Michael Shellenberger

CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech @UAustinOrg :: Dao Prize Winner :: Author, "The Left's War On Reality," "San Fransicko," "Apocalypse Never"

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

I'm honored to be "Climate Heretic" #7 out of 50 listed by @Newsweek. For decades, apocalyptic fanatics demonized, censored, and ruined lives. Facebook censored me for stating easily verifiable facts. Many people are trying to pretend it never happened. But we will never forget.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

Democrats spent decades demonizing, censoring, and ruining the lives of climate heretics. Now they're using their language and gas-lighting the public. Their goal is to advance their apocalyptic and Malthusian anti-civilization agenda through more politically salient messages.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

Be sure to read this bombshell report by @MikeNayna & @NAffects informed by the research of @itshermargaret about a new censorship bill that would let the government spy on all citizens and report their lawful political opinions to foreign governments.

https://t.co/ENKthZuS68

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

by @MikeNayna @NAffects & @Shellenberger

In September 2025, top government censorship officials from Europe, the UK, Brazil, California, and Australia met at Stanford to discuss ways to coordinate censorship at an international level. The meeting was titled “Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.” Australia’s top censor, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, gave the keynote.

Though Grant did not provide her remarks to Public, previously she had told the World Economic Forum (WEF) that she was organizing censorship officials around the world because “we know we’re going to go much further when we work together with other like-minded independent statutory authorities around the globe.”

Inman Grant’s efforts appear to be coming to fruition in Australia, where the lower house has passed sweeping censorship and surveillance legislation that the Senate is now considering. The legislation would allow the Commissioner to monitor “lawful but harmful” speech.

Inman Grant, an American who once volunteered to a journalist that she turned down a job with the CIA, can already order a platform to reveal who is behind an anonymous account from anywhere in the world.

But the DDoC bill now before the Australian Senate would also let her use fake accounts that deceive users into thinking they are citizens and not government spies, record their legal speech, and give what she learns directly to Australia’s spy agencies. Those agencies could then share that intelligence with the FBI and other “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partners in the US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

The bill enables this by granting eSafety the ability to create an unlimited number of AI-generated “sock puppet” identities (effectively bots) under policies set “in consultation with the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.”

The private information that the Australian government could share with foreign intelligence agencies could include a user’s name, address, phone number, email, along with what the Privacy Act calls “sensitive information,” which includes political opinions, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and health records.

The Institute for Public Affairs (IPA) first reported on the Privacy Act changes on Monday, and Network Affects noted last month that the new censorship legislation designates eSafety an “enforcement body” under the Privacy Act, expanding its ability to access personal information.

In 2013, documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that British intelligence officials had allowed, as part of a secret deal with the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA), for it to gather information on UK citizens who were not under suspicion of any wrongdoing.

The eSafety Commissioner could thus unmask anonymous accounts in the United States, France, or Germany, for example, that complain about controversial issues like mass migration, and report them and all of their private information to the FBI and European spy agencies.

“We have power to share with the AFP [Australian Federal Police]; we don’t have power to share with intelligence agencies at this time,” testified Heidi Snell, eSafety’s General Manager of Regulatory Operations,in October this year. “But the amendments would see us being able to share directly with those other government agencies,” she added.

Those agencies include the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Australia’s equivalent of the CIA; the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), which performs a role similar to the FBI’s domestic intelligence division; the Australian Signals Directorate (Australia’s NSA); the Office of National Intelligence (ODNI); the Department of Home Affairs (DHS); the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (State Department); the Department of Defence; and any other “Commonwealth entity.”

The DDoC Bill contains a provision that would put eSafety in the same legal category as the Australian Federal Police under the Privacy Act for “surveillance activities, intelligence gathering activities or monitoring activities.”

eSafety told Public in an email that information it sends to the police may include “the account names or the identity of the users who posted the material.” A Federal Police witness testified on Oct 21 that police can pass eSafety’s information to “our ASIO partners.”

The censorship bill would change Australia’s Privacy Act so eSafety could collect sensitive personal information, including political opinions, without users’ consent,a warrant or judicial oversight. To invoke this Privacy Act exception, it would only need to “reasonably believe” that the collection is necessary for its functions...

https://t.co/kj1kSFPzvX

Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative journalism and read the rest of the article.

https://t.co/kj1kSFPzvX

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

We are in the midst of a five-alarm fire on free speech and privacy internationally.

Politicians across the West are demanding new powers for their spy agencies to do what East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, did.

Americans, Europeans, and anyone else online will have their privacy invaded, and personal information, including information about their health and sexual orientation, potentially shared with foreign spy agencies, if the Australian Senate passes the @AlboMP government's totalitarian bill.

New investigative reporting by @MikeNayna, @NAffects, and @itshermargaret reveals that the Albanese government buried in its censorship legislation a radical change to the nation's Privacy Act, one that would open the door to unprecedented secret spying globally.

It's coming at a time when governments in Europe, the UK, and Brazil are all demanding ever-more censorship of their enemies.

Behind the war on free speech is a war on ordinary people seeking to defend core civilizational pillars, from borders to industry to the rights of women.

The iconic 2006 film "The Lives of Others," about the Stasi, is about what happens when politicians decide their citizens are the enemy. That's what's happening today.

It's fitting that the main character on that film poster should be Australia's Prime Minister @AlboMP, whose legislation would weaponize the nation's censorship agency, the "eSafety Commissioner," to spy on citizens and report them to their governments for thought-crime violations.

Every free person in the West should be alarmed by this development and see @AlboMP and his apparatchiks for what they are: a clear and present danger to our freedoms and civilization itself.

It's up to free people to spread the word about this five-alarm fire and resist with everything we've got.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

EXCLUSIVE: New censorship legislation would let the Australian government spy on US & European citizens and report "sensitive information" about their lawful political opinions, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and health records to foreign spy agencies, including the FBI.

[University of Austin (UATX) @uaustinorg]

Congrats to Michael Shellenberger, CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at UATX and "Climate Heretic" #7 in @Newsweek. @shellenberger

https://t.co/bKMZf1v9Im

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@sjc_pbs @BjornLomborg Thank you for your work on the issue. It has been very important

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@BjornLomborg Well deserved, Bjorn! 🌹

[Bjorn Lomborg @BjornLomborg]

Honored, if slightly bemused, to be #21 on Newsweek's list of "climate heretics"

My heresy: climate change is real, and we should spend our money where it does the most good

https://t.co/4PqHWZuMMx
https://t.co/fYXC04olZZ

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@bundeskanzler @RogerPielkeJr @BjornLomborg @curryja @jrockstrom @GretaThunberg @BillGates A lot of the people who engage in the most psychopathic behaviors are literally mentally ill. One of them, Joe Romm, who sought to ruin careers and lives, killed himself in September. @johnpodesta @amprog @nytimes and other media promoted him for years. He had become irrelevant.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

I'm honored to be "Climate Heretic" #7 out of 50 listed by @Newsweek. For decades, apocalyptic fanatics demonized, censored, and ruined lives. Facebook censored me for stating easily verifiable facts. Many people are trying to pretend it never happened. But we will never forget.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

Democrats spent decades demonizing, censoring, and ruining the lives of climate heretics. Now they're using their language and gas-lighting the public. Their goal is to advance their apocalyptic and Malthusian anti-civilization agenda through more politically salient messages.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@bundeskanzler @RogerPielkeJr @BjornLomborg @curryja @jrockstrom @GretaThunberg .@BillGates is on the list for saying climate change isn't the apocalypse, well after it was safe to do so. A real profile in courage. There are many such cases of cowardly opportunists. Today, Gates is a leading advocate of censorship.

https://t.co/FzIWr1iVix

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

Bill Gates two weeks ago, John Kerry last week, and Hillary Clinton today — all demanding government censorship of X. Hard to see this as a coincidence. They appear to be laying the groundwork for totalitarianism. Our democratic republic is in danger.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@Hologram_9 @Newsweek 🎯

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@RogerPielkeJr .@jrockstrom is a liar, fabulist, and fanatic. He is an embarrassment to Germany.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

@jk_rowling 😂