The need for national Security
Focus:
National security for Australia has recently become the focus of attention this year because of the holding of the Olympic games in Sydney. This brings with it the risk of terrorist activities occuring within Australia, as has happened in previous Olympic games ÃÂáV such as the murders in the Munich games by the Black Panthers organisation, and the bombings in last games in Atlanta.
Whilst this is our current focus, the risk of Terrorist activities, drug importation, ethnic crime activities, and other dangers are present all the time.
Thus, tere is a need for national security and Australia supports several intelligence agencies, which have the task of protecting national security and gathering intelligence information. For example: ASIO and ASIS (similar roles to the CIA); the Federal Police (abstractly like the FBI) and Defence Signals Directorate (parallel to NSA).
Security Treaties:
Australia is a party to the quadrapartite treaty known formally as the UKUSA agreement (1947) which creates an alliance of security agencies and allows transfer of information.
The globe is devided into 5 parts and each party is responsible for the provision of intelligence from within its area of responsibility.
Encryption:
A major issue debated over privacy rights is the use of encryption in a commercial and personal way. It is argued by security agencies that the use of encryption on the superhighway has the potential to inhibit, and potentially imperil, law enforcement and national security. They believe that encryption should be the province of trusted parties, such as the department of defence, and that encryption in the general community should be resisted.
This means that all non-government files can be easily accessed. On a national level the govt. will not institute a national encryption system to make to make information secure from interception...