THE WAR ON TERROR AND SPYING ON EVERYONE are both very serious matters. Indeed, the war on terror is killing people all over the world — including, sadly, here in Australia this week.

The tragic death of Abdul Numan Haidar is not a laughing matter. The confusion, misinformation and outright lies being spread about this young man are appalling. That the news media is buying into it with awful headlines and front page stories vilifying him, his friends and even random, totally unconnected young men should shame some journalists into silence.

At the same time, the rush to cut into our liberties in the name of ‘protecting’ us from a shadowy threat that kills less people than bee stings is also not something to joke about, or is it?

In the last 24 hours, a new Twitter hashtag, #HeyASIO, has burst into prominence to take the piss out of Raging Bedsore’s new surveillance powers.

Now that our security services have the right to monitor the whole of the inter-webs with just one warrant allowing them to tap into any computer ‘network’, it seems that nothing we do online is going to be private anymore.

The rightwing trolls don’t like it and curmudgeonly columnists like Andrew Bolt complain (without even having a Twitter account) that social media is dominated by “the left”, but for those of us who:

1. don’t like the Abbott Government;
2. think the terror threat is overblown;
3. don’t like the idea of ASIO snooping on us around the clock and, more importantly;
4. have a sense of humour…

… then It’s  a great way to get your message across while having a bit of fun.