Australia’s surprising disregard for free speech

The day before the raid, police separately raided the home of a journalist at the Sunday Telegraph, one of Australia’s bestselling papers, in connection with a story about secret plans to expand the state’s surveillance powers to include snooping on people’s e-mails, text messages and bank accounts. Last year a former spy, known as Witness , and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, were charged for (years ago) exposing Australia’s bugging of the government of Timor-Leste during sensitive negotiations over rights to offshore oil and gas. Mr McBride, whose trial is due to start in a couple of weeks (and whose obstetrician father is credited with exposing the side-effects of thalidomide, a drug for morning sickness that caused babies to be born with deformed limbs), says the government is using the security apparatus “to fight its own people now”.

Source: www.economist.com