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Australia Spying On Its Own

Posted by timothy on from the he-ain't-heavy-he's-big-brother dept.

AVIDLY INTERESTED writes: "Well well, the Australian government has been caught out spying on its own citizens, despite denying for years that they do this type of thing. This story at The Age shows that the Defence Signals Directorate listens to just about every bit of communications in Australia. The interesting thing about this story is the background to it. In this case the govt spied because they were trying to win an election, and needed evidence to demonise a ship that was docking in Australia carrying a bunch of refugees. National security be damned, this is echelon for political gain. Is it happening anywhere else?"

2 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. More info... by arsaspe · · Score: 5, Funny

    can be found here

    personally, I think that spying on citizens is like masturbation. Everyone does it, no one admits it, and in the end it gets you nowhere.

  2. So? Just Stop Communicating by guttentag · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...the Defence Signals Directorate listens to just about every bit of communications in Australia
    Geez, every time some government does something like this we run around screaming about restrictions on our freedom. No one's restricting your freedom -- you still have to freedom to not communicate. I mean, that's what I do... aside from Slashdot, that is. I just got tired of all the PGP, SSL, and Cocoa Crunchies Decoder Wheels and stopped communicating altogether. Problem solved.

    No one's forcing you to communicate with other people, just like no one's forcing you to use Windows...

    (If you can't detect the sarcasm in the above statements, you really shouldn't be roaming the Web without a guardian)