Federal police raid Canberra journalist's home

Federal police raid Canberra journalist's home

www.abc.net.au

Australian Federal Police (AFP) agents have raided the home of a Canberra Times journalist in connection with a story he wrote about defence intelligence.

Seven AFP officers entered journalist Philip Dorling's house at 8.30am with a search warrant.

Mr Dorling is the newspaper's national affairs correspondent.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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www.canberratimes.com.au

Looks like the Australian Government is trying to crack down on on the US spy base in WA here. Linked is the report that I believe this raid refers to.

The new US defence facility will be located with the existing Australian satellite signals intelligence facility at Geraldton, Western Australia. The base will be linked to a network of communications satellites that will provide front-line US military units with instant access to high-grade intelligence and tactical information.

The cat's out of the bag, not sure why the government is heavying the press on this now.

www.abc.net.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

The question that comes to my mind about the US base is this the same thing Peter Garret was talking about a month or two ago ? He said that the USA wanted to have a "weather" station in Australia. (What a joke )

Looks like the journalist found some papers that the government did not want to become public

We have enough US BS in our country tell them to get lost

This is a real shame. That bloke is one of the only journo's left that actually tries to make a difference. He goes out and actually does what a journo should do. Find the truth and report it. Not like the rest of the dribblers.

Scary stuff.

Well i think that he is very lucky that they raided his home,he could have gone missing or been taken to one of them foreign countries where no one has any rights.

What do they call that ?? rendition (good movie)


Would love to be a fly on the wall when they were asking him questions

gday, ive been reading quite a bit on this site for the last year or so, nothing compares to reading an article bout home tho, what happened to good old Australia, as i recall, it was roughly 1988 when there was a shift from Australian living, to what we have today.
Krispy Kremes is already corrupting our young here...but a weather station?? for America? in Australia?? Cmon Aussie Cmon!!

Hello to the Aussies !!!,
Do you think this will be used in relation to China etc ?

Or is it something akin to the early Space program where the U.S needed something in the Southern Hemisphere ?

Do the British still have any installations in your country ?

There was clarification on the article cited in the search warrant today. It was the following article:

Revealed: our spy targets

The disclosure of DIO's focus on Japan comes after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's meeting in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and expressions of Japanese support for Mr Rudd's proposed International Commission on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

The briefings, seen by The Canberra Times, show that DIO's transnational, scientific and technical intelligence branches keep a close watch on Japan's nuclear power industry and civilian space programs.

According to one Defence intelligence analyst, this is more than a watching brief.

"We put quite a lot of effort into the Japanese target," he said.

"After all they have lots of nuclear reactors, an advanced space sector and an enormous stockpile of plutonium. There's no Japanese intention now to get nuclear weapons, but who knows what the world will look like in a decade or two decades' time.

Didn't realise we viewed Japan as such a threat, and obviously this is not something the Australian Government wanted to become broad public knowledge. I wonder what they find so interesting about the Japanese space program?

The point of this search is not actually to charge the journo - think of the raid's intention - to put fear into the minds of ALL public servants generally.
As with the Kessing Customs case last year, when the Crown barrister, Lincoln Crowley, stated explicitly at the sentencing hearing that "..a custodial sentence was necessary to dissuade other public servants from disclsoing information..". The judge at his trial also ordered the jury NOT to take into account the obvious public interest benefit of disclosing the lax security at Sydney airport. Plus ca change or as Voltaire said of the english propnsity to shoot the occasional general, "..pour encourage les autres..."