The Australian spy agency is getting legal powers to spy on the whole Internet with a single warrant

Sep 25, 2014 10:08 GMT  ·  By

Australia’s taking one more step towards allowing its spy agency to have even more power over citizens.

After a recent law introduced back in June expanded the powers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) to tap computers under warrants, they’re also going to be allowed to add an unlimited amount of devices on each warrant.

George Brandis, the country’s Attorney General said that he doesn’t want to limit the number of devices ASIO can access under a single warrant because he cannot determine what the future may hold, ZDNet reports.

The proposal has already been vetted by the parliamentary committee, despite warnings from academics that every computer in the world could end up on ASIO’s list under a single warrant.

The executive officer of the Australian branch of the Electronic Frontiers, Jon Lawrence, has already warned about how the new legislation could be interpreted as allowing the spy agency to spy on the whole Internet.

“It is arguable that the definition could be applied to the entire Internet, given the way the legislation is currently worded. They will need some additional work to tie that down to what we believe the department is actually proposing,” Lawrence said.

Even so, ASIO can access as many devices as it wants under a single warrant, without having to give any type of justification for why it wants to tap into the computers of 10, 100 or 1,000 people. Attempts to amend the legislation were rejected since they were seeking to limit the scope of the warrants.

Today's law for next decade's possible needs

Defenders of the bill claim that there’s no way of correctly anticipating what the needs of the intelligence agency are going to be in ten years’ time, or for long the legislation stands. Therefore, instead of expanding on the legislation if need arises a decade from now, they’d rather just give ASIO free hand at intercepting communications and tapping people’s computers.

“Limiting computer access warrants in the way the Greens propose would produce, as I said before, an absurdity. It would create a significant loss of ASIO's capability. It would be irresponsible in the extreme to seriously entertain that notion,” said George Brandis.

Australia is walking on a very thin line that has already put the United States in a very difficult space because it allowed NSA to spy on the world with very little oversight and powers drawn from a free interpretation of the Patriot Act.