I hope to have a productive January with writing, including finishing my most bizarre project, a short children’s book in Mandarin. In the meantime, here are two articles I recently wrote for the web:

Politicians struggling to cope with that interwebby thing in The Punch

Free speech is sexy again for New Matilda, who thankfully will be continue publishing in 2011.

I also made another appearance on Mike Jeffrey’s show on 2UE this week. Have a listen below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Have a chill week.

The Wikileaks saga continues to captivate the public imagination. The drama around Assange and his arrest, the fascinating leaks, and the cyberpunk-style internet war that is raging in the background means this is the story that just keeps on giving. And it’s not just geeks that are soaking up the news – it’s everybody. This will have a huge impact on future debates on civil liberties online.

Though Wikileaks has done only what journalists have been doing for time immemorial, the backlash against them – and Julian Assange personally – has been massive. First came the outrage. The vociferous condemnations, encouragements to assassination, the hunt to find a legal pretext to lock him up, all came thick and fast as the latest round of leaks began. Our own Prime Minister was quick to label Wikileaks a criminal organisation, despite no laws being broken or charges filed.

Next came the legal and financial attacks. Web hosts were forced to sever ties with Wikileaks. Politicians in the U.S. put pressure on web hosts and payment processing companies such as Paypal, Mastercard and Visa to stop providing service to Wikileaks and throttle their ability to operate. Even a Swiss Bank cancelled Assange’s bank account because he used his Swiss lawyer’s address instead of his own.

The last phase will be legislative, as embarrassed Governments scramble to make laws that would ensure they can lock somebody up – if not now, then next time. Already, a bill has been introduced into the U.S. Congress that would allow the U.S. Government to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act. Our own government may well be pondering a similar course of action; several times we have been told that they are scouring the law books for something, anything, with which to charge Assange.

Continue reading…

Julian Assange has done us a huge favour, and we owe him a debt of thanks.

Not just because he’s lifted up the rock of international diplomacy and made the diplomats and politicians writhe and squirm in the light of global scrutiny – though he has certainly done that.

Not just because he has revealed some of the secrets and deceit behind our own foreign policy, and demonstrated the gap between what our leaders tell us and what they really believe.

And not because he has revealed the often corrosive role of U.S. policy in its relentless drive to shore up American interests. By letting the world’s people know how the U.S. is pressuring or driving the actions of their own governments behind the scenes, they have forever weakened that power.

These things Wikileaks have done are of massive importance. But perhaps they are equally powerful as a demonstration of, a case study in, or even a fable of free speech.

These current disclosures by Wikileaks has been a clear demonstration of the power information can have. Every person in Australia – and indeed the world – who has read or watched the news in the last few weeks has had a lesson in journalism and in whistleblowing. The actions of the our own government have made sure the lesson was driven home in an unforgettable way.

By piling on Assange, by accusing him of criminality, our Prime Minister sought to talk tough on a supposed threat to our security. But it has backfired. We have seen through it. Assange has become David to a Government Goliath. He’s nothing short of a national hero.

That’s because the people know. They know that embarrassing the government is not a crime. Forcing transparency on our elected representatives is not terrorism. Reporting the truth is not, and must never be, against the law.

A mature government, a confident government, could have weathered the storm, explained the embarrassing leaks as grist for the mill of global politics, and defended Assange’s rights without endorsing his actions. But they chose the cowardly way. We noticed, and we were disgusted.

What this means that the next time our government try to tighten their control over information, people will sit up. People will ask questions. When the government tries to censor the free flow of information on the internet, they will talk about protecting children. They will talk about violence, and predators. They will scare us with talk of terrorists and security, telling us that censorship is for our own protection.

But we will think of Assange. We will think of our right to know what our leaders really think of the wars we are embroiled in, or that members of our own government are sources of information for a foreign embassy. We will think of politicians scrambling to protect their own image, and their own jobs. And we will say: No. We will not let you censor, suppress, expunge. Because you work for us, and free speech is the only safeguard we have to hold you accountable.

Wikileaks has demonstrated this beyond a doubt. For this, we owe Julian Assange our support.

It’s been an interesting week but it ended on a low note, with the meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys General not agreeing on implementing an R-18+ rating for games. EFA have campaigned for this for a long time, and with Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor thoroughly behind it, a lot of people were optimistic we would finally see it happen. It appears that there were one or two holdouts amongst the states, so we’re going to have to push for this next year.

Tonight I debated the issue with the Australian Christian Lobby’s Jim Wallace. You can count on Jim to be on the opposing side to just about any free speech issue, and he represents a tiny minority of Australians, but it’s amusing to hear how quickly he devolves into rants about the horrors of war – which are certainly real, but not particularly germaine to a discussion on classification reform.

Have a listen below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tonight I was a guest on RRR’s Byte Into It program to discuss Wikileaks. Visit RRR’s website or listen below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The media going beserk today over the arrest of Julian Assange. It’s exciting, firstly because it is bringing unprecedented public attention to the issues surrounding free speech and the internet. The second reason it’s exciting is because it reads like a cyberpunk novel; hackers, espionage and Anonymous revenge groups cyber-attacking the Swedish prosecutor’s office.

I support EFA’s position strongly supporting Assange as an Australian citizen with a right to due process, and to Wikileaks too; clearly whatever harm has been done by leaking the cables is not in proportion to the hysterical reaction in the USA. What has America become when the feeling of self-righteousness engendered by a little embarrassment deteriorates so quickly into talk of whacking somebody in their hotel room? There is controversy in the USA at the moment over the fact that the president has ordered the killing of U.S. citizens – suspected terrorists – without evan a trial. But all Assange has done is shed a little unwelcome light into the snarky thoughts of diplomats.

Likening this to terrorism further cheapens an already overused word. If Wikileaks is added to the U.S. list of proscribed terrorist organisations, how could anyone take the list seriously anymore? Nobody has been harmed, or even jeopardised. Wikileaks is not advocating acts of violence, merely publishing information given to it. Unfortunately, instead of Assange it would appear that the U.S. constitution’s First Amendment is the one that has been taken out the back and put up against the wall.

Here’s a conversation I had on air with ABC Radio’s Paul Austin last night about Wikileaks and online civil liberties. It’s amazing to see the level of interest this topic has generated in freedom of speech online. I’m off to talk to RRR radio about the same subject tonight.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Over the last few days I’ve been dealing with a flurry of media on the (missing) R-18+ games category, and I’m just catching my breath. The news on this front is that the Commonwealth government has come out strongly for amending the national classification code to allow R-18+ games. They released research which shows  that the links between games and childhood aggression are tenuous, at best; performed a survey which shows that the move is overwhelmingly popular; and made an official statement backing the reform. (I put some more info up at EFA.)

Apart from the fact that this ridiculous hole in the law is about to be fixed, what I find most interesting here is the very shrewd way that the Home Affairs Minister, Brendan O’Connor, has framed the debate. Rather than discuss the measure as an overdue liberalising of the censorship regime to allow broader entertainment choices for adults, it has been presented as a new ban on selling games to kids. It’s worked; the news on Sunday reported it as a new ban and even went so far as to show teenagers outraged at the patronising new policy, rather than happy (as they should be) that formerly banned games will now be available for sale, at least to those over 18.

I did a few news spots, which demonstrate the slightly confused but highly effective messaging. I also did an interview for ABC News 24 which you can see below.

With elections, report-writing and speaking engagements over for the time being, expect to see a few more updates here in the near future.