The Australian government’s peak cybersecurity agency claimed two speakers were cancelled from the country’s premiere cybersecurity conference because it was suggested they would host a panel with the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but the Guardian has been told the idea was never formally proposed.
The Guardian reported earlier this month that the former US National Security Agency executive-turned-whistleblower Thomas Drake, along with the Melbourne university academic Dr Suelette Dreyfus, were kicked off the conference agenda in what Drake described as an “Orwellian” move by conference partner the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC).
The pair were told their speeches were “incongruent” with the conference, and they said at the time they believed it was because their speeches were related to whistleblowing. A third speaker also claimed he was pressured to edit his speech because it was “biased” against the government’s anti-encryption laws.
ACSC declined to comment at the time, but in Senate estimates on Thursday, the head of the centre, Rachel Noble, said she made the decision to cancel the speakers.
“The advice I made the decision on was a proposal for Dr Dreyfus and Mr Drake to [via video conference] have a panel with Edward Snowden. That was the first proposal,” she said.
“At that point my judgement was based on, I guess, the reputation of all of those speakers – that they are known public advocates for unauthorised disclosures or the leaking of classified information outside of legitimate or lawful whistleblowing schemes.”
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Snowden leaked documents related to the NSA’s spying program to the Guardian in 2013, and has been based in Russia ever since.
Noble said that the presentations “weren’t consistent” with a cybersecurity conference, and that there was a risk those speakers would “express views that are inconsistent with Australian government laws, and our processes and our values.”
Dreyfus said the suggested talk was merely a thought bubble in the initial stages of conference planning.
“The idea of Edward Snowden on a panel was floated in a phone call due to the newsworthiness of his new book being published,” she said. “The ACSC didn’t object to the idea when raised. The idea didn’t go anywhere, as the ACSC well knows, since they saw the exact content of my talk abstract and Thomas Drake’s slides.”
The speeches were cancelled at the last minute, long after abstracts of the speeches were provided to the conference organisers. Dreyfus’s talk was about how technology could enable whistleblowing, while Drake’s was on the golden age of government and corporate surveillance.
Dreyfus said cybersecurity wasn’t improved by shutting down speech.
“You don’t build the country’s cybersecurity strength by shutting down experts because you fear they might criticise laws or processes – Australia has serious problems with its cybersecurity, as evidenced by a slew of high profile attacks. ACSC is tasked with addressing this,” she said.
“But sweeping debate under the carpet doesn’t fix those problems. The silencing of ideas and knowledge is not a recipe for success in solving our cybersecurity risks as a nation.”
The conference program specifically stated that all of the speeches at the conference were not endorsed by the Australian government.
Snowden’s book, Permanent Record, was published in September.
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