Chapter Four - Government spying

The 24 January 1995 letter was faxed to the arbitrators’ office. Is there a connection between the loss of my faxed arbitration documents and the TIO’s 28 June 1995 letter stating that his office has no record of my 24 January 1995 letter to the arbitrator requesting him to seek various documents from Telstra under the discovery process? My 24 January 1995 letter requesting a copy of the Cape Bridgewater/Bell Canada information to be provided from Telstra through the arbitration process was received (see Front Page Part One File No/2-A to 2-E).

Why did the TIO advise me that records in his office did not record receiving my 24 January 1995 letter? “Our file does not indicate that you took the matter any further,”  When my letter was returned to me, the fax footprint indicates it was received at the arbitrator’s fax machine. The TIO’s 28 June 1995 letter is possibly one of our most damning pieces of evidence, showing that “forces at work” were able to conceal essential arbitration material from being addressed during my arbitration process.

If the arbitrator had acted on my requests for the Cape Bridgewater/Bell Canada test information, which I was legally entitled to have, I could have proved the Bell Canada International could not possibly generate the alleged 13,500 test calls through a Tekelec CCS7 system that they and Telstra stated was installed at the Cape Bridgewater RCM exchange. There was no equipment in place at the Bridgewater exchange to facilitate such tests. The nearest Telstra exchange that could facilitate a Tekelec CCS7 monitoring system in November 1993 was the Warrnambool exchange, which is 112 kilometres from Cape Bridgewater. The TIO and Commonwealth Ombudsman records will confirm I requested the BCI information on at least four occasions.

It is serious enough that an Australian corporation knowingly provided false answers to questions on notice during a Senate committee hearing, however, consider: if the TIO is telling the truth that the arbitrator did NOT receive my 24 January 1995 BCI letter, then who did? And why do the markings on this document show that it arrived at its intended destination? My own BCI report shows Telstra even went as far as knowingly providing false  Cape Bridgewater information to the Senate in October 1994. As a result, the Senate estimates committee did not investigate the fundamentally flawed BCI Cape Bridgewater report.

Front Page Part One File No/2-A to 2-E shows this important arbitration documents, faxed by me to the arbitrator on 24 January 1995, did reach the arbitrators’ office. As we have shown on this website other similar documents faxed from my office were never received (assessed) by the arbitrator.

Before we continue this chapter we ask the reader to consider the following:

Open Letter File No/12, and File No/13 prove COT cases’ faxes were intercepted during their arbitrations. So, with that firmly in mind, first try to imagine the people assigned to intercept the many COT arbitration documents, as they left each of our individual premises, heading to the arbitrator, our financial advisors or our technical advisers. Try to imagine what it might have been like for those people, studiously chasing up and illegally intercepting our legal documents as they travelled around the fax circuit. Try to imagine doing this every single day because, particularly at the peak of our arbitrations, most of the COTs were constantly using the fax system to send documents all over the place! Then, change tack a bit, and try to imagine you are one of us, a member of the COT group, just an ordinary Australian citizen, running an ordinary Australian small business: an ordinary person who trusts the government to do the right thing by ALL Australian citizens. And, so, while you work at keeping your small business afloat, you also write up submissions, prepare legal documents (something you have never done before) and work hard to learn your way around complex technical documents, sometimes with an advisor at your side, but mostly alone.

Try to imagine what it would be like if, after all that effort, even before your documents reached their intended destinations, the defendant hijacks them as part of its reprehensible plot, so it could assess your documents, before they reach their intended destinations, because what this meant was that the defendant gained extra time along with the critical advantage of knowing, in advance, what was to come in the next part of the arbitration process. This was a huge advantage for the defendant because, of course, that knowledge also gave them time to decide which aspect of the claim would be easy to defend and which it would be best to completely avoid. Now try to imagine what that would have felt like for the claimants, when they eventually discovered what had been going on, in secret. At the same time, remember that, as we record elsewhere on absentjustice.com, some of those documents that we sent off, through what should have been a secure fax system, never arrived at their intended destination at all.

I know this seems too fanciful to be true but I am not Robert Ludlum or John Grisham spinning a story here, not even vaguely, because all this really did happen here in Australia, a supposedly democratic country, not all that long ago – in the years between 1994 and 2001, as Open Letter File No/12, to File No/20 show. In fact, our evidence shows that this fax hacking started at the very beginning of 1994, during the first process, which was called the Fast Track Settlement Proposal. Now, as you read on, imagine you are sitting at your desk in your office, just like the COT members often did. You’ve been up most of the night, working on your claim, and both your privacy and the fax system (which everyone used back then) are about to be violated, yet again, by the defendant, without your knowledge or consent, and the government you pay your taxes to is NOT willing to investigate or assist you, as your business vanishes before your eyes.

NONE of the COT cases should have been forced to sign our 1994 arbitrations while the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were investigating the possibility that our arbitration faxes were being illegally hacking (screened by Telstra) before they arrived at their intended destination. It is clear the rights of the COT Cases were violated in the most deplorable fashion.

It is also important to note that just prior to these hackers contacting Graham, in March 1994, Mr Schorer’s office was broken into in. I was also assisting the Australian Federal Police (AFP) with their investigations into my claims of fax interceptions. Hacking-Julian Assanage File No 52 contains a letter from Telstra’s internal corporate solicitor to an AFP detective superintendent, misinforming the AFP concerning the transmission fax testing process. The rest of the file shows Telstra did experience major problems when testing my facsimile machine, when it was tested in conjunction with a facsimile machine installed at Graham’s office.

It is important to highlight how skilfully Mr Row did not disclose to the AFP the problems Telstra had experienced when sending and receiving faxes between my machine and Graham’s fax machine.

Although the following 22 April 1994 fax issue is addressed above, it relates directly to AUSTEL only receiving three blank pages, even though AUSTEL’s fax report shows these pages took between 1min 20sec to 2min 40sec to transmit. (See Hacking-Julian Assange File No/34-A and File No/34-B)

None of those three blank pages had my fax identification displayed at the top of the received documents nor the time and date that they were sent. However, they all had a single, small square in the top right corner of the page, each with a number inside it.

Even if blank sheets of paper are faxed mistakenly instead of printed documents, they will still arrive with the sender’s identity, the date and the time the document was sent. As I later proved to the arbitrator, these blank documents did not include any sender identification. The arbitrator, however, for reasons known only to him, never investigated this apparent interception of my arbitration claim documents – clearly an invasion of my privacy – just as he didn’t investigate the threats and harassment from senior Telstra executives that I was subjected to throughout my arbitration.

The 22 April 1994 fax issue also relates directly to a fax issue on 29 June 1998, four years after my arbitration, which was supposed to address these faxing problems. My solicitor, Mr William Hunt, sent me copies of two documents that I had faxed from my office, but which had arrived at Mr Hunt’s office as blank sheets of paper except for this strange numbering system, again inside a small square in the top right corner of the page. Mr Hunt also sent a copy of his fax journal for that day (see Hacking – Julian Assange File No /48 and File No/49) confirming their arrival in his office, just as AUSTEL had also done, just one day into my arbitration.

In March 1994, Graham Schorer (COT spokesperson) and another COT member suffered break-ins and lost business-related documents. That made us all much more vigilant. I found no evidence of a break-in, but I did notice two diaries covering the period 1987 to 1989 were missing. I decided to remove my official business diaries from my office, and from that time on, I transferred information to them on a weekly basis from my wall calendar and unofficial notebooks.

The following statements are taken from Graham Schorer’s Statutory Declaration re his break-in. (See Hacking – Julian Assange File No/3)

“In early February 1994, our premises were broken into and all computer cables including the power cables were severed, as well as all power connections to the main server which was in a specially constructed room. The perpetrators forced entry into the building in what the police described as a “ram raid”, where something similar to pneumatic tyre attached to the front of a vehicle was used to hit the front door with enough force to dislodge the steel frame attached to the brick work.

Part of the microfiche copier and viewer was stolen, as well as the PC on my desk which contained all of my COT information and correspondence between regulators, politicians, etc. Also stolen was a book that contained a catalogue of computer file numbers against their description.

The same day I spoke to Garry Dawson from Dawson Weed and Pest Control (another COT Case) on the phone, who told me that his business premises in Sunshine had been broken into just after midnight and burgled. The only thing stolen was the Dictaphone tape which held a recording he had made of a meeting between him and two Telstra executives on the previous day”. (see also Arbitrator File No/84)

Two months after the above break-in, my arbitration claim adviser Garry Ellicott (ex-National Crime Investigator and ex-Detective Sergeant of the Queensland Police) visited and we spent five nights trying to decipher the pile of Telstra discovery documents. It was then that I discovered further losses: exercise books in which I kept official booking records; a number of bank statements and my bank pay-in books for 1992/93. I cannot account for these losses. It is possible they were also missing in March, and I simply didn’t notice their absence. Without these records, I was hard-pressed to produce full and correct financial statements for my forensic accountant, Derek Ryan, and was reduced to scavenging information from wall calendars and other unofficial sources. When Garry returned to Queensland, I got him to take the work diaries with him for safe-keeping.

In February 1994, Detective Superintendent Jeff Penrose and Constable Melanie Cochrane of the AFP visited my business to discuss my concerns regarding the possibility my telephone conversations were intercepted and my faxes were not being received at the intended destination. During this visit, I spoke to Constable Cochrane regarding my concerns about the privacy issues connected to my singles club records, explaining I had provided the club members with a written assurance that I would not circulate their private information to anyone without first seeking their permission. For this reason, I was particularly concerned that it would not be fair to submit any of their private information into my Fast Track Settlement Proposal. Constable Cochrane commented that the TIO should contemplate suspending our settlement process until after the AFP finished their investigations into Telstra’s unauthorised interception of COT cases’ telephone conversations and in-confidence faxes.

The letter dated 2 March 1994, from Telstra’s Corporate Solicitor, Ian Row, to Detective Superintendent Jeff Penrose (see Home Page Part-One File No/9-A to 9-C), makes it quite clear that Mr Penrose was profoundly misled and deceived about the faxing problems I was having to deal with, as discussed in this letter. Over the years, many people have compared the four exhibits numbered (File No/9-C) with the interception evidence revealed in Open Letter File No/12, and File No/13 and promptly concluded that, if Ian Row had not misled the AFP in relation to my faxing issues then the AFP may have been able to stop Telstra from intercepting the various relevant AFP arbitration documents in March 1994, before any damage had been done

This letter dated 14 April 1994, from Telstra’s Steve Black to Detective Superintendent Jeff Penrose states that Telstra only voice-monitored my telephone service from June to August 1993. This corresponds to Steve Black’s statement in a letter to Warwick Smith, which is recorded below, are various pages from a transcript of an AFP interview with me on 29 September 1994, which records the police asking me about a hand-written reference to a bus company that Telstra appeared to have added in the top right corner of a letter I had written previously, on 10th September 1992, to Telstra, when that name was not mentioned in that letter.  It is true that I was tendering to a number of bus companies during 1992, including Nuline Bus Services, Centre Road, Bentleigh, Mooney Valley Bus Lines, Money Valley, Warrnambool Bus Lines and O’Meara’s (the name that had been hand-written in the corner of this letter). I had contacted all four companies for the same tender in an attempt to use one of their services to bring people from Melbourne to Cape Bridgewater, but since O’Meara’s was not mentioned anywhere in the letter it had been added to, it would seem that Telstra was actually voice monitoring my phone calls or intercepting his faxes as early as September 1992.

On 26 September 1994, Detective Superintendent Penrose again visited my business with a still-serving officer of the AFP (hence I will not name that officer) for a second interview regarding the same matter. By then I had told the AFP about threats I received from Telstra executives, who were refusing to supply any further FOI documents to help me in my arbitration because they knew I was assisting the AFP with their investigations. Senate Hansard records, dated 29 November 1994

Screening In-Confidence Faxes 

The Australian Government has since been provided with a report confirming that confidential, arbitration-related documents were secretly and illegally screened before they arrived at their intended destination. It has now been confirmed some never arrived at all.

One of those documents, dated 18 April 1995, and which appears to have been secretly screened and withheld from the claimants and only provided to them seven years after the arbitrations concluded (See Prologue Evidence File No 22-A). This three-page letter from the arbitration project manager to Warwick Smith (arbitration administrator) and copied to Dr Hughes (the arbitrator) advised:

“It is unfortunate that there have been forces at work collectively beyond our reasonable control that have delayed us in undertaking our work.” (See Call For Justice DCITA File No 9).

The four COT claimants were never told about these forces at work nor were we warned that, under the noses of the TIO, his legal advisor and the arbitrator, these un-named forces were allowed to infiltrate and manipulate the arbitration process. When these three legal experts, namely Dr Gordon Hughes, Warwick Smith and Peter Bartlett, allowed this very important 18 April 1995 letter to be concealed from the four COT cases, they directly assisted those “forces at work” to carry out their intended disruption of the four COT cases’ arbitrations.

Note: the not credible arbitration agreement discussed by Dr Gordon Hughes in his 12 May 1995 letter to Warwick Smith (see Open Letter File No 55-A) was covertly drafted by Telstra (the defendant) and then was used as the final version of the agreement for the first four arbitrations, instead of the independently crafted agreement that was formally agreed to by all parties and various members of government. This Telstra-designed agreement provided numerous benefits for the defence, such as not enough time allowed for inevitable delays associated with the production of documents, obtaining further particulars and the preparation of technical reports;

How can the Australian government engage in a negotiation with the arbitrator, the administrator and the defendant, Telstra Corporation, and allow that corporation – who is also under investigation by the Australian Federal Police for committing crimes against the claimants – to write up its own agreement under which it is to be investigated under by the same arbitrator (who advised the claimants and the government that he drafted the agreement)?

On 12 May 1995, 13 months into my arbitration and one day after he brought down my award, Dr Hughes condemned the Telstra-drafted arbitration agreement as not a credible document to use in the process; however, he used it to my detriment as a claimant and stated:

“…as far as I could observe, both Telecom and Smith co-operated in the Smith arbitration;

“the time frames set in the original Arbitration Agreement were, with the benefit of hindsight, optimistic;

“in particular; we did not allow sufficient time in the Arbitration Agreement for inevitable delays associated with the production of documents, obtaining further particulars and the preparation of technical reports; …

“In summary, it is my view that if the process is to remain credible, it is necessary to contemplate a time frame for completion which is longer than presently contained in the Arbitration Agreement.” 

The fax imprint across the top of this letter (Open Letter File No 55-A) is the same as the fax imprint described in the Scandrett & Associates report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), confirming faxes were intercepted during the COT arbitrations. The question the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman (TIO) and the Federal Attorney-General has still not answered is:

Was this letter actually faxed to my office by the TIO. to assist me in any pending appeal process and, if not, why was such an important letter deliberately kept from me during my designated appeal period? 

If I had received a copy of this letter, declaring the agreement used in my arbitration process was not credible, then of course, I would have appealed the arbitrator’s award. After all, how could an appeal judge argue against the arbitrator’s own findings that the agreement was not credible, even though he used it anyway?

How could Dr Hughes even contemplate making a statement like: “…as far as I could observe, both Telecom and Smith co-operated in the Smith arbitration”, let alone decide to include it in his 12 May letter, when he and the Senate had already been warned that Telstra was threatening to withhold further relevant documents from me, simply because I had agreed to assist the Australian Federal Police with their investigations into Telstra’s unauthorized interception of my phone conversations and faxes and, even worse than that level of Telstra treachery, Telstra then actually carried out those threats?  And what about the advice that both the arbitrator and Warwick Smith had received on 18 April 1995 (see above), which stated clearly that there had been ‘forces at work’ that had ‘derailed’ my arbitration?  This 12 May statement shows that Dr Hughes was quite clearly choosing to protect those ‘forces at work’, regardless of the serious problems that created for me.

Interception of this 12 May 1995 letter by a secondary fax machine:

Whoever had access to Telstra’s network, and therefore the TIO’s office service lines, knew – during the designated appeal time of my arbitration – that my arbitration was conducted using a set of rules (arbitration agreement) that the arbitrator declared not credible. There are three fax identification lines across the top of the second page of this 12 May 1995 letter:

1. The third line down from the top of the page (i.e. the bottom line) shows that the document was first faxed from the arbitrator’s office, on 12-5-95, at 2:41 pm to the Melbourne office of the TIO – 61 3 277 8797;
2. The middle line indicates that it was faxed on the same day, one hour later, at 15:40, from the TIO’s fax number, followed by the words “TIO LTD”.
3. The top line, however, begins with the words “Fax from” followed by the correct fax number for the TIO’s office (visible

Consider the order of the time stamps. The top line is the second sending of the document at 14:50, nine minutes after the fax from the arbitrator’s office; therefore, between the TIO’s office receiving the first fax, which was sent at 2.41 pm (14:41), and sending it on at 15:40, to his home, the fax was also re-sent at 14:50. In other words, the document sent nine minutes after the letter reached the TIO office was intercepted.

The fax imprint across the top of this letter is the same as the fax imprint described in the Scandrett & Associates report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), which states:

“We canvassed examples, which we are advised are a representative group, of this phenomena [sic].

“They show that

• the header strip of various faxes is being altered
• the header strip of various faxes was changed or semi overwritten.
• In all cases the replacement header type is the same.
• The sending parties all have a common interest and that is COT.
• Some faxes have originated from organisations such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman office.
• The modified type face of the header could not have been generated by the large number of machines canvassed, making it foreign to any of the sending services.”

One of the two technical consultants attesting to the validity of this fax interception report emailed me on 17 December 2014, stating:

“I still stand by my statutory declaration that I was able to identify that the incoming faxes provided to me for review had at some stage been received by a secondary fax machine and then retransmitted, this was done by identifying the dual time stamps on the faxes provided.” (Front Page Part One File No/14)

It is also clear from Front Page Part One File No/1, File No/2-A to 2-E, File No/3, File No/4 and Front Page Part One File No/5, that numerous documents faxed from my office to the arbitrators office did not reach their intended destination.

Many within the Establishment said that it was actually unconstitutional to force the COT cases into an arbitration process with Telstra while the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were still investigating Telstra for alleged phone and fax hacking of the COT cases’ businesses and, furthermore, it was acknowledged that it was clearly an unworkable process. This didn’t stop the arbitrations, however, although it does raise a number of important questions:

1. How could two separate investigations into Telstra, for allegedly unlawful conduct, be undertaken by two different organisations at the same time, i.e., an arbitrator as well as the AFP? As far as we can find, this situation is unheard of in any other Western democracy.
2. While all the COT cases attempted to keep their individual small businesses going while their arbitrations continued, how could we be expected to submit complex submissions to an arbitrator and, at the same time, assist the AFP with their investigations?
3. Who decided that this situation would be allowed to continue?

(see Senate Evidence File No 1), record this fact.

When I reminded Detective Superintendent Penrose about my previous concerns regarding the privacy issues of females who joined my singles club weekends at Cape Bridgewater, I explained I had uncovered a document, showing Telstra recorded the names and phone numbers of two of my singles club female members. When this was added to other documents I supplied to the AFP, it was clear I could not submit any of my singles club information in my arbitration without some security measures being applied by the arbitrator.

Mr Penrose then suggested that I submit a letter to the arbitrator, explaining that the AFP was investigating matters associated with these privacy issues and my arbitration, and ask if I could submit my Singles Club information directly to the arbitrator, under confidentiality, and as a separate arbitration issue, because it would not be considered appropriate for me to release this private material into a process where others could have easy access because that would raise serious concerns: also suggested that the arbitrator would be well aware of the need to keep this information ‘under wraps’ so to speak.

Well, I did exactly what Superintendent Detective Jeff Penrose suggested and that the arbitrator responded some days later informing me that he would accept this part of my submission at a proposed oral arbitration hearing on 11 October 1994.

Constable Melanie Cochrane stated I should not release the singles club members’ private information to Telstra and Superintendent Detective Penrose suggested I provide the private singles club information to the assessor under confidentiality and advise him the AFP was also investigating this same material that appears to have been hacked by Telstra.

Constable Cochrane also stated that as I had assured my singles club members their private information would not be disclosed without their consent, I also needed to discuss this with the assessor, Dr Hughes. I believe Superintendent Detective Penrose stated the assessor would be aware I could not divulge this private information via mainstream documents with Telstra, while the AFP was investigating.

It was due to these types of facts, and Superintendent Detective Penrose’s advice, that I sought a clearance, from the arbitrator, to allow me to have this information accepted under confidentiality

Transcripts from my 11 October 1994 oral arbitration hearing confirm Telstra advised the arbitrator they thought my singles club information was irrelevant and therefore should not be accepted into the arbitration process. This evidence supported that I had lost two businesses due to my ongoing telephone problems, i.e., the school camp bookings as well as the more-lucrative singles club bookings. The transcripts, which I can supply the AFP if requested, show Dr Hughes was badgered into accepting Telstra’s insistence that my singles club material be not assessed during the arbitration process. Why did Dr Hughes allow Telstra to decide not to view my singles club evidence as a business loss, even though he had previously understood the advice given to me by Superintendent Detective Penrose and had agreed the singles club material could be submitted under confidentiality during the oral hearing? That he went back on his word.

Question 24, in the 20 September 1994 interrogatories shows I answered the following question 24 by stating to Telstra and the arbitrator:

“This matter is currently under investigation by the Federal Police. In the interest of fair justice I believe that I should not further comment apart from what I have already stated that it is true that I was told this by Detective Superintendent Penrose. It the Australian Federal Police are prepared to disclose the details of their investigations and of their conversations with myself, then Telecom will be able to obtain the same” 

In our Front Page for the date of 11 October 1994, during my five-hour, nonstop, oral-arbitration hearing, Telstra’s Mr Benjamin and Telstra’s other arbitration liaison officer, Steve Black, discussed along with the arbitrator and me my claims regarding Telstra’s unauthorized interception issues noting:

Mr Benjamin: “In respect of Detective Superintendent Penrose.”

Mr Black:“There has been an allegation that Detective Superintendent Penrose says that the Plummers’ telephone was allegedly unlawfully tapped” —

Me: “I believe Telecom is playing on words – the word “illegally tapped” – it’s like asking me – I’m not a —

Dr Hughes: “Sorry, if I can interrupt both of you, the issue here is that your answers – your answer to question 24, you indicate that you were told something by Detective Superintendent Penrose.”

Me: “Yes:”

Dr Hughes: “Is there any documentation to support that statement or is there any other light that you can shed upon that statement you have made in relation to Detective Penrose?”…

Me: “I have spoken to Detective Penrose on two occasions and he has stated that my phones had been listened to.”

I raise the interrogatories and the oral arbitration hearing because of the main question they raise:  how could it possibly be ethical, or moral, for Dr Hughes to expect me to disclose further personal and private information about the female members of my Singles Club, for all to see, when the AFP were still investigating Telstra in relation to how they were able to separately record the names and phone numbers of various other female Singles Club members when that information had only ever been sent by fax or discussed over the telephone. NONE of my singles club lost revenue due to my ongoing proven telephone faults were ever recorded by Dr Hughes (arbitrator) or Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (arbitration resource unit) in their final Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp findings.

Next Page ⟶