The Muslim Advisory Body

In August 2005 a Muslim advisory body was created, called the Muslim Community Reference Group. It falls under the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA), comprises 14 members, and exists to advise the Australian Government on issues regarding Islamic Australians.

News.com has reported that the advisers have been 'muzzled' (or 'gagged'). Reportedly DIMA has instructed the membership to turn down media enquiries or refer them to the chairman, Ameer Ali, or get the chairman's consent to speak to the media. Apparently the idea is that the views presented to the media have the agreement of the entire group. How does News.com know this? Well, they asked the members, and seven of them said so, speaking on condition of anonymity. Notwithstanding the humour of the media reporting that the group has told them that they are not supposed to talk to the media, is this news?

I don't think so. I work for the government. My position involves access to information which is covered by the Privacy Act. My department's policy is that I should not speak to the media, and that if I receive an enquiry from the media, I should refer them to my department's spokespeople. The reasons why I have been instructed not to speak to the media are different to the reasons for the instructions given to the members of the Muslim Community Reference Group not to speak to the media. What might those reasons be?

To me it seems likely that the government would prefer that members of the group who hold controversial or dissenting views not publicise them - especially given that, as events in recent months have shown, the publication of controversial views relating to Islamic issues can result in civil unrest, damage to property, or even loss of life. The group does not exist to expose the government's policies or actions that relate to Muslim Australians. It exists to advise the government. The members are no doubt free to speak their minds, including speaking to the media, within the boundaries of the law, but it is not unreasonable for the goverment to try to avoid media debacles, whether for political reasons or to avoid loss of innocent life.

Microsoft and the European Commission

After being presented with a fine of 2 million euros per day of noncompliance with the ruling of the European Commission (currently under appeal), Microsoft is the subject of a new anti-trust complaint to the European Commission by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) - a concerted front representing IBM, Oracle, Sun, Nokia, RealNetworks and others. According to Australian IT the new complaint relates to anti-competitive behaviour by Microsoft, such as the Microsoft Office software that does not permit rivals to interoperate properly with the Windows OS.

My eyebrows went up last year at the sheer size of the fine issued to Microsoft, and the daily increment. Is must be, I imagine, be a very effective way to compel rapid compliance. I can't help but think however that the fine is tailored to Microsoft as respondent. Would anti-competitive behaviour by a Flemish cheeseware manufacturer with a yearly gross of $1 million receive a fine like that? I think not. So the fine is tailored to the subject, not to the offence, which does not strike me as fair.

We all like to root for the underdog, meaning against the overdog. There is no dog more over than Microsoft in the software industry. But anti-trust actions are chary things. In business, the company that is better at doing business makes more money and can grow faster. True, unethical practices can also boost a company. But it does not automatically follow that a company that does better than all others in its industry is using unethical practices. I suspect the primary reason rival companies oppose Microsoft through litigation is because they are rivals, and because it is a cost-effective way for them to restrain Microsoft's success and thus optimise their own opportunities. I would rather see businesses succeed by doing successful business, rather than by tripping the runners in front of them. And the European Commission is not exactly a criminal court. It is simply ruling whether Microsoft's legal business practices are damaging to the industry as a whole.

Microsoft has produced the most widely employed operating system for personal computers. They have pursued a policy of integrating applications with their operating system, which makes it difficult to opt-out of using the Microsoft application and using a rival application instead - for example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), the Microsoft web browser, is an integral part of the Windows desktop now. You can install another browser, but you can't get rid of IE - and many people will use it rather than trouble themselves with finding another. Media Player is another example. Microsoft Office. The list goes on. Microsoft might have intentionally pursued this policy to squeeze out rivals - companies that make money by producing applications that work in the Microsoft operating system, much like non-Toyota parts for your Toyota Corolla - but they might also have pursued it entirely, or at least primarily, because integration is the direction in which personal computer software is evolving.

It seems to me that the position of the members of the ECIS is perhaps like that of companies manufacturing parts for another company's car. Do such companies have a right to demand that cars be made in a certain way to ensure that the parts they sell will not become obsolete?

Microsoft is faced, if they cannot win a legal challenge, with either modifying their software to fit the ruling of the European Commission (a task which may cost a huge amount of money), or perhaps being forced to withdraw from the European market. The ECIS is presumably betting on the former, since without Microsoft operating systems in which their applications can be installed, they might have to - well, they might have to produce software that works in a non-Microsoft operating system, or produce one of their own. And how could that possibly be fair?

Drugs and Terrorism in the Australian News

Some responses to law-enforcement-related news articles today:

The Bulletin with Newsweek, 28 February: The Road To Hell

An excellent overview of the Bali 9 investigation and the members of that ill-fated criminal syndicate, concentrating (for once) not on hystrionics outside the courtroom or on tearful relatives, but on the events that led to the arrests, and the backgrounds of the now-convicted offenders.

"They never get the real ringleaders, just the little people. The nebulous Mr Big remains free while nine of his foot soldiers languish in Bali's Kerobokan prison, seven of them for life, two of them for death. It is always the way, in politics, war and crime.But what if there is no one hiding in the shadows, just a core of senior little people who have already been caught? And what if this "major organised crime gang", which police have actually described as having "tentacles", is in fact just a big bunch of minor thugs and losers from the wrong end of town?"

The author reveals some fascinating nuggets of information which cast the Bali 9 in a far different light than that in which they have been seen in recent months. Rather than being innocents blackmailed into compliance by an unknowable Mr Big, most had criminal records (Stephens and Lawrence were due to face court in Gosford for car theft; Czugaj reportedly has 14 minor dishonesty convictions; Rush is an intravenous drug user with a history of small-time drug and theft convictions). Lawrence claims Chan was the origin of the threats to kill the mules and their families; Chan was employed at the same Sydney company as Lawrence, Norman and Stephens. Lawrence, Nguyen and Norman reportedly had already brought heroin into Australia the same way once before in 2003, and there had been a second attempt aborted because the heroin had been sold by the supplier to a higher bidder.

Another interesting point concerns suggestions made by some (including letters in today's papers) that the decision of the AFP to provide intelligence regarding the presence of the drug traffickers in Bali to the Indonesian Police prevented the heroin from being traced to distributors in Australia. Apart from the (to me) obvious point that with drug investigations, one ideally wishes to trace the network in the direction of the supplier, not in the direction of the users, Toohey makes clear that the AFP information named other persons than the Bali 9. Some were believed to be potential mules who did not make the trip to Bali. Six people have since been arrested in Australia in connection with the case, have been charged with conspiracy to import, and will face committal in April. Toohey quotes AFP commissioner Keelty as saying that the AFP is not through charging people yet.

The article does not deal with the ethical or moral issue of whether the AFP should have provided the intelligence to the Indonesian Police, given that it was possible that a death penalty might be awarded, as has been the case for Chan and Sukumaran. (For discussion of this point, prior to the convictions, see my earlier post.) This is no longer a legal issue; lawyers representing two of the Bali 9 have made this argument in court in Australia, and the judges' decision was that the AFP's actions had been within the law and in accordance with their duties; and further that the AFP did not have a duty of care to protect would-be criminals from their own actions. In the words of one judge, "They are the authors of their own fates."

On an entirely different trial: the Australian trial of Joseph Thomas on charges of knowingly receiving funds from a terrorist organisation (Al-Qaeda), intentionally providing resources to a terrorist organisation (Al-Qaeda), and possessing a falsified Australian passport.

Todays reports in The Age and the Australian (I could not find the article in their online edition) focus on a statement by Thomas' lawyer Lex Lasry that the trial is a 'trophy trial' intended to show 'how hard Australian Federal Police were fighting to counter terrorism.' Lasry's unfounded suggestion aside, reports seem to indicate that there is thin evidence against Thomas.

True, Thomas did admit attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. True, Thomas did admit accepting a plane ticket home and US$3500 cash from Khaled bin Attash, a man who claimed to be a close associate of Bin Laden. Based on those admissions it seems likely that Thomas was, at the very least, a potential terrorist. Other points made underscore the difficulty of obtaining evidence to obtain a criminal conviction in this kind of matter: according to Lasry, the AFP failed to trace a money trail for the cash given to Thomas, so it is not clear that the funds constitute receiving funds from a terrorist organisation. Also according to Lasry, the AFP has failed to prove that bin Attash is linked to Al-Qaeda.

If accurate, reports may indicate that the charges levelled at Thomas were premature. Perhaps it would have been better to let him go and keep him under surveillance in the hopes that either he would incriminate himself or identify links to other potential terrorists. It seems likely that Thomas was engaged in something ill-smelling - false passport, Al-Qaeda training camp, cash and air ticket from a man who says he is a close associate of Bin Laden, and therefore either is Al-Qaeda, or wanted Thomas to think that he was - but the law requires that the prosecution prove guilt, not that the victim prove their innocence. The maxim that it is better to let a hundred guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man remains a foundation of our legal system, but the price of letting guilty men go free may be higher in this era of hijacked airliners and explosive belts than was once the case. Nonetheless it is a price we must pay if we are to remain a free society.