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Australia Spying On Its Own
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?"
Posted by Paleolithic on Tuesday February 12,
>Do some research and you will see that Australia is run by the right -- Conservatives not liberals.
Just to be more confusing - the Conservatives are called the Liberals. http://liberal.org.au
It has been mentioned in subthreads above, so this might be modded down as redundant. However, since several posters are arguing that freedoms are being taken away by the Evil Liberal Soccer Moms of Australia, I'll risk it by saying that John Howards Liberal party in Australia is actually deeply conservative. Their main opposition is the Labor party which are more social-democrat/liberal in the European sense.
As for you libertarians who seem to think liberals are the greatest threat to freedom, who are the ones currently taking away US freedoms in the old excuse of national security? It ain't the liberals anyway.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
It's bad when the political party in power uses the intelligence services of the public illegally in order to strengthen their power base. Did you not see the "not supposed to spy on conversations involving australians " and the "calls between the captain and the maritime union of australia "?
Of course it should be noted that Amnesty has repeatedly asked Philip Ruddock to take off his Amnesty badge because they feel that his actions are not appropriate for a member of Amnesty (he keeps on wearing it BTW). Not to mention that the Liberal party has recently disendorsed a candidate in Tasmania because he criticises the Liberal's refugee policty. On an added note, wasn't there that nasty incident during the election last year where the Defence Minister said that boat people were throwing their children overboard to blackmail Australia to accept them and swore that there was a tape to prove it. Now it turns out that this tape may not even exist and defense personnel at the scene swore it didn't happen the way the Australian Government said. In fact before he retired (but after the government was re-elected) the Defense Minister was starting to retract his statements, admitting that he never actually saw the tape or personally confirmed the incident. Not to mention the recent mass suicide attempst, self-multilation attempts by desperate refugees in camps, reports of child abuse being ignored by a corporation attempting to make money, a refusal to allow media to talk to refugees even when invited by refugees, refusal to open the camps to the UN (though they changed their mind on that one). The latest bright spark is that even though many of the Afghans belong to minority groups long abused in Afghanistan by the majority even before the Taliban they are proposing to let the present Afghan government which include many leaders of the groups that abused these refugees to talk to them to "persuade" them to go back to Afghanistan thus sparking riots. Not to mention unaccompanied children in the camps for several years and the fact that many of the refugees believe that they are are being punished for September 11 and will be jailed forever. I do think that the summary here is blatently wrong (because the government listened in once on a phone conversation between a non-Australian captain of a ship which was about to be boarded by the SAS, suddenly the government listens in on *all* civilian phone calls. Talk about conspiracy theories). However I don't think it is wrong to say that the government definitely tries to demonise the refugees and treats them badly. Not to mention that the vast majority of "illegal immigrants" are Britons and Americans who overstay their visas, sometimes for years on end, also taking jobs and resources from Australian taxpayers. Yet, I don't see John Howard calling for a mass round-up and incarceration.
Liberalism is seldom associated with increased surveilance and invasions of personal liberties: Quite the opposite in fact. Most "soccer moms" who call for greater and greater restraints and government controls are conservatives. A liberal approach to things is live and let live. A conservative approach to things is "live the way we see as the best way to live".
It's just the media.
:)
And our media has a good habit of being politically biased, and beating up stories, because after all, we are a small country and earth shattering events rarely take place here.
They've taken an allegation on monitoring conversations between the tampa (a ship). But the media likes to turn it into "big brother is watching".
It will be big news in parliament for about two days, and like always, the treasurer of the country will give the opposition a big smarmy grin, and make innuendo about their political oponents lack of ticker, and move on to the next witty remark and mini-drama.
Come and spend some time in Australia and travel around, and make up your own mind
I can't believe such blatent misinformation got modded up. This phony perception of liberalism being equivalent to socialism is a common misconception among Americans, but I thought that at least some people around here knew better.
Liberalism has a meaning. It is a political philosophy that puts individual liberty and freedom as the natural and desired state of human beings, and dictates that burden of proof must always fall on any person or law that infringes on individual liberty in any way (that is, speed limits are ok even though the limit freedom, as long as we can show that they do great good to make up for it.)
Liberalism should be contrasted to a conservative political philosophy, which means that the burden of proof always falls on people and laws that change the current situation. That is if there is currently a law that infringes on peoples freedom, the liberal will say, "Show me why we need this law, or I will get rid of it," while the conservative says, "Show me why we would be better off without this law, or it stays."
It makes my skin crawl every time I hear an American attacking liberals as wanting less freedom and more laws. If somebody wants that then they are BY DEFENITION not liberal, regardless of what they, the media, their opponents, or anybody else says. Nor does liberalism have anything to do with socialism, which is a political system (not really a philosophy) that tries to even out social injustices. There are people who combine the two under the argument that people without money are having their basic freedoms infringed by the economic system, but that is neither universally held nor in any way inherent to being a liberal.
If you think that, all things equal, people should be as free to do whatever they want as is possible, then you are liberal. It doesn't matter if you find that hard to swallow because you are American and don't like the people who call themselves liberals around you, or whether you despise Al Gore, or whatever. Get over it, and learn the meaning of term before you attack it.
"Liberal" means quite different things depending on country and date:
19th Century: Best expressed by J.S. Mills. Sort of what Americans now call "moderate libertarian":
- Capitalist, free-market economics.
- Mills probably never heard of labor unions, and certainly wouldn't have approved of them.
- Distrust of government balanced against recognition that some government is necessary. Mills: "That government is best which governs least."
- Representative democracy with quite limited governmental powers. (In the US, this depends largely on the Supreme Court, the legislature and executive both being notably lacking in self-restraint and respect for the Constitution... British liberalism substituted the hereditary House of Lords for the Court, and tradition for a written Constitution, and so far it seems to have worked out no worse than over here...)
- Heavy emphasis on individual rights, except where they conflict with the free market.
- Some public works projects are acceptable (like roads), but gov't should stay out of anything that can be done by competitive commercial concerns, or by private charities.
Late 20th & 21st century American "liberals": Moderate socialists. Sometimes not so moderate. Example: Ralph Nader
- Regulated capitalist economy with many socialist trimmings.
- Pro union
- Distrust of big business. Also tends to regulate small business to death...
- Schizoid attitude towards government -- when it comes to arresting criminals or the national defense, gov't is bad, but when it comes to welfare, business regulations, zoning, public schools, or social agencies checking up on how you raise your children, gov't magically becomes good.
-Representative democracy with some limits on governmental powers.
- Heavy emphasis on individual rights, except where they conflict with the "liberals" favorite gov't regulations.
- Almost everything should be a public work. If the regulated and heavily taxed economy can't employ everyone, the gov't should hire them. If necessary, to dig holes and fill them up again...
- Does not believe that honest citizens can or should defend themselves.
(Don't let my ridicule of 21st century liberals fool you -- conservatives are even more schizoid. But that would get too long and too far off topic...)
British or Australian late 20th - 21st century liberals: What we call "conservatives" in America
The thing is though, if it weren't for the United Statees' EPCA (Electronic Privacy Communications Act), there would be no expectation of privacy when talking on a cellular phone anyway.
[snip]
There is _plenty_ of RF Scanning gear that was sold commercially before the EPCA came into effect that is still in private and corporate hands that can listen to the cellular portions of the 800MHz band.
You're talking about old-style cellular, which most people are moving away from except as a fallback. The rules have changed now.
I use GSM on the 1900 MHz band. I know that my conversations have several layers of encryption and are transmitted over a spread-spectrum link with the cell. I know that breaking the encryption is difficult, and intercepting the transmission has never been accomplished even under laboratory conditions. I have *every* expectation of privacy for the radio leg of my call.
OTOH I know they can tap my call at the cellular company's switch. The cell company is not supposed to allow this without a court order. So, I damn well expect a well-behaved law enforcement agency to go to an ordinary judge and talk the judge into issuing a clear warrant ordering my phone to be tapped before it can happen.
If the NSA were to be going around recording my calls randomly, I would want them crucified for it.
Ok, in reading this thread, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the term 'liberal' and what it means. Let me see if I can explain what's going on... someone correct me if I'm wrong.
First of all, the poster declared himself to be a 'libertarian', a libertarian, in the US is someone who believes in little government interference and that type of thing, it's a term only really used in the US, as far as I know. And he called what the Australian government's actions "liberal", now I'm guessing he means "liberal" in the US sense, rather then say, the British sense. Now, to make things extra-confusing "Liberal" in the US and "Liberal" outside the US mean opposite things. In the US the Democratic party is called "Liberal" and the republican party is called "Conservative". In the rest of the world, the republican party would be called "Liberal". Liberals out side favor liberty and the like. In the US, liberals are liberal with government money: P.
The term 'libertarian' thus came about here, because people who favored liberty but didn't think the republican party was any good needed something to call themselves. They couldn't use "liberal" because it was already in use by people who they even more strongly disagreed with, thus "libertarian" was minted.
To make things extra confusing partisans, people who identify strongly with a particular labeled viewpoint (like liberal, conservative, fascist, communist, whatever) tend to label things they don't like as being in the opposite camp. This libertarian here called the AU's listening "liberal" in the US sense (I think), because he didn't like it.
Personally I don't think listening to almost everyone in the AU has any particular political slant other then "Sleazy", and of course "Very, very disturbing", (although you might be able to say its "reactionary").
Anyway, let me know of any mistakes I've made. Personally I think we should choose new names in the US for these terms to make intercontinental communication easier.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.