Abolish the eCensor Comissioner

#auspol

https://x.com/celinevmachine_/status/1867456072761671798

QUOTE

🚨 PLEASE READ: Letter from @FSUofAustralia 🚨

Celine Baumgarten's (🙋♀️) hearing against the eSafety Commissioner is on today. The hearing so far has been a revelation, it exposes that the Commissioner is systematically acting beyond her legal authority.
Here are the key admissions that arose from the cross-examination of a witness (who is a 'senior lawyer' within the organisation) and led the team who investigated all the adult cyber abuse complaints:

- That eSafety sends hundreds of informal takedown notices to social media providers every year and only 3 or 4 formal ones (under the relevant scheme).
- There is no formal legal authority for these informal notices and they are often issued by junior staff (as opposed to the formal notices, which only senior staff can issue).
- eSafety staff have a very poor understanding of the formal legal delegations that they have, or that are needed, for issuing these notices.
- In issuing these notices, eSafety staff DO NOT expressly consider Australians implied right of political communication!
- The informal takedown notices are being used to censor posts that do not meet the bar for formal notices.
- The original poster has no power to appeal the decision.
- The witness admitted that they don’t routinely tell social media companies that they are not formal removal notices, and that X probably interprets the informal takedown notices as legal requests to take down things as that is the purpose of the portal!
- The eSafety Commissioner is arguably misleading the social media providers and using the 'aura of its authority' to vaguely pressure social media companies into thinking they have to take posts down.