Thomas Drake, a well-known whistleblower from the US and a former employee of the NSA, and Melbourne University Professor Dr Suelette Dreyfus, both had their talks cancelled after having been listed on the program as long as 11 months ago.

CyberOz memory holes? After acceptance of my talk “The Golden Age of Surveillance” at #cybercon2019 got disinvited as speaker & could only attend as delegate. Informed was “incongruent” w/ conference. Silencing voices in cyber security undercuts democracy. https://t.co/gpeCrmYS5u

— Thomas Drake (@Thomas_Drake1) October 7, 2019

The Australian Signals Directorate, the local equivalent of America's NSA, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre are both partners of the organiser, the website CSO Online reported.

Drake worked with former NSA technical director William Binney and cryptologist Edward Loomis in the 1990s. They all left the NSA after the 11 September terrorist attacks.

Drake's talk at CyberCon was described as "a provocative peek at the present future of the national security state, encryption and the de-evolution of democracy and the rise of technocracy from both a personal and professional perspective.... His talk directly impacts and implicates information security and the challenges faced by industry in the digital age."

11/16 We are now on notice that @CyberGovAU is actively silencing experts from speaking at public conferences it partners in if it doesn't like what you say. #AISA #CyberCon #CensorCon #cyber #infosec #cybersecurity
First they came for the journalists.. then the academics..

— SueletteD (@SueletteD) October 7, 2019

Dr Dreyfus was due to give a talk on the use of secure and anonymous digital dropboxes as a means of fighting corruption.

Both Drake and Dr Dreyfus claimed that the ASD was behind the cancellation of their talks.

iTWire has asked the ASD for comment. There is no media contact provided for the CyberCon conference but iTWire has contacted AISA for comment.