We still need to know the facts behind the Witness K case
ATO deputy commissioner Matthew Frederick Hay has been awarded the Public Service Medal for “outstanding public service in the application of contemporary online services, core technology platforms, and complex IT systems for the Australian Taxation Office”.
Mr Hay has been credited with delivering the digital aspects of the ATO’s package of economic stimulus measures including JobKeeper, early release of super, and cash flow boost within a short time frame of six weeks from the announcement of the measures.
He has also been recognised for the smooth execution of tax time 2020 in the face of a sixfold increase in digital transactions compared with the previous year.
Fellow ATO deputy commissioner James Matthew O'Halloran has also been awarded the Public Service Medal for “outstanding public service to superannuation reforms, and to the implementation of infrastructure to enable the Government's economic support measures to Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic”.
Mr O'Halloran was the program lead for the JobKeeper and has been credited with designing a system that used existing architecture and integrated data already collected through Single Touch reporting (STP).
He has also been recognised for overseeing the introduction of STP, and facilitating the program to reunite Australians with billions of dollars of lost and unclaimed superannuation.
Accountants, ATO officers honoured on the Queen’s birthday
"To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be." (This goes for yourself too.)
Australia is giving its security agencies ever more powers to fight terrorism, foreign influence and international crime but the case of Witness K, which concluded on Friday, has raised again the need for careful supervision of how these powers are used.
Lawyers for the former intelligence officer Witness K have urged a court to spare him a criminal conviction for his role in unearthing Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste, saying it would only serve to increase his “alienation, anxiety and post-traumatic stress”.
Amid much secrecy and after extraordinary delay, sentencing proceedings against Witness K finally began on Thursday in the ACT magistrates court.
The former spy was present but surrounded by a wall of black panels which hid him completely from the crowd of lawyers and observers packing out the courtroom.
Electronic devices were banned from the court and security cameras were obscured. Glass panels leading into the courtroom and behind the magistrate, Glenn Theakston, were blacked out.
The voice of Witness K, whose identity is guarded closely, was heard for the first time in open court after he was arraigned on a single charge of conspiring with his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, to disclose intelligence information to the government of Timor-Leste.
Witness K speaks for first time in open court as he pleads guilty to breaching secrecy laws
José Ramos-Horta calls on Timor-Leste to award Australia’s Witness K top honour
WITNESS K
EDITORIAL JUNE 19, 2021
It is an absurd situation. Witness K has pleaded guilty for his role in exposing wrongdoing by the government. He is being sentenced over a crime Australia committed. In a little room in Canberra, behind black panels to conceal his identity, he spoke his first words in open court: “Guilty, your honour.”
LAW & CRIME JUNE 12, 2021
Bernard Collaery and Witness K
In Franz Kafka’s book The Trial the accused, Josef K, manages to arouse the court’s anger by loudly complaining about the absurdity of the proceedings and the accusation itself, if he could only understand it. The book is alternatively macabre and...
So, I will say this — and I honestly mean this — I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science,’ he said. ‘Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.’
DuckDuckGo’s Quest to Prove Online Privacy Is Possible - Wired: “…DuckDuckGo is on a mission to prove that giving up one’s privacy online is not, in fact, inevitable. Over the past several years, it has expanded far beyond its original search engine to provide a suite of free privacy-centric tools, including a popular browser extension, that plug up the various holes through which ad tech companies and data brokers spy on us as we browse the internet and use our phones. This year it will roll out some major new products and features, including a desktop browser and email privacy protection. And it will spend more money than it ever has on advertising to get the word out. The long-term goal is to turn DuckDuckGo into an all-in-one online privacy shield—what Gabriel Weinberg, the company’s founder and CEO, calls “the ‘easy button’ for privacy.”…if DuckDuckGo succeeds at bringing simple privacy to the masses, it will mean that the future of privacy might not depend on the relative benevolence of just two corporate overlords…”
Rogue doctors and the good character test
With the death of former medical practitioner, Geoffrey Edelsten, one can predict that there will be commentators and journalists who will seek to laud him. Here is a different view....
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE, BUT YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER: If Netanyahu Studied Godfather Movies He Might Still Be Prime Minister.
NO, JON STEWART’S WUHAN LAB TIRADE IS NOT ‘FRINGE’ OPINION: “How do you know an opinion isn’t dangerous? When a famous comedian says it on network TV.”
UPDATE: Former CDC director: That Jon Stewart fellow is on the right track about COVID-19 origin, you know.
FLORIDA, MAN: Florida city accidentally sells its water tower
The Rashomon Effect
In Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon, the story of the murder of a samurai is told from several different viewpoints and each account of the event is different and even contradictory. In real life as in cinema, the Rashomon Effect describes how events can be recalled in contradictory ways by well-meaning but ultimately subjective witnesses. In this short TED-Ed video, the Rashomon Effect and its implications are explained and explored. (via open culture)