The government of Australia is set to announce sweeping new counter-terrorism laws early next week according to several news reports.
The new anti-terrorism laws will, inter alia:
- Authorize police to secretly search the home of suspected terrorists.
- Allow the incarceration for up to five years of persons convicted of preaching radical extremists acts (presumably related to violence).
- Allow the government to deem foreign regions or cities that are known or suspected terrorist locations as “proscribed” destinations for the purposes of permitting greater anti-terrorism measures to apply.
- Travelling to, or remaining in, a proscribed location would be an offence under Australian law.
- Law enforcement will be authorized to conduct covert searches on the property of terrorist suspects without notice of a search warrant until six months after the issuance of the warrant.
- It will be an offence to promote a terrorist act, or to advocate such an act even it it never occurs.