Anti-terror laws used in war against drugs

A few months ago there were rumours of a few people getting raided on the north coast of NSW, but it wasn't like it used to be. There was no media coverage, there was no police bragging about their apparent successes, and there was no noise from the community - not even those who were taken in for questioning. It took weeks for details to filter down the grapevine, but these tidbits did not give any indication of the sheer scale of what was going on.

The following accounts should worry any citizen living in a democracy as they attack the basic principles of human rights. But they should worry Australians more than most as we were largely in favour of the laws when they were passed. As is so often the case, the cautious minority that was dismissed as conspiracy nuts and leftist propagandists were proven right. As we can see from todays decision in the canadian parliament it is not too late to stop this decay of our personal freedoms.

And if you thought that this does not apply to you, please keep in mind that the vast majority of people who were caught up in the story below were also entirely innocent. A large number had no idea what was going on, and many still don't.

The ACC has been a major force in all this so it is essential to provide some background on this agency. The Australian Crime Commission deals with organised crime, fraud and other crime syndicates. It also deals with matters of national security at times. It was formed a few years ago and operates under the National Crime Authority [NCA] act. The NCA was disgraced and disbanded in 2001 or so for abuse of powers. To get an insight into the mentality of the NCA you just have to follow the writings of it's ex chairman, who is now a QC and is infamously known for his advocacy of torture in matters of national security. The ACC is basically the NCA, but with a slightly different management and better funding. The culture of the agency has not changed.


So, back to the rumours. They intrigued me so I did a bit of digging. Turns out that NNSW was identified in late 2005 by various crime fighting agencies as a major source of ice. The main agencies involved were ACC, NSW drug squad and customs. Extra funding was provided to these agencies by all levels of government. By October 2005 they had gathered enough intelligence and also caught several lucky breaks which led to the arrest of a major syndicate of mdma, ice and coke dealers operating out of sydney, byron and the gold coast. These were done so skillfully that no one in the local community of Byron Bay knew what was going on. The estimated number of raids in this sweep is 20-50. As I said, getting information is very difficult for a number of reasons as I will outline later. These raids appear to have netted many major dealers and did not appear to have affected anyone else.

A few days later a second sweep of about 40 raids netted only a few dealers while most others were unconnected and innocent. Several were charged with minor offences like having soem personal drugs in the house etc.

Then a further 1-2 weeks later about 25 houses got raided. It appears that these raids were on such vague intelligence that it was enough if you had the same solicitor or other professional service as one of the INNOCENT people in the previous raids.

Then over december activity seemed to mostly move up to the gold coast and other than hearing of more raids I have little information. In january the olympic kayak champion got busted with pills driving back from Byron Bay and later a pill press was found on his premises. Whether this last incident is part of this investigation I don't know, but it was one of the very few media publicised aspects of what ahs been goign on.

Now, what happens during a raid? About 10-25 officers are assigned to each premise. People are individually questioned and some are taken in for further questioning. Any small amount of drug that may be on the premise is logged. The raids are pretty standard. The questioning of suspects definitely is not!

We have full accounts from at least 2 suspects and bits and pieces from several others. This is what we have been able to piece together:
Suspect is taken into a room with a person on a podium or such. This person does not introduce himself, but is obviously the person of authority. Suyspect is now told two things and these are what my post is all about.

1) You have x amount of time to tell us everything you know about any illegal activity [sometimes this is narrowed down to being information about specific people]. If you do not tell us everything and we later find out that you failed to tell us you are in contempt of court and can be penalised by up to 5 years jail.

2) You must not tell anyone about this or you are in contempt of court and can be penalised with up to 5 years jail.

Both actions are permitted under the national security act [anti terror laws] and were designed to make suspects [or innocent bystanders] talk. The first action is basically a removal of the right to silence [or what is called miranda in the USA]. The second is a court gag order, which is not a new concept, but was previously not applied in such cases. It achieves exactly what it sets out to do and stops information being spread about the draconian practices used by the ACC.

We have no 100% proof, but it appears that the person in charge of the questioning is in fact a magistrate. This person has the power to hold suspects for up to about 90 days and can also decide whether you are permitted a solicitor or not. From what I gather the questioning is actually a national security tribunal.

For people unprepared for this new legal situation this tactic can be quite scary. I mean, everyone has grown up thinking that all you need to do is ask for a lawyer and not answer any questions. That doesn't work anymore.

One might argue that the terror laws are needed to keep us safe and even I tend to sympathise with that notion. Extraordinary threats warrant extraordinary measures. But to apply these laws to every day crime where there is quite obviously no terror threat should make people think twice about who brought us these laws and why we agreed to them.

As I said before, the vast majority of people who got caught up in this had no connection to the crime syndicates, but were stripped off their personal rights regardless. What if it happened to you? How different are we to regimes such as china or myanmar then?

Gag orders can sometimes apply to media only [to avoid publicity] or can be very narrowly defined. Usually in the past gag orders included everyone outside your immediate family. Several gag orders in the case of these suspects applied to EVERYONE. ie, a suspect could not even tell his wife that he had just spent hours or days in interrogation.


Anyway, there was also a batch of 50 raids on the sunshine caost in january and another batch of bikie raids last week. The agencies are now patting themselves on their backs for having caught a few crims and ignoring the fact that thet have eroded our civil rights in the process. Not that I have any compassion for ice makers and dealers, but we already know how futile the war on drugs is, which makes our loss of civil rights even more undeserving. Essentially we are losing our rights while law enforcement achieves nothing. ice is and will be readily available everywhere regardless of what they do. However, I am sure that the several hundred people affected by these raids will be less supportive of our law enforcement agencies after the harrassment they had to endure. That is a dangerous development

In all we know of at least 210 premises being raided in connection with this in the Byron, GC and SC areas alone [no info about sydney or other connected areas]. This number may well be substantially higher. That is a lot of enemies the ACC has made.

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