What has Employers snooping on emails got to do with terrorism? It is one thing for the police to obtain warrants. It is quite another to allow indescriminate privacy violations by Private people and certainly without a warrant.

Howard would not have got away with this. But the Librals will support any measure that increases the power of the powerful. The irony of a Labor government.

No, i prefer Seek

Even if I was inclined to engage in terrorist related activities I certainly wouldnt be silly enough to send something related to that over a work email client. IT, developers, sys admins and the rest can all see your emails anyway, so unless your disseminating copies of the terrorist's handbook or sharing photos of potential terrorist targets with colleagues then there isnt much to worry about for the average joe, because no email is private no matter where you are.
My only concern is, as is natural, will those laws enable them to prosecute me for other illegal activities. If they catch people looking at child porn because of these laws, great, that is a fantastic added benefit. But what if I'm a hardcore movie and music pirate, or a tax cheat, or a whistleblower, and they use those powers under the guise of preventing terrorism to prosecute me, that is a worry.
........As does our bosses being able to discover just how much time workers waste sending each other stupid emails of sporting accidents, animal attacks and other weird and whacky crapola...and what if my boss is a terrorist?!?!?

Police still need a warrant to wiretap. As far as I'm aware we're not yet a police state. What they need is additional warrants if they all of a sudden need to tap a mobile phone or a pay phone in addition to whatever they got the warrant for. Why be worried that the cops may record your voice if they are tracking someone else? Unless you're a bloody thug you've got no reason to worry. Its making it easier for our law, the good guys, to track criminals.

For some reason there seems to be this determination that there is going to be an imminent terror attack.

Civil liberties are being curbed too much already with out the need to screen emails. What's next? Censorship of international news for fear of giving people ideas?

What scares me the most isn't that they want to read our email, it's that they think terrorists IM their plans to their fellow terrorists from their work computer, and that employers are somehow going to catch them. They're probably using facebook anyway.

I can deal with the fact that the attorney general wants police to have access to email, im and mobile phones. But why the lack of warrants? That's just asking for things to go wrong.

And why involve employers?