Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
20161102
20160223
The Antennas of Pine Gap
Antennas are the most readily available and visible evidence of the existence, character, and size of signals intelligence facilities that operate or monitor space systems. Coupled with data on the timing of developments in US geosynchronous satellite programs, the timing of antenna installation now permits, for the first time, identification of the role and function of almost all antennas at Pine Gap. Documenting the development of the antenna systems of Pine Gap provides visual evidence of the profound changes in the base’s operations and its missions: a subject of political controversy in Australia for half a century. The antennas of Pine Gap are a powerful political symbol in Australia, representing either promise of enduring alliance protection or loss of national autonomy and nuclear threat to different audiences.
Since 1967, at least 46 antenna systems have been installed at Pine Gap, including 23 parabolic dish antennas covered by protective radomes and 23 uncovered antennas of assorted types. Four of those in radomes were subsequently dismantled (although three were replaced by other systems in radomes); nine without radomes also have been dismantled. Of the 33 antenna systems at the facility as of February 2016, 19 were in radomes and 14 were uncovered.
AUTHORS
Desmond Ball is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University (ANU). He was a Special Professor at the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1987 to 2013, and he served as Head of the Centre from 1984 to 1991.
Bill Robinson writes the blog Lux Ex Umbra, which focuses on Canadian signals intelligence activities. He has been an active student of signals intelligence matters since the mid-1980s, and from 1986 to 2001 was on the staff of the Canadian peace research organization Project Ploughshares.
Richard Tanter is Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute and Honorary Professor in the School of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne...
http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/the-antennas-of-pine-gap/
20160218
Deportation-threatened Baby Asha under guard in Australian hospital
"She's effectively in detention inside the hospital," said Natasha Blucher, a long-time advocate for the family and activist with the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network.
The activist said guards from the company Serco, which is contracted by the Australian Immigration Department, were standing guard outside the hospital room where 12-month-old Asha and her Nepalese mother were staying.
"The guards told me the hospital has been designated as a place of detention under Australian law," Blucher told CNN, speaking by telephone outside the Lady Cilento Childrens' Hospital in Brisbane....
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/asia/australia-battle-immigrant-baby/index.html
20160217
Serco targets £1bn Australian immigration centre contract
The contract, which is due to be awarded by the end of this year, is to manage the government’s two offshore immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru for five years from April 2017.
A fresh deal to run offshore detention centres in Australia would be a boost for Serco, which has been struggling to win new business since being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging the British government on the electronic tagging of prisoners.
In the first half of 2015, Serco won contracts worth £1bn, including a three-year £6m deal to provide contact centre services for the British National Careers Service and a £34m contract with the Ministry of Justice to build and manage an extension to Thameside Prison in London.
The FTSE 250 company is competing against the current provider, Broadspectrum, operating under the name Transfield, which recently had its contract extended to March next year, while the government revises the scope of the tender....
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/496a8ad2-cf1f-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html
20160213
20151030
Serco immorality shown up at island detention centre - Davis
Labour’s corrections spokesperson Kelvin Davis says what he saw of Australian detention centres conformed his belief multinational Serco should not be running New Zealand prisons.
Mr Davis has been in Christmas Island to speak with former prisoners who are being detained so they can eventually be deported back to this country under Australia’s tough new visa rules.
He says the detainees expressed anger and frustration at their treatment and the continued uncertainty they face.
Mr Davis says what’s going on across the Tasman is just another chapter in what was already an appalling track record when Serco was signed up to run the Auckland Remand and Wiri prisons.
"Everything that was said was borne out in my experience. They are just a money-making entity that doesn't care about human rights rehabilitation or even just doing what's right. I just can't believe the immorality of the way they operate," he says.
Mr Davis says Serco denied him access to one detainee, whose family subsequently told him was in need of medical attention after an attack by guards.
20140922
AUSTRALIA’S PRIME MINISTER GIVES A MASTER CLASS IN EXPLOITING TERRORISM FEARS TO SEIZE NEW POWERS
If you’re an Australian citizen, you have a greater chance of being killed by the following causes than you do by a terrorist attack: slipping in the bathtub and hitting your head; contracting a lethal intestinal illness from the next dinner you eat at a restaurant; being struck by lightning. In the post-9/11 era, there has been no terrorist attack carried out on Australian soil: not one. The attack which most affected Australians was the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali which killed 88 of its citizens; that was 12 years ago.
Despite all that, Australia’s political class is in the midst of an increasingly unhinged fear-mongering orgy over terrorism. The campaign has two prongs: ISIS (needless to say: it’s now an all-purpose, global source of fear-manufacturing), and the weekend arrest of 15 people on charges that they planned to behead an unknown, random individual based on exhortations from an Australian member of ISIS.
The Australian government wasted no time at all exploiting this event to demand “broad new security powers to combat what it says is a rising threat from militant Islamists.” Even by the warped standards of the west’s 9/11 era liberty abridgments, these powers are extreme, including making it “a crime for an Australian citizen to travel to any area overseas once the government has declared it off limits.” Already pending in that country is a proposal by the Attorney General to make it a criminal offense ”punishable by five years in jail for ‘any person who disclosed information relating to ‘special intelligence operations’”; the bill is clearly intended to outright criminalize WikiLeaks-and-Snowden-type reporting and the government thus expressly refuses to exempt journalists...
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/22/australias-prime-minister-gives-master-class-exploiting-terrorism-fears-seize-new-powers/
Despite all that, Australia’s political class is in the midst of an increasingly unhinged fear-mongering orgy over terrorism. The campaign has two prongs: ISIS (needless to say: it’s now an all-purpose, global source of fear-manufacturing), and the weekend arrest of 15 people on charges that they planned to behead an unknown, random individual based on exhortations from an Australian member of ISIS.
The Australian government wasted no time at all exploiting this event to demand “broad new security powers to combat what it says is a rising threat from militant Islamists.” Even by the warped standards of the west’s 9/11 era liberty abridgments, these powers are extreme, including making it “a crime for an Australian citizen to travel to any area overseas once the government has declared it off limits.” Already pending in that country is a proposal by the Attorney General to make it a criminal offense ”punishable by five years in jail for ‘any person who disclosed information relating to ‘special intelligence operations’”; the bill is clearly intended to outright criminalize WikiLeaks-and-Snowden-type reporting and the government thus expressly refuses to exempt journalists...
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/22/australias-prime-minister-gives-master-class-exploiting-terrorism-fears-seize-new-powers/
20120618
20120505
Google Australia: ~$1bn in revenue, $74k in tax | Delimiter
Search giant Google has revealed it expects to pay just $74,000 in corporate income tax for the 2011 calendar year in Australia, off claimed local revenues of $201 million, despite the fact that industry estimates have continually pegged the search giant’s Australian income at closer to $1 billion. In its latest set of financial accounts filed this week with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Google stated that it received some $201.1 million in revenue in the 2011 calender year in Australia. Expenses largely associated with its significant Australian headcount of 568 staff ($143.5 million) and advertising costs ($18.9 million) meant the company made a loss on paper of $3.9 million in that period. Both Google’s revenues and losses were up over calendar year 2010. In the statements, Google accounted for just $74,176 in taxation for that year, compared with $1.1 million for the year previously. It had $46 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand as at the end of December last year... http://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/03/google-australia-1bn-in-revenue-74k-in-tax/
20120424
Australian Police Accused of Mass Software Piracy | TorrentFreak
Australian police are involved in a massive piracy lawsuit. Software company Micro Focus is claiming that the police are making unauthorized use of its ViewNow software, which they use to access the COPS criminal intelligence database. In addition, it’s alleged that the police shared the proprietary software with third parties. Micro Focus is fighting the case in court and is demanding at least $10 million in damages. 
The Aussie police are clearly not setting the right example when it comes to copyright infringement. In 2008 computers of the South Australian police force’s IT branchwere found to contain hundreds of pirated movies.There is, however, an even ongoing bigger case in which the New South Wales police are accused of massive software piracy involving its criminal intelligence database...
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