013 is undeniably the year that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released documents to challenge the fundamentals of the surveillance state. He’s remained relatively out of the media but in this exclusive Washington Post interview he eloquently explains the importance of a free society and what unaccountable power looks like (and why it must stopped):…