The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

John Philpot Curran
Speech on the Right of election
of the Mayor of Dublin, 1790.

Editorial	Government Internet Regulation Proposals
Senate Committee Split	MP's get E-Mail
PGP 5.0 released	EFA Copyright Submission
Walsh Report liberated	EFA Rules Revised
EFA Board Contacts	Membership Renewals
Stay in Touch with EFA	About EFA

Editorial: Privacy under Threat

Personal privacy is seemingly coming under increasing threat from government and business interests prepared to value privacy much lower than political or commercial expediency. Threats to our privacy in recent times have included:

• Government outsourcing of processing of sensitive information.

• Calling Line Identification to be introduced nationwide in December.

• Proposals to require ISPs to provide data surveillance facilities.

• Revelation of covert police surveillance of civil liberties organisations.

• The Howard Government's breaking of its pre-election promise to extend the Privacy Act to cover the private sector.

It is a flawed approach to assume a small or episodic interest of the state should necessarily predominate over the privacy interests of the individual.

EFA calls upon its members and other readers to support the Campaign for Fair Privacy Laws, and to join the campaign's boycott of the Voluntary Privacy Code proposed by the government as an alternative to legislation. A voluntary code will give consumers a false expectation of privacy protection, and the individual whose privacy is threatened has no bargaining power in the development of the code's content.

With less than one year to go before the European Union Directive on Data Protection comes into force, there is a growing interest in the position of the various parties in Australia in relation to privacy protection.

Australia's privacy protection measures will come under intense international scrutiny in the year ahead, and this campaign will be publicised in the international press, on the Internet and through Privacy International.

Please give the campaign your support.

Government Internet Regulation Proposals

EFA followed this up by establishing a mailing list encompassing all of the major industry organisations in order to provide a platform for discussion of the DoCA proposals. Although there were some differences of opinion, particularly with the ISP representative bodies, a great deal of common ground was evident. This activity led to a meeting in Sydney on 6th August between representatives of these groups and Departmental and ABA officials at which the most serious of the perceived problems with the proposals were raised. EFA's formal response to the government proposals was submitted to the Department on 10th August.

A total of 59 submissions was received and these have now been made available online.

The next expected development is that exposure draft legislation will be released for public comment. However, time is running out this year and it now expected that draft legislation will not appear until next year.

As part of its campaign against unnecessary and unworkable Internet regulatory proposals, EFA is promoting an online Petition to be presented in the Senate. If you have not done so already, please show your opposition to Internet censorship by signing the petition.

Senate Committee Split on Recommendations

The Committee has now disbanded but a new Senate Select Committee on Information Technologies has been appointed, on a motion by the chair of the old committee, Senator Tierney.

The proposed Terms of Reference of the new Committee are to:

(a)

receive and consider the outstanding government responses to the reports of the Select Committee on Community Standards Relevant to the Supply of Services Utilising Telecommunications Technologies;

(b)

evaluate the development of self-regulatory codes in the information industries; and

(c)

monitor the personal, social and economic impact of continuing technological change created by industries and services utilising information technologies.

Jeannie Ferris (Chair), Lib SA
Paul Calvert, Lib Tas
John Tierney, Lib NSW *
Julian McGauran, Nat Vic *
Brian Harradine, Ind Tas *
Natasha Stott Despoja, Democrats SA *
John Quirke, ALP SA
Kate Lundy, ALP ACT (to 27/1/98)
Margaret Reynolds, ALP Qld (from 28/1/98) *


* denotes members of the former Community Standards Committee.

MPs get E-Mail

EFA welcomes this development and we hope that the exercise will prove beneficial for both members and constituents.

The full list of E-Mail addresses is available on Parliamentary Library list of Senators and Members

For those who may not be aware, Hansard records of Parliamentary proceedings are available on the Internet, usually early on the day following the relevant sitting day. Hansard is available for both the Senate and the House of Representatives

The Index to Australian Parliamentary Information provided by the Parliamentary Library also contains a wealth of information by which we can keep track of what our representatives are doing and saying.

PGP 5.0 Released

    Windows 95/NT version, 3.5 Mb

    Macintosh BinHex version, 5.2 Mb

    Unix Version, GNU Zip, 870K
      or
    Unix version, alternate site (Australian PGP mirror)

Please note that the Mac and Windows 95 sites host the US version of this software, which not surprisingly "escaped" from the USA despite futile export restriction laws. Legal versions of this software, obtained by scanning legally exportable source code in printed form, are expected to made available from The International PGP Home Page very soon.

EFA welcomes release of this software which will make available user-friendly strong crypto to a wider range of Internet users.

EFA Copyright Submission Lodged

EFA lodged a submission to the review in August 1997 in response to the Discussion Paper Copyright Reform and the Digital Agenda.

Copyright and other Intellectual Property issues are assuming increasing importance on-line, not only in relation to conventional documents, but also affecting software, audio and video material. Internet users will increasingly need to become aware of the copyright issue.

Walsh Report liberated

The Walsh Report, or more correctly the Review of policy relating to encryption technologies, is the outcome of a study conducted in 1996 by Gerard Walsh, a former deputy director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The report has now been made available online, after EFA obtained its release under the Freedom of Information Act.

A number of paragraphs were deleted from the copy supplied to EFA. These have been identified in the report, together with an annotation referring to the section of the report under which that paragraph was claimed to be exempt from release.

The report takes a balanced look at the conflicting arguments in relation to cryptography policy, but comes down clearly on the side of privacy interests. The report makes a valuable contribution to the emerging crypto debate in Australia, and provides convincing arguments as to the futility of governments around the world effectively attempting to ban the use of mathematics.

EFA Rules Update

The new rules are outlined below.

EFA Board

Following the Annual General Meeting of EFA on 12th October 1997, the composition of the EFA Board for 1997/98 is as follows:

Chair Kimberley Heitman	kheitman@it.com.au
Vice Chair Brenda Aynsley	bpa@iss.net.au
Secretary Irene Graham	rene@pobox.com
Treasurer James Nunn	jnunn@pobox.com

General Board Members:

Michael Baker	mbaker@pobox.com
Michael Malone	pariah@iinet.net.au
Mark Neely	accessnt@ozemail.com.au
Greg Taylor	gtaylor@gil.com.au
Jan Whitaker	jwhit@primenet.com
Danny Yee	danny@staff.cs.usyd.edu.au

Membership Renewals

You can renew your membership in any of the following ways:

• Cheque for $20 made payable to Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. forwarded to PO Box 382, North Adelaide, 5006
• Credit card payments may be faxed to (08) 8373 3829 or (03) 9564 7729
• Credit card details may be phoned to vice-chair at (08) 8357 8844 or treasurer on 0411 241 041
• Credit card payments may be sent using a PGP-encrypted message to jnunn@pobox.com using this public key.

Lost members - if you are a member and did not receive email notification of this newsletter, you are among the few members for whom we do not have a valid email address. Please contact membership@efa.org.au with your preferred email address(es).

If you can take a more active role please contact volunteer@efa.org.au to offer your services. We can really use you!

Stay in Touch with EFA

How to join

Membership fees are payable each September and part fees apply to those joining during the year:

• If paid between September and December $20.00
• If paid between January and March $15.00
• If paid between April and June $10.00
• If paid between July and September $20.00 (carries through to the following September)

Group Membership is open to associations and groups on the basis of an annual fee of $300 or $0.10 per member, whichever is the greater.

The form to complete is available online at http://www.efa.org.au/JoinEFA/Welcome.html. The membership form is also mailed automatically to anyone who sends email to efa-info@efa.org.au or netmail to efa-info at 3:800/846.

How to follow EFA activities

• On Usenet, read aus.org.efa< (and comp.org.eff.talk if you want the global picture).
• If you use Fidonet Echos, follow discussion in the "EFA" echo.
• Follow the links on our Web home page at http://www.efa.org.au/.
• Volunteer to help us. There's no better way to stay in touch than getting involved yourself! Email volunteer@efa.org.au if you are interested in helping.

About EFA

EFA's current objectives are:

(a)

To protect and promote the civil liberties of users of computer based communications systems and of those affected by their use.

(b)

To advocate the amendment of laws and regulations in Australia and elsewhere which restrict free speech and unfettered access to information.

(c)

To educate the community at large about the social, political, and civil liberties issues involved in the use of computer based communications systems.

(d)

To support, encourage and advise on the development and use of computer based communication systems, and related innovations.

(e)

To research and advise on the application of the law (both current and proposed) to computer based communication systems and related technologies.

On the Internet, you can find more information about EFA at our World Wide Web site, http://www.efa.org.au/, or by sending email to efa-info@efa.org.au.

Ways to get EFA information via Fidonet:

• File request efa-info.efa, efa-info.lzh, EFA, ERR from node 3:800/846.
• Send netmail to efa-info at 3:800/846 and a copy of the EFA information file will be bounced back.
• Log in to sawasdi BBS as "EFA" password "EFA" and download the files from file area "EFA". The phone number for sawasdi is (08) 8261 7802.

Submissions to this newsletter are strongly encouraged. Ideas and brief articles for future issues should be sent to editor@efa.org.au.

© Copyright 1997 Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc.

Permission is hereby given for redistribution on networks, but distribution via other media is subject to the written permission of the EFA Board.

Views expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors only, and not necessarily those of Electronic Frontiers Australia.

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