Category Archives: Secrecy in governance

Australian police chief links media raids to US-led “Five Eyes” spy network

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 9. June 2019 by

Australian Federal Police (AFP) spent seven hours ransacking a News Corp political reporter’s home in Canberra, and eight hours poring over and seizing files at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Sydney headquarters.

In an extraordinary admission, the AFP’s acting commissioner Neil Gaughan blurted out that the real reason for the raids was to protect the information that the Australian police and intelligence agencies receive from their “Five Eyes” counterparts. Five Eyes is a top-level network of intelligence agencies dominated by the US that also includes Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

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D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 9. May 2019 by

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Professor Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Show Business

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Discovering secret dockets

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 23. July 2015 by

According to a survey by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for this guide, federal courts and many state courts allow for “super-secret” cases, which never appear on the public docket or are hidden using pseudonyms, such as “Sealed v. Sealed” or “John Doe v. Jane Doe.” Courts that maintain these secret dockets will neither confirm nor deny the existence of such cases. As a result, these cases proceed through the court system undetected.

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Digital “False Flag” operations by UK services

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 1. February 2015 by

The division of GCHQ known as JTRIG responded to the surge in hacktivism. In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit’s mission included computer network attacks, disruption, “Active Covert Internet Operations,” and “Covert Technical Operations.” Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts and masquerading as an enemy in a “false flag” operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.

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Constructing the secret EU state: “Restricted” and “Limite” documents hidden from view by the Council

Aldeilis (EN) Posted on 27. March 2014 by

In place of the need to deepen democratic openness and accountability in EU the Council has entrenched a system of secrecy based on its discretion to decide whether and when to make documents public. The result is that the European legislature – the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament – meet in secret trilogues to decide over 80% of new laws going through the EU

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