Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens

sg_oneill writes "The Australian Electronic Frontiers foundation report that the Australian Government is looking at introducing changes to the Telecomunications Interception Act giving Government Agencies (NOT just police!) the power to intercept email, voice mail and SMS messages without a warrant. Considering the concurrent proposals to introduce legislation to allow banning of organisations suspected of terrorist links, am I the only one suspecting Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?" I think our most recent Australia spying story was about the Australian government spying to win elections.

Comments

Email is not and never was secure.

[blair1q]

The net is ad hoc. Your email is not and never was secure. You were told that when you signed up for your service or hooked up to your peer. Pretending it's an outrage for anyone to be reading it now is shedding crocodile tears.

--Blair

Re:George Orwell is spiniing in his grave.

[famillionaire]

1984 is hardly only about the USSR, as people always seem to be so comfortable in believing - Orwell had already written a book dealing exclusively with the USSR and its betrayal of socialist principles in favor of continued exploitation in a new form (Animal Farm). A betrayal that Orwell was acutely aware of (remember that Orwell was a socialist and fought for the POUM [independent Marxists] in the Spanish Civil War), but by no means blinded him to the faults of capitalist society, many held in common with society in the USSR. 1984 is not just the 'fairy story' of Animal Farm elaborated, but a much richer, more universally relevant novel that encapsulates a large number of Orwell's theories of history, authority, his fears about the future of society, and to dismiss the novel lightly as being 'merely about the USSR' is to trivialize it and assign to it a datedness that it doesn't merit, especially in the present context.