I’ve just co-sponsored a Bill to repeal the Digital ID Bill passed by the government.
This is why it is so essential to get rid of this dictatorship tool.
Posts
Regarding the government’s not so voluntary National Digital Identity – you are not alone. We’ve been receiving many similar messages and emails from across Australia.
Three bills were rammed through the Senate, creating dangerous legislation for Australians who value their privacy, security, and civil liberties. The Identity Verification Services Bill, which permits the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens was passed into legislation. The Digital ID Bill was also passed in the Senate with almost no debate and was rubber-stamped in the House of Representatives. The Combatting Misinformation/Disinformation (Censorship) Bill received strong pushback and has gone quiet for now. Instead, we saw an attack on free speech from Australia’s eSafety Commissioner.
Labor is forging ahead in lockstep with other countries to implement the World Economic Forum’s digital economic agenda.
There have been many different digital identity systems floating around in the government. The Digital Identity Bill was designed to create one Digital Identity to rule them all. Among some last-minute concessions in the legislation, the government has said that its new Digital ID can be deactivated. That’s irrelevant however when banks and other institutions will make it mandatory. In fact, Section 74 of the bill states that Digital ID is voluntary, but sub-sections 2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8 list a series of exceptions. All of which means it can be mandated under the flimsy provision of “appropriate to do so”.
The Australian Government’s proposed ‘Trusted Digital Identity Framework’ (they actually used the word ‘trusted’ in the first draft of the bill) is not a stand-alone policy. It sits inside the extensive Digital Economy Strategy 2030 worth $1.2 billion at the time of the 2021-2022 Budget. It will be accessible and used both in government and private settings. This legislation relies on legacy identification mechanisms which guarantee a role for Big Tech companies in the Government’s proposed ‘identity ecosystem’.
Unfortunately, the interests of ‘Big Tech’ and ‘Big Government’ are becoming increasingly aligned. Both parties have a vested interest in pervasive surveillance, data mining and matching: one for profit and the other for control. This represents an unhealthy alignment of State and Corporate interests, with everything that entails.
The new raft of identity legislation creates a brand-new identity record for Australians, originated by Government and validated by Government, and commercial entities. This legislation goes much further than the MyGov digital ID. It puts all your identity eggs into one digital basket and will place more Australians at risk of being hacked.
A much better alternative would be an identity system based on the user owned and operated technologies developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that rely on cryptographic tools and decentralised identifiers to prove ‘trustworthiness’ online, as well as identity – if that is what’s needed. These tools allow for direct, peer-to-peer proofs of trustworthiness and identity verification, without the need for Government or Big Tech involvement. So why is the Australian Government persevering with such a poor-quality identity solution? You might ask yourself, “Why do we need another digital identity system when we already have myGov ID?” The short answer is that this legislation is not designed to serve the interests of ordinary Australians. It’s been designed by foreign Big Tech firms and international governance bodies like the WHO, UN, IPCC and WEF to serve their interests. These organisations profit handsomely in terms of money and power from the capture and exploitation of personal data, and they don’t want that model to change.
The most serious risk associated with this legislation is scope creep. Like Australia, most developed nations around the world are implementing Government Digital Identity systems that are remarkably similar to those already operational in China and India. Over-identification is a feature of both the Chinese and Indian Digital ID legislation and there is a real risk that biometric mechanisms of identification will become a mandatory aspect of every transaction Australians make online and off.
I first drew Australia’s attention to this dangerous and dystopian legislation in 2021 “1984: the Bill” – The Trusted Digital Identity – Malcolm Roberts (malcolmrobertsqld.com.au). I’ve been opposed to the government’s digital identity since it was first proposed under the coalition, when Australia aligned with the World Economic Forum’s goals for a global digital economic strategy. This is the reason government-legislated Digital Identity was created in the first place. Read my article in the Spectator (click here) for more about the bureaucratic bungling behind this legislation.
The government did not come up with the Trusted Digital Identity on its own to solve the issue of outdated government databases. As stated by the policymakers in their accompanying documentation, the Trusted Digital Identity is the brainchild of the World Economic Forum and their global digital identity roadmap. Unlike the Voice, which sought to change the constitution, legislation can at least be undone with a change of government.
It’s important to keep pushing back against these authoritarian measures. The best remedy will be at the ballot box during the next federal election.
If One Nation had had just one more senator in parliament, many of those abhorrent, dystopian bills that were rammed through the Senate with little or no debate would not have been passed.
Make your vote count at the next election.
A Triad of Tyranny
Three Bills are being rammed through the Senate to create legislation that will transform the UN-WEF plans for surveillance and control into a dystopian reality in Australia.
The first is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which is designed to permit the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens and normalise it. The second, the Digital Identity Bill 2023, will ensure Australians have no choice but to succumb to setting up a digital ID. The third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023. This is the censorship tool to make sure both the media and social media carries government sanctioned opinions only. The government in power is exempted and free to be the Ministry of Truth, spreading misinformation or disinformation. Remember how well that went during the COVID response?
The Driver’s Licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already being used to establish your identity with a paper check and now with a facial scan.
I implored the Senate to vote against and to reject this Bill. This is the first of three Bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
Transcript
One Nation strongly opposes the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023. Here’s why. The Albanese government’s great mate, Blackrock boss Larry Fink, and predatory billionaires at the World Economic Forum are fond of the phrase ‘you will own nothing and be happy’. What they really mean is that they will own everything and you will comply. Why would people voluntarily enslave themselves, give up their homes, cars and household goods and lose the right to travel freely, I hear you ask. The answer is that people will not be given a choice. They will be coerced—forced into it. That’s the purpose of this government’s triad of tyranny.
First is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which will normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Second is the Digital ID Bill 2023, which will force every Australian into having a digital ID. Third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions; the government will be exempted and can be free to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Biometric data is your face turned into a data file based on your physical characteristics. It allows for faster and more accurate identification. They will capture your face. The national drivers licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already used to establish your identity with a paper check. Now it will have a facial scan.
Australians do not need to consent in a meaningful manner. The bill currently uses the word ‘consent’ without definition. Consent can be implied. Here’s an example. If a person sees a video of themselves on a self-service check-out at the supermarket and uses the check-out anyway, it’s considered implied consent. The government has accepted that implied consent is no consent at all and has upgraded the reference to ‘consent’ in their amendment on sheet UD100 to ‘explicit consent’. That isn’t good enough either. Explicit consent can be provided as blanket consent. An example would be MasterCard changing their terms and conditions to allow for facial recognition whenever their card is used. Once the card owner gets the email saying, ‘We have updated our terms and conditions. Click here to approve,’ and people click without reading it, one of those new terms could be permission for facial recognition. Did you give consent? No.
Banks currently record the image of anyone using their ATMs and then use that in the case of a fraudulent transaction. Banks will update their terms and conditions to give themselves the right to run your biometric
verification on each occasion before allowing access to your account. Refusing the new permission gives your bank or card company the right to refuse service. It’s that simple. It’s blackmail. This is why the government suggesting a digital ID or biometric data check will be voluntary is a complete lie. It’s compulsory, because not agreeing means you lose your bank account or payment card or service—just as those voluntary COVID injections were compulsory if you wanted to keep your job and your house and feed your family.
I foreshadow an amendment in the committee stage on sheet 2327 to change the definition of ‘explicit’ to ‘active’, meaning on each occasion your face is to be scanned they must ask permission before they scan it and make sure they get your permission each time. That’s active consent. This should be supported, because the government already says Australians will have to consent to their biometric data being used—unless, of course, that was misinformation.
This bill does not offer a direct link between the authentication action at a check-out, office, airport et cetera and the master file. A government hub receives a request and pulls the master file, meaning only the government has access to the master file. This seems to look acceptable, yet it means there’s a master file with 17 million records containing name, address, telephone, date of birth, drivers licence number, passport number and a biometric identification file all sitting in the same database. That’s all the information necessary to steal someone’s ID and impersonate them online—a hacker’s paradise.
Robodebt proved that our bureaucrats are incapable of even a simple one-to-one database match, and now they’re being trusted to pull this off. It’s impossible without a high level of compulsion and without completely ignoring victims of software or data-matching errors. If the look-up fails, then your purchase, travel, document, signing or whatever other use fails. If the purchase was for petrol, your family could be stranded late at night. We might as well start the royal commission now.
Downstream from the big government database are what I call intermediaries or entities with participating agreements. There are 20 of these so far. Their role is to take a request for authentication from a bank or card
processor, solicitor, real estate agent, airline—anyone needing you to prove you are who you say you are—and submit that to the national drivers licence database hub to run past the master database. In the original bill there were no effective checks and balances on those businesses. The government’s amendment of its own bill has added a few checks and balances to ensure that intermediaries must delete data received as part of the verification process.
Thank you, Minister Gallagher. That, taken together with my amendment to make the level of consent clear, takes some of the potential abuse out of the bill. A clear privacy statement would have helped. The government have promised they will do that later. There are trust issues around that promise.
Questions remain around the New South Wales government’s comment that this bill will allow them to verify that every person detected driving a car past a surveillance camera has a drivers licence.
The only way this can be achieved is if every driver is scanned every time they pass a detection camera and their image is compared to the national database. Does this mean those cameras going up around Australia are just the right height to scan the driver’s face and that the cameras will be used to scan and verify your identity each time you pass one? Yes, it does. Before they work out who you are and whether you have a licence, they have to scan and verify your biometrics. It’s the only explanation for the New South Wales government’s comment.
For those listening to this with incredulity, I remind you that this is exactly the system now in place in London, with Lord Mayor Khan’s ULEZ, Ultra Low Emission Zone, and in Birmingham, Manchester and other cities in Britain. It’s really the World Economic Forum’s 15-minute cities happening right now. Residents are locked into their zone and can only leave a certain number of times a year. This is happening in Britain. That depends on the make and model of the car you drive. If you drive a car they don’t like, you can’t move. Rich people who can afford electric cars can, of course, come and go as they please. Everyday citizens are locked in or, when they leave, the cameras detect them leaving and fine them on the spot. It’s a fine of 180 pounds a week for leaving over seven days.
That’s in Britain now. Already it has raised hundreds of millions of pounds because people will pay for freedom.
Look it up. Don’t just trust me: look it up. There are fines for not registering with the system and fines for breaching the 15-minute limits. It’s a virtual fence. It’s like an electric dog collar. It’s the foundation for a social credit system to completely control people’s lives. So don’t tell me this is a conspiracy theory. It’s real and it’s happening now in our mother country.
Cash is necessary to ensure these measures are ameliorated as much as possible, which is why the globalist wing of the Liberal Party tried to ban cash in the last parliament, which One Nation defeated. It should be obvious that predatory, parasitic billionaires and some of their lackeys in the Labor and Liberal Party are getting their ducks in a row because they want to be ready for the full implementation of their globalist masters’ control agenda, exactly as they promised. It’s not like they’re hiding any of this. When they tell us what they’re going to do, listen.
Remember this government’s triad of tyranny. Already entered into parliament is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 to normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Here it is. There’s the Digital ID Bill 2023 to force every Australian into having a digital ID. There’s the misinformation and disinformation bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions, and the government is exempted. I implore the Senate to vote against this bill and to reject this bill. This is the first of three bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
During recent Senate Estimates I checked with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as to why it did not publicise complaints about the ABC, yet pushed out press releases for similar breaches by the Sky Network.
I also inquired into the Optus outage last year to see whether there is any new information around the failure of emergency 000 calls and whether Starlink (high speed satellite internet) was being considered as a backup in the future.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again today. On 26 April 2023, you issued a press release about the Sky News program Outsiders for breaches of industry codes. On 20 March 2023, in relation to the ABC, in response to Senator Henderson, you agreed that the ABC breached the codes during their coverage of a community meeting in Alice Springs. You endorsed the ABC Ombudsman’s finding that there were breaches of the code yet published no press release about that, from what we can see. Why does a conservative news service cop a full press release when you conclude they’ve breached the code but when the ABC breaches a code there’s barely a peep from you publicly?
Ms O’Loughlin: I might need to refer to my colleagues for the details of that circumstance.
Senator ROBERTS: Sure.
Ms O’Loughlin: I would have to say that we put out media releases for pretty much every breach that we look at under the Broadcasting Services Act, be it a national or a commercial broadcaster. I can take it on notice. There are certainly circumstances in the last year where we have put out media releases on the ABC. So it is not our practice to discriminate between types of broadcasters. We like to make transparent our decisions about breaches across the board. I might just see whether or not my colleagues have anything to add.
Ms Chapman: In the instance of the ABC Alice Springs issue, we didn’t undertake a full formal investigation. We fully considered the matter. We looked at the content. We considered the report by the ombudsman at the time. We didn’t find a formal breach in that instance. That was on the basis that the ABC themselves had found a breach. The ABC themselves conceded that there were issues with the broadcast and that there was considerablemedia attention at the time which highlighted the findings that the ABC made. So we didn’t put out a press release because we didn’t make a formal finding.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
Ms O’Loughlin: I will add to that. I just found something in my notes. For example, from the investigation we did on the ABC’s Four Corners program called The Big Lie, we did a media release for that on 21 December 2022 because we had found breach findings in that program.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I accept your answer from before. I refer to your letter, Ms O’Loughlin, to Senator Henderson on 20 March that is file reference BM11801. You mentioned in the second last paragraph the matter conducted by the ABC about the circumstances attaching to this matter, including any changes to its editorial processes. Did the ABC advise of any changes to its editorial processes?
Ms O’Loughlin: I don’t have the letter in front of me.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll read it.
Ms Chapman: We did seek a response from the ABC, but I think we need to take on notice whether we received a response.
Senator ROBERTS: I will read the second last paragraph. However, the ACMA has requested that the ABC keep it informed about the outcome of any further internal investigation conducted by the ABC about the circumstances attaching to this matter (including any changes to its editorial processes) and any additional steps that may be taken by the ABC as a result.
Ms O’Loughlin: Senator, we will take that on notice for you. I don’t have that in my pack.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. What does it do to the trust of a media company when it has obvious bias?
Ms O’Loughlin: Senator, I don’t think that’s something on which I can express an opinion. I do think in our experiences broadcasters take very seriously their obligations under the various regulatory codes that they are subjected to, which do come to, in most cases, provisions around bias, impartiality and factual accuracy.
Senator ROBERTS: It would erode trust if it is done often?
Ms O’Loughlin: That would probably be a matter for the broadcasters to comment on, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I will ask some questions here briefly. If they’ve been covered, just tell me so. I’ve checked with Senator Cadell. He hasn’t covered this one. Could you briefly explain the obligation for carriers to allow network switching for Triple Zero calls and why this didn’t happen during the Optus outage? The second part you’ve already discussed at length, so I’m not interested in that. Could you please explain the obligation?
Ms O’Loughlin: Certainly, Senator. The obligation is usually referred to as the mobile camp-on provisions. That is a globally standardised arrangement. Where emergency call services can’t be delivered by a particular carrier for a particular reason, those networks allow those calls to camp on to their network for them to be delivered to the emergency call service. That’s what—
Senator ROBERTS: Free automatic switching?
Ms O’Loughlin: So it’s an automatic transfer of those particular calls going to emergency call services to camp on to another network. If I have that incorrect, my colleague will let me know.
Senator ROBERTS: She’s got it. Thank you. Are there any fines applicable for carriers failing to allow switching or failing to make switching work for Triple Zero calls? Would Optus be facing that?
Ms O’Loughlin: I think part of what we’ll be looking at in our investigation is what was the reason, if in fact that was the reason, some emergency calls didn’t get through. As I mentioned earlier, it’s still not very clear. We’re still in information gathering mode about why that didn’t work. I will ask Mr Fenton to go over some of the potential regulatory responses we may have, if we do, in fact, find any breaches. But it is early days.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
Mr Fenton: I will clarify again that these are enforcement options available to the ACMA if it does find breaches of the determination in question—the emergency call determination. The ACMA can issue a formal warning. It can issue a remedial direction to take action to comply. It can accept a court enforceable undertaking. There are infringement penalties available currently set at $18,780 per contravention. It is open to the ACMA to apply to the Federal Court for penalties as well.
Senator ROBERTS: This is an interesting quirk. Does per contravention mean each phone call?
Mr Fenton: It would depend on the construct of the particular obligation in question. But it can apply to a specific contravention. Once again, it comes back to the actual structure.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I understand. Thank you. Finally, it strikes me that there is the Starlink service, which covers almost everywhere in Australia. It can access the sky, and that’s pretty much everywhere. Would it be a good back-up for text messages and limited voice conversations and emergency calls to fit into that network?
Ms O’Loughlin: That’s a really interesting question. I think there’s a lot of interest in Starlink and, indeed, other satellite services, such as low earth orbit satellite services, that may be able to provide direct to handset text or, indeed, calls which are now starting to emerge. There is the potential for that to really benefit particularly people in regional or remote areas or areas of Australia that have trouble getting signals. I think the department is commencing to look at that in more depth to see what that potential is. There has been quite a lot of strong interest internationally as well, as you can imagine, from particularly countries who have the same sort of issues we have in trying to get signals into various areas. The United States recently, from my reading, had come to the conclusion that technology was just not quite mature enough at the moment to be a backstop for emergency calls but could be in the future. I think the department is going to be looking at whether that is a potential in the future. We think that’s a really exciting development in the satellite space.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I must say that I appreciate the direct answers.
At this year’s Davos, less government officials were present than usual, yet Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, was not only present, but she was also an agenda contributor, pushing for greater online safety.
I asked in what capacity Ms Julie Inman Grant was present at Davos for the World Economic Forum 2024 annual meeting, what was the cost to Australian taxpayers and whether staff travelled with her on this trip at public expense. As an independent statutory authority, Commissioner Inman Grant is planning to embrace global opportunities to help achieve the outcomes she perceives necessary for online safety. The Commissioner is seeking broader powers to achieve her agenda, for our own good of course, and once again this begs the question exactly who is deciding what is ‘good’?
Listening to her speak about online safety regulations, the one word conspicuous by its absence is censorship. The other missing words were freedom of expression.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here today. Did you attend the World Economic Forum planning session in Davos last month? If so, was that in your personal capacity or as the eSafety Commissioner?
Ms Inman Grant: I attended the world economic global summit as the eSafety Commissioner. I achieved more in four days than I could in four years because I was meeting with senior technology executives. I was talking directly to the people who are building AI and immersive technologies and asked directly the decision makers what they are doing to make their platforms safer. I was sharing really our leadership and our model in terms of how we’re tackling online safety.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, I think we’re the ones who should be assessing whether or not you’re justified. How many staff accompanied you? What was the cost to taxpayers?
Ms Inman Grant: I will take that on notice. I had one staff member accompany me. I supplemented that with trips to Brussels, where I met with European Commission officials, and to Dublin to meet with my fellow regulators in Ireland and the UK. So it was a very productive trip.
Senator ROBERTS: Now can I have the justification, please? What did taxpayers get for their money? How did attending help in the discharge of your duties?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, I had access to the presidents of most of the major technology companies, including the CEO of OpenAI. I was able to ask him what they were planning to do to build safety into this. Any time that we can influence the decision-makers at this level to make technology safer is better.
Senator ROBERTS: You run an online agency, right?
Ms Inman Grant: I run—
Senator ROBERTS: Couldn’t you have done this online?
Ms Inman Grant: I run a real agency that has real people and capital equipment. I couldn’t engage in this forum online and not have those kinds of meetings to make a real difference for Australians in terms of getting real change happening.
Senator ROBERTS: You are referencing your panel session at Davos. Your office has just sent Twitter a notice regarding them allowing hate on the Twitter platform, including allowing previously suspended users back on the platform.
Ms Inman Grant: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Can you give me examples of Australian accounts that X has allowed back on that your office objects to?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, the online hate notice looked at the range of trust and safety governance steps that they had taken, including firing 80 per cent of their safety engineers, more than half of their content moderators and 80 per cent of their public policy personnel—so the people who actually look after the safety. We did ask them. It was reported that there were 62,000 previously banned users. To be permanently banned on Twitter, you have to have violated the policies pretty egregiously a number of times. We asked them the question. They responded. We asked about the 62,000. They responded with 6,100. We assumed that meant they reinstated 6,100 previously banned Australian accounts, which wasn’t in the manner and form of the notice and the question that we asked them. They didn’t name what those specific ones were, but they did tell us that there are no additional safety provisions even though they have been permanently banned for online hate in some cases.
Senator ROBERTS: It seems to me, Ms Grant, that you’re assuming the previous bans were in order. Had you explored those previous bans before coming to that judgement?
Ms Inman Grant: Twitter, as the company, had a whole range of policies, including a hateful conduct policy. They remove or—
Senator ROBERTS: So you haven’t? What you’ve done is you’ve gone off their interpretation of their policy, even though we know they were biased.
Ms Inman Grant: That’s the only thing we can do, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you come back to my question—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, please allow Ms Inman Grant to answer.
Senator ROBERTS: and give me examples of Australian accounts?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I appreciate that you are somewhat agitated. Could you please respect the witnesses and allow them to answer the questions.
Senator ROBERTS: I would like the witness to give me examples of Australian accounts that X has allowed back that her office objects to. That’s my question and you haven’t answered it.
Ms Inman Grant: I didn’t ask them specific questions about which accounts they were. I asked for the quant the numbers.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Are you setting yourself up as an arbiter of what should and should not be seen online?
Ms Inman Grant: No. I am not. I have been designated by the government to serve as the eSafety Commissioner and to remediate harms of online individuals who have experienced online abuse and, in most cases, have reported that abuse to the platform. The platform hasn’t enforced their terms of policy, so we are there as a safety net or a backstop to help remediate that harm.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Your remarks included this comment, and I quote: There are lots of different tools in the toolbox we’ll be using. What are those tools? Under what explicit power do you possess them? Who supervises how you use them?
Ms Inman Grant: All our powers are designated under the Online Safety Act. We have a range of complaints schemes that deal with youth based cyber bullying, image-based abuse, adult cyber abuse and the online content scheme. We have systems and process powers under the basic online safety expectations. We have now six codes registered and two standards that we’re working on. They are the primary tools.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Who supervises how you use them? Who assesses whether or not you’re being effective or overextending?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, we are held to account. We have lots of reporting and transparency and accountability measures ourselves. If there’s ever a question about any decision that is made, it can be challenged through internal review, the ombudsman, the AAT or the Federal Court. So we are accountable to the people and the government.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. At the World Economic Forum planning session in Davos, you said, and I quote: We have started something called the Global Online Safety Regulator. Who is ‘we’? Did you receive ministerial permission to involve Australia in another globalist power sink hole? You may laugh, but we are facing a big threat.
Ms Inman Grant: I am an independent statutory authority. The Internet is global. Most of our regulatory targets are based overseas. For more than seven years, we were the only online safety regulator in the world. Now, we use the tools we have and we can be effective, but we know we’re going to go much further when we work together with other like-minded independent statutory authorities around the globe. So with the UK, with Ireland and with Fiji in November 2022, we launched the global online safety regulators network. That has now grown to seven independent regulators, including France, South Korea and South Africa. A number of countries are serving as observers. That is so we can achieve a degree of regulatory coherence for the technology industry and make sure that we’re working together to achieve better safety outcomes for all of our citizens.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you get ministerial approval for that?
Ms Inman Grant: I don’t think it was required. Certainly the minister was aware.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. This is a further remark you made—this is how it was reported:
We have reached a tipping point where technology is neither good nor bad. We need to be pushing towards the forces of good. That comment seems steeped in hubris. Who decides what the forces of good are? You?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, the Online Safety Act does define thresholds for harm. Certainly our research looks at the benefits and the drawbacks in terms of how people experience technology and whether it helps them to create, to connect, to work and to communicate versus the harms that they experience, whether it’s—
Senator ROBERTS: How do you listen to people?
Ms Inman Grant: How do I listen to people?
Senator ROBERTS: You just said it’s the people who decide.
Ms Inman Grant: I listen to people in many different ways. We have citizen facing complaints schemes. We’re out in forums all the time. We correspond. We also have about two million people who visit our website every year so they can access resources or report forms of online abuse.
Senator ROBERTS: This is my last question, Chair. Thank you for that. You state: Deepfakes are covered under our world leading image-based abuse scheme, which has close to a 90 per cent success rate. How do you measure 90 per cent objectively? This is your statement.
Ms Inman Grant: We look at the number of complaints that we receive. The 90 per cent success rate is because in the vast majority of cases people just want the intimate imagery and videos taken down, mostly through informal means. We measure the 90 per cent based on how many complaints we receive and how many we get down.
Senator ROBERTS: So the images reported and the images removed? Ninety per cent of them would be removed?
Mr Dagg: When we investigate a complaint about image-based abuse, for example, or any of the other harms set out in our complaint schemes, we measure the response to our requests for removal or our formal interventions. We find, as the commissioner said, requests to be far more efficient and produce a faster turnaround, so they constitute the bulk of our interventions. Ninety per cent of those in the case of image-based abuse succeed. That measure of success is whether or not the images are taken down.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
Three Bills are being rammed through the Senate to create legislation that will transform the UN-WEF plans for surveillance and control into a dystopian reality in Australia.
The first is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which is designed to permit the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens and normalise it. The second, the Digital Identity Bill 2023, will ensure Australians have no choice but to succumb to setting up a digital ID. The third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023. This is the censorship tool to make sure both the media and social media carries government sanctioned opinions only. The government in power is exempted and free to be the Ministry of Truth, spreading misinformation or disinformation. Remember how well that went during the COVID response?
The Driver’s Licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already being used to establish your identity with a paper check and now with a facial scan.
I implored the Senate to vote against and to reject this Bill. This is the first of three Bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
Transcript
One Nation strongly opposes the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023. Here’s why. The Albanese government’s great mate, Blackrock boss Larry Fink, and predatory billionaires at the World Economic Forum are fond of the phrase ‘you will own nothing and be happy’. What they really mean is that they will own everything and you will comply. Why would people voluntarily enslave themselves, give up their homes, cars and household goods and lose the right to travel freely, I hear you ask. The answer is that people will not be given a choice. They will be coerced—forced into it. That’s the purpose of this government’s triad of tyranny.
First is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which will normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Second is the Digital ID Bill 2023, which will force every Australian into having a digital ID. Third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions; the government will be exempted and can be free to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Biometric data is your face turned into a data file based on your physical characteristics. It allows for faster and more accurate identification. They will capture your face. The national drivers licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already used to establish your identity with a paper check. Now it will have a facial scan.
Australians do not need to consent in a meaningful manner. The bill currently uses the word ‘consent’ without definition. Consent can be implied. Here’s an example. If a person sees a video of themselves on a self-service check-out at the supermarket and uses the check-out anyway, it’s considered implied consent. The government has accepted that implied consent is no consent at all and has upgraded the reference to ‘consent’ in their amendment on sheet UD100 to ‘explicit consent’. That isn’t good enough either. Explicit consent can be provided as blanket consent. An example would be MasterCard changing their terms and conditions to allow for facial recognition whenever their card is used. Once the card owner gets the email saying, ‘We have updated our terms and conditions. Click here to approve,’ and people click without reading it, one of those new terms could be permission for facial recognition. Did you give consent? No.
Banks currently record the image of anyone using their ATMs and then use that in the case of a fraudulent transaction. Banks will update their terms and conditions to give themselves the right to run your biometric
verification on each occasion before allowing access to your account. Refusing the new permission gives your bank or card company the right to refuse service. It’s that simple. It’s blackmail. This is why the government suggesting a digital ID or biometric data check will be voluntary is a complete lie. It’s compulsory, because not agreeing means you lose your bank account or payment card or service—just as those voluntary COVID injections were compulsory if you wanted to keep your job and your house and feed your family.
I foreshadow an amendment in the committee stage on sheet 2327 to change the definition of ‘explicit’ to ‘active’, meaning on each occasion your face is to be scanned they must ask permission before they scan it and make sure they get your permission each time. That’s active consent. This should be supported, because the government already says Australians will have to consent to their biometric data being used—unless, of course, that was misinformation.
This bill does not offer a direct link between the authentication action at a check-out, office, airport et cetera and the master file. A government hub receives a request and pulls the master file, meaning only the government has access to the master file. This seems to look acceptable, yet it means there’s a master file with 17 million records containing name, address, telephone, date of birth, drivers licence number, passport number and a biometric identification file all sitting in the same database. That’s all the information necessary to steal someone’s ID and impersonate them online—a hacker’s paradise.
Robodebt proved that our bureaucrats are incapable of even a simple one-to-one database match, and now they’re being trusted to pull this off. It’s impossible without a high level of compulsion and without completely ignoring victims of software or data-matching errors. If the look-up fails, then your purchase, travel, document, signing or whatever other use fails. If the purchase was for petrol, your family could be stranded late at night. We might as well start the royal commission now.
Downstream from the big government database are what I call intermediaries or entities with participating agreements. There are 20 of these so far. Their role is to take a request for authentication from a bank or card
processor, solicitor, real estate agent, airline—anyone needing you to prove you are who you say you are—and submit that to the national drivers licence database hub to run past the master database. In the original bill there were no effective checks and balances on those businesses. The government’s amendment of its own bill has added a few checks and balances to ensure that intermediaries must delete data received as part of the verification process.
Thank you, Minister Gallagher. That, taken together with my amendment to make the level of consent clear, takes some of the potential abuse out of the bill. A clear privacy statement would have helped. The government have promised they will do that later. There are trust issues around that promise.
Questions remain around the New South Wales government’s comment that this bill will allow them to verify that every person detected driving a car past a surveillance camera has a drivers licence.
The only way this can be achieved is if every driver is scanned every time they pass a detection camera and their image is compared to the national database. Does this mean those cameras going up around Australia are just the right height to scan the driver’s face and that the cameras will be used to scan and verify your identity each time you pass one? Yes, it does. Before they work out who you are and whether you have a licence, they have to scan and verify your biometrics. It’s the only explanation for the New South Wales government’s comment.
For those listening to this with incredulity, I remind you that this is exactly the system now in place in London, with Lord Mayor Khan’s ULEZ, Ultra Low Emission Zone, and in Birmingham, Manchester and other cities in Britain. It’s really the World Economic Forum’s 15-minute cities happening right now. Residents are locked into their zone and can only leave a certain number of times a year. This is happening in Britain. That depends on the make and model of the car you drive. If you drive a car they don’t like, you can’t move. Rich people who can afford electric cars can, of course, come and go as they please. Everyday citizens are locked in or, when they leave, the cameras detect them leaving and fine them on the spot. It’s a fine of 180 pounds a week for leaving over seven days.
That’s in Britain now. Already it has raised hundreds of millions of pounds because people will pay for freedom.
Look it up. Don’t just trust me: look it up. There are fines for not registering with the system and fines for breaching the 15-minute limits. It’s a virtual fence. It’s like an electric dog collar. It’s the foundation for a social credit system to completely control people’s lives. So don’t tell me this is a conspiracy theory. It’s real and it’s happening now in our mother country.
Cash is necessary to ensure these measures are ameliorated as much as possible, which is why the globalist wing of the Liberal Party tried to ban cash in the last parliament, which One Nation defeated. It should be obvious that predatory, parasitic billionaires and some of their lackeys in the Labor and Liberal Party are getting their ducks in a row because they want to be ready for the full implementation of their globalist masters’ control agenda, exactly as they promised. It’s not like they’re hiding any of this. When they tell us what they’re going to do, listen.
Remember this government’s triad of tyranny. Already entered into parliament is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 to normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Here it is. There’s the Digital ID Bill 2023 to force every Australian into having a digital ID. There’s the misinformation and disinformation bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions, and the government is exempted. I implore the Senate to vote against this bill and to reject this bill. This is the first of three bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
At Senate Estimates, I asked the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) about their input into Labor’s Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill.
Both ACMA and the Minister claim the bill will retain the democratic right to freedom of speech and freedom of political expression. I don’t believe them! The coercive threat of future government action on tech companies will definitely restrict Australians’ political expression.
How can this basic human right be retained when the government and its mouthpiece media will be the only ones with carte blanche to say whatever they want while everyone else’s views will be open to censorship?
Once a government gives itself an advantage like that over its opponents, both in the political arena and among the public, history informs us of the outcome. Democracy enters decline, every single time.
During the May/June Senate Estimates hearings, I asked the Department of Health and Aged Care to clarify their role with the Department of Home Affairs in censoring social media posts.
Home Affairs had indicated that it relied upon the Department of Health to identify social media posts that ‘contravened Facebook/Meta’s guidelines’. This of course is just more dodging of responsibility as the agency trampling the fundamental rights of speech. Although it’s government doing the censoring, they give the social media corporations the button to push.
It turns out that when Home Affairs wanted to censor or provide information to social media platforms where posts breached the platform’s own guidelines during the COVID response, they relied upon the Department of Health to identify whether or not there was a breach. The Department of Health rarely identified posts and merely provided the information that the government decreed to be ‘correct’.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: Yes. Professor Murphy, could you please clarify your department’s relationship with the Department of Home Affairs, because Home Affairs seem to think that they relied upon the Department of Health for identifying social media posts that contravened Meta’s guidelines.
Prof. Murphy: Ms Balmanno can go over that again.
Ms Balmanno: As evidence became available in terms of the nature of the virus and the nature of treatments, vaccines and all of those sorts of things and how it was being transmitted, obviously there was a growing evidence base there, and it was our job to collate that and to point to the source information, whether that be the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, whether that be the World Health Organization or whatever it might be. We would collate that information for the Department of Home Affairs. That would be what they were able to the then assess posts against. But ultimately the assessment is against the social media platform’s own policies about what is appropriate and not appropriate to be put onto their platforms. They each have a published policy, so they would use our evidence base to inform that decision and assess against those policies. Where they felt there was a breach and a post or an account was putting forward information that was not consistent with those policies, they would refer that to the social media company to look at.
Senator Roberts: Let me clarify, then, to make sure I’ve got the understanding. Home Affairs wanted to censor or provide information to social media platforms where a post breached a social media platform’s own guidelines, and they relied upon you to identify whether there was a breach.
Ms Balmanno: We were part of informing that, in that—
Senator Roberts: Who else was part?
Ms Balmanno: My point is the elements that we were able to contribute to were whether if, for example, they were making a referral specifically because they thought the information was false and was disinformation being deliberately promulgated to cause harm, they would use the evidence sources that we had collated for them to make that assessment and say, ‘According to all of this published research or according to the views of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee and the position in Australia, here is the evidence we are pointing to to suggest that this post is incorrect.’ So we would help provide that evidence. That was our role.
Senator Roberts: So you didn’t identify posts; you just provided evidence when Home Affairs asked for the evidence?
Mr Blackwood: Yes, we were proactive in providing it if there were something not covered—
Senator Roberts: So you sometimes did identify posts?
Ms Balmanno: We were proactive in providing evidence as new evidence came to light and adding to the evidence base. If there were an issue they come across that they thought was incorrect—for example, the idea that 5G was causing COVID was one of the early ones that we did a lot of referrals in relation to—and if we didn’t already have that in the evidence base, they would obviously check that with us in terms of an evidence assessment, and that would be added to it.
Senator Roberts: So it was a hybrid role, then. Sometimes you identifies posts—
Ms Balmanno: We very rarely identified posts.
Senator Roberts: But sometimes you did.
Ms Balmanno: We probably have a handful of examples where we identified posts, and I have agreed to take that on notice.
Senator Roberts: Thank you.
Have your say and sign our petition by clicking on the links below. Help safeguard Australia’s democratic and ‘human’ rights to free speech.
There are only a few days left for you to ‘Have Your Say’ (while you still can) on the Government’s ‘Censorship’ bill giving ACMA powers to combat misinformation and disinformation. One of the greatest sources of misinformation, government departments and their funded media, are excluded from this bill, making it not fit for purpose.
The sleight of hand in this legislation is in the use of the words “misinformation and disinformation”. If we replace those key words in this bill to the more accurate “truth and scientific fact” we can see it is a threat to the prevailing narrative preferred by government “for the safety and well-being of the Australian people”.
It is immediately apparent that the bill is aiming for Orwellian censorship. Such social engineering would see the elimination of thought crimes (freedom of expression) and the removal of the ability for citizens to access truth and protest Government mistakes, bad policy and restriction of freedom.
This bill demonstrates that this government and ACMA has no role or interest in the truth which is disturbing to the majority of Australians. The proposed code would “support fact checking” which has been revealed in the United States court to actually be a misnomer for “narrative reinforcing”. That this legislation is even proposed by a democratically elected Government is beyond comprehension. It must be defeated if we are to remain a free country where the truth, not ‘The Narrative’, should set us free.
Free Speech Conference
Reserve your seat here: https://www.onenation.org.au/free-speech-bne
Labor’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 is a direct attack on freedom of speech.
With the government taking aim at free speech and threatening the very foundations of our democracy, it’s vital that we stand against this bill. We must fight to protect our fundamental right to express ourselves.
There is a major problem with this bill and it is far more than just a slippery slope for our civil liberties. It is highly subjective in its definition of what constitutes ‘misinformation’ – in fact, ‘misinformation’ will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. That’s why it is being called ‘Orwellian’ with references to ‘The Ministry of Truth’ which featured in the novel ‘1984’ by George Orwell.
The information censorship being sought by this bill could easily include legitimate criticisms of the government, questions about the science underpinning climate change ideology, questions about high immigration, questions about gender dysphoria, and the ‘no’ campaign against the voice to Parliament. When the ‘truth’ becomes a subjective tool for the government of the day, you have to ask, who will be fact-checking the fact-checkers?
Petition (scroll down to sign)
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