Police can now snoop Facebook, emails and text messages

Tight controls and restraints need to be imposed on these powers, but looking at the legislation, there’s nothing in there to stop the police from using these powers to snoop on citizens in the hope of finding something incriminating.

If we are to have phone taps foisted on us, then any information provided to the PIM to support a phone tap application must also be provided to the defence if that evidence gathered formed part of a subsequent Crown case.

Given the manner in which electronic communications could be manipulated, I expect any evidence gathered by phone taps or electronic intercepts to be vigorously tested in the courts.

The police say having these powers will make it easier to catch criminals but phone tap recordings and intercepted emails and texts can be manipulated. Just as a photograph can be challenged in court on its authenticity, so we can expect any telephone or electronic communication intercept evidence will be challenged in court.

If the police are presenting taped conversations or intercepted emails as evidence, then obviously we would need to vigorously investigate whether the tapes or emails were genuine or had been edited or tampered with in any way. It’s going to complicate trials and maybe make some of them longer.

Strict controls on phone taps are needed to avoid the spectre of giving the CMC and police the power to just tap phones in the hope of catching someone out.

When you start chipping away at the public’s rights, you undermine the foundations of our civil liberties.

Advocates of the phone tap laws claimed criminal gangs have relocated to Queensland because the state’s current laws did not allow phone taps. This is misleading. Federal phone tap laws could be applied in Queensland if circumstances warranted.

What this is really about is giving the Queensland Police more powers and controls over the daily lives of Queenslanders.

I very much doubt organised crime these days restricts its communications to fixed telephone lines, but that’s been the PR image pushed by the government and police to get the laws here changed. They have portrayed criminal gangs as devious types whose activities can be detected via a phone tap. This image belongs to 1950s movies about the FBI.

Gangs, like international terrorists, use all manner of electronic communications system to talk to one another, yet the police and state government have deliberately avoided acknowledging this. Why? Because the logical next step is to eavesdrop on every form of private electronic communication.

This includes things that might be written in silly emails that zip around computer terminals in the office, get forwarded to friends and family, or written about on one of the social network internet websites that are so popular now as a communications medium.