Australia faces three security threats as terrorism (home grown or lone wolves), espionage and cyber security, and none of these can be prioritised over the other.
United State’s Director National Intelligence, General James Clapper (2016) indicated that the year of 2014 by far has been the worst recorded year, with highest level of global political instability, followed by the highest number of state sponsored killings, furthermore 2014 saw the highest number of refugees, and equated to over 13000 terrorist attacks. The large proportion of these terrorist attacks were based in Middle East, followed by Paris, Belgium, Australia, South East Asia, Canada and Denmark.
The online social media has become a way of accessing information and allows
disengaged youths to self radicalise in isolation. There is also an up rise in various terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, al-Shabaab, Bako Harem, Islamic State (ISIL) and al-Nusra, who have used internet as an advance and readily available mean to communicate and recruit people around the world. These groups have become highly sophisticated and skilled in using social media for marketing their propagandas. Australia is not far from their reach and has been selected as a probable target by these radicalised groups. Even though the current terrorist threat level in Australia is probable, the government intelligence agencies have worked hard in keeping it this way. In todays highly advanced era, Australia faces new and different prospect of politically motivated and violent terrorist attacks. In past two years only, Australia has experienced two extremist attacks and over half a dozen more terrorist attack plans disrupted. In 2014, the terrorist threat level was raised from medium to high, following terrorist attack in Melbourne at a police station, where two uniform members were injured and second, the lindt café siege, which result in deaths of three people. There is a continuous encouragement from terrorist groups to plot a terrorist attack in Australia. The poll conducted by Lowy Institute in 2015 indicated that fewer than 25% of Australian felt safe, especially with the emergence of ISIL in Iraq and Syria at the core of the Australian security.
Shadowing World War II, there was an amplified fear of communism in Australia. The influence of the threat of Communism in Australian local politics from 1945 to the 1950’s was very strong as you can see through Robert Menzies, the Petrov Affair, The fear of Ussr spies, the royal commission and the Alp split show relevant threats to the Australian Domestic politics by saying they are spies, traitors and liars.
The only time Australia has come under direct attack from another country, was when Japan bombed Darwin and sunk a number of ships in Sydney, during World War 2. The question then has to be asked, why Australia has been involved in so many conflicts. A number of recent conflicts in this century come to mind, they include, The Boer War, World War One, World War Two and The Vietnam War. By far the conflict that drew the most outrage from Australian citizens was the Vietnam War. Australia has been drawn into these conflicts through a number of treaties and alliances made with other countries. Often it is not the conflicts that have drawn most outrage from Australian citizens, rather the insistence of other countries, for Australia to accept large numbers of post-war refugees.
‘Australia is at War’ is a primary source from the year 1939 and is a speech by renowned Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies (1894 – 1978). This speech was delivered at the beginning of World War II declaring Australia’s participation and assistance to its “Mother Land”, Great Britain. World War II was developed and initiated by the infamous Adolf Hitler, a notorious German leader and the head of the Nazis. German’s invasion of Poland initiated Great Britain’s move towards force rather than their original approach of negotiations and peace, as stated in Prime Minister Menzies’ speech, “they [Great Britain] have kept the door of negotiations open; they have given no cause for provocation.” So the purpose of this source, Menzies speech, which was broadcasted on national radio, was to inform Australia of the drastic measures that were to be taken against Germany in the defence for their Mother Land. As Australia had only pronounced federation a mere thirty-eight years earlier, Great Britain was still referred to as the “Mother Land”, as it was still greatly depended upon it, concluding that when Great Britain had declared war upon Germany, as a result, Australia too was also at war. From Australia’s contribution to Great Britain began the rise of varies army reinforcement groups such as AIF (the Australian Imperial Force), RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force), RAN (Royal Australian Navy) and many more.
Although an act of cyberterrorism has yet to occur, officials and scholars continuously study the possibilities of such an attack. As our physical and virtual worlds continue to intertwine the risk of such an event rapidly increases. Everything from our transportation systems to pharmaceutical manufacturing are computer controlled. The closest the world has come to an act of cyberterrorism was in 2000. Known as the Maroochy Shire case in Queensland, Australia was committed by Vitek Boden. Boden was an engineer for Pacific Paradise, a sewage pumping in Australia. He was able to successful hack into a control system modifying the operations and dumping millions of litres of raw sewage into the local waterways. Boden’s motivation was the only reason the act was not classified as cyberterrorism was his motivation. It was personal rather than political or religious in nature (Sharp Parker, 2009). The only reason this wasn’t the first act of cyberterrorism was motivation. As companies invest in upgrading their technological capabilities, they too need to invest in security structure to protect their systems and the public from threats of terrorism. Our government must also decide how to address public safety in regards to cyberterrorism. On September 11th, 2001 America was reminded how vulnerable we are when it comes to acts of terrorism. The sheer complexity and varying design of attacks often makes it very difficult to create a catch-all defense in fighting terrorism. To improve the disruption of terrorist activities by government agencies in the United States many laws needed to be updated to include the latest areas of electronic communications.
Since 2014 these groups have been on the rise with a 40% increase of 142,500 reported crimes since the first six months of 2016 (Kern, 2016). Of greater concern are the obvious increases in terror attacks in the EU, specifically in France, Germany and Belgium, host nations for a majority of the migrant populations. In 2015, Paris experienced the Charlie Hebdo attack and ended with the Paris nightclub attack in which more than 150 were killed and 300 injured. In 2016, there have been a significant increase in terror attacks in Europe. The Brussels Airport bombing, the Nice truck attack as well as knife attacks in Germany. Added to this is the threats of future attacks in statements by ISIS leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi, as coalition forces fight to retake key strongholds from the Islamic State, but failed to secure the surrounding areas controlled by ISIS allowing an untold number of IS fighters to escape and enter into the EU with the flow of
In 1776, even as Adam Smith was championing the ideals of a free market economy, he recognized that the interests of national security far outweighed the principles of free trade. More then two centuries later, that sentiment proves to still be accurate and in use. Since the early 1900s, the United States has used this precept to defend its position on trade barriers to hostile nations, and through the majority of the century, that predominantly referred to the Soviet Union and its allies.
Cyber activity has increased exponentially while security strategies lack behind. Defence funding identifies Australia’s defence priorities over the last decade highlighting counter-terrorism as the biggest security risk . The 2013 National Security Strategy continues to identify counter-terrorism as its main threat. Concern over cyber crime is apparent with the strategy, encouraging integrated policy development , yet the threat has no substantial counter strategy . In recent years the large-scale information breaches release and published online represent the vulnerability of systems including infrastructure. The case studies of Anonymous and Ransomeware raise the question of the Governments ability to counter cyb...
Terror is rising day by day all over the world, and United States is no exception. There have been mass shootings at schools, shopping malls, music concerts and even at a movie theatre. So far, there have been 398 mass shootings recorded only in the past 50 years which resulted in 1996 deaths and 2488 people injured[1]. According to Van Dorn et al., a history of childhood abuse, binge drinking, and male gender are all predictive risk factors for serious violence[2]. The average number of genocides is 7 per year for last 50 years which took 39 lives and 48 person injuries per year[1]. These incidents affect the society on a high rate which in turn contributes for such situations again indirectly.
While there are several competing if loosely defined definitions of cyberterrorism, Hua and Bapta have clearly broken down the core elements to illuminate the nuances between traditional terrorism and an ordinary hacker. As Hua and Bapta aptly state, "modern economies are heavily dependent upon Information Technology (IT) based information systems for survival" (Hua & Bapna 2013). Given our dependence on Information Systems, some effort of consideration must be given to securing them.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines terrorism as “the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal” (“Terrorism”). Terrorism is a problem that all countries should be concerned with. Canada has been one of the countries that are concerned with the safety of people against terrorist attacks. Canada is very concerned with the issue of terrorism, it has a very specific position of counter-terrorism, it believes that violent extremists are the leading cause of terrorism, it has ways that the international community should respond, and it is willing to contribute to make the problem of terrorism end.
September 11th, 2001, marked the beginning of a long war against terrorism. Nineteen militants from the group Al-Qaeda hijacked four planes to crash into three different locations: The World Trade Center in New York, The Pentagon in Washington, and it was believed that the fourth plane was headed toward the Capitol building or the White House in Washington D.C. On May 2nd, 2011, Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was assassinated, since then there haven’t been anymore attacks lead by Al-Qaeda. But there are still other groups of terrorists to worry about.
The threat of global terrorism continues to rise with the total number of deaths reaching 32,685 in 2015, which is an 80 percent increase from 2014 (Global Index). With this said, terrorism remains a growing, and violent phenomenon that has dominated global debates. However, ‘terrorism’ remains a highly contested term; there is no global agreement on exactly what constitutes a terror act. An even more contested concept is whether to broaden the scope of terrorism to include non-state and state actors.
"Terrorist Attacks in the U.S. or Against Americans." Infoplease. Infoplease, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.
...an laws to implement United Nations Security Council sanction policies. It has also held in building UN’s capacity to control terrorism in all ways in line to the Charter. The Australian government has identified key elements to deal with international terrorism. It has advocated for multilateral and regional engagement where issues relevant to maintaining security are addressed.
The international community has undergone extensive change in the last century. We have seen atrocities like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and more recently, the violence of Al Qaeda and ISIS. Each time a new tragedy strikes, the world is asking “Should we help?” or “Who will help if we do not?”. In an era and globalization and interdependence, these questions need to be considered carefully. As Adam Roberts points out “It is sometimes suggested that the changes in the world in the past decade require exponents of the academic subject of international relations to go back to the drawing board.” (Roberts, 3). In the end, it comes down to the fact the United States, along with the rest of the international community, needs to intervene