Censorship isn't the answer

We should be relaxed and recharged after the Christmas break, but this years holiday period was tainted with terrible news. Airplane accidents and terrorist attacks made for a sombre end of last year, and shocked the world in the first few days of 2015.

Predictably, spy agency bosses and politicians say the Martin Place and Paris shootings justify more surveillance and data retention to prevent future attacks.

Attorney-General George Brandis, who previously found it difficult to not only detail what his data retention bill would cover but also why exactly it was needed, now thinks his government has been vindicated and that stricter security laws are urgently needed.

It is a contradiction in terms: protect the Western way of life and its illusory ideals of freedom of speech and liberty by doing the exact opposite and clamping down all those things.

Such contradictions are not problematic for the powers that be. I dont like predictions, but for 2015 it seems pretty clear that every person and organisation will be monitored much more than before.

Neither France nor UK are very strong on protecting peoples privacy from official snooping, and there is already extensive surveillance, physical and online, in both countries.

Those measures weren't sufficient to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attack and ensuing murders of hostages during the hunt for the gunmen, so there is no logical argument to introduce the same measures here.

I dont want a situation where privacy is so... sacrosanct that terrorists can confidently operate from behind those walls without fear of detection."

- MI5 chief Andrew Parker.

Parker has support for this notion with the British prime minister David Cameron. The BBC quoted Cameron as campaigning the next election on what seems to be a total erosion of privacy for everyone.

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Censorship isn't the answer