Source:
Sydney Morning Herald (Oz)Military Police have raided a Canberra bookstore to confiscate what they described as classified material, even though the books they took were old training manuals that are easily bought on the internet or found in the Australian War Memorial library.
Some of the books date back to 1937, rendering them obsolete.
The Beyond Q Bookshop and cafe lost about $700 worth of its second-hand book stock last week when someone employed by the Australian Defence Force alerted Military Police to the existence of what Defence calls ''pams'' military doctrine training pamphlets...
The Military Police also confessed that the person who had reported the books wanted to photocopy one or two for himself once they came into the possession of Defence...
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/military-police-seize-old-training-manuals-from-book-shop-20110418-1dlcn.html
This is simultaneously funny, sad, and frightening.
Basically it is a case where one person, 'employed' by the military, wanted a copy of an outdated training manual.
As he (will risk a guess of gender) was too cheap to buy it from a used book store he took advantage of the apparent fact that 'classified' material in Australia must not have an automatic sundown into non-classifed.
He was thus able to use the power of the state to, without any judicial intervention needed, have about two-dozen books seized simply so that he could illegally ('classified' remember) make a copy of the one that he wanted.
Somewhat surprisingly, the military police would not let this individual make a copy - and they even returned a copy of a book about the American Civil war (apparently it had looked 'classified' to them) which they had also seized. They kept the rest: Democracy and freedom being just that more diminished.
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