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Australia Taps More Phones Than Entire U.S.
An anonymous reader writes "Last year Australian authorities tapped more phones all United States authorities combined. Australian phones were tapped at 20 times the rate of phones in the US according to this article in the Sydney Morning herald. The fact was revealed during a debate in the Australian parliament. The government is attempting to pass new legislation to to make it even easier for the country's domestic spy agency ASIO to tap phones." Update: 09/16 14:07 GMT by T : Julian Assange writes "The Australian is also running the story and has better stats." Thanks for the link.
I think that maybe CIA/FBI statistics are a little less forthcoming than those from ASIO. With all these measures to prevent terrorism, I'd assume that the CIA and FBI combined would be at least 20 times what they were just over a year ago anyway.
In short: I don't believe it.
The USA can keep dreaming that they have privacy, but guys, face it - you don't live in the land of the free any more.
They're welcome to our line. I admire anyone that could stand more than 5 minutes of listening to the crap that my sister speaks about all day long on the phone.
I live in the Netherlands (pop 15 million, about as much as NYC) and the police over here taps more phones than the whole of the US.
It's not as much the phone taps that are in place that worry me. It's the taps that should be there and that are prevented by corrupt officials.
Land of the free. Yeah sure, but only when you've bought your local politician/whatever.
the pun is mightier than the sword
I'm pretty sure Australia has most if not all of that somewhere in their constitution as well. What they don't have is something like our second amendment which is:
But i'm just one of those types who is picky about which amendment is which.
Echelon makes this kind of irrelevant. The 5 countries that are part of Echelon (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ) can basically listen in on ANY phone call/fax/email/IP etc in any of the other countries. There are some computers here in New Zealand that are directly controlled by the US (NSA I think). This means that the NZ govt (and Aust govt etc) can listen to US phone calls. Now part of the reason it is set up like this is that the US authorities can use the NZ bit of the network to listen to US calls. This way it is technically not "domestic spying" as it is occurring over here.
I guess the wiretaps they're talking about here are for court-issued wiretaps for the police, rather than the secret services.
especially telling.
Guess that explains everything. The crooks, labor organizers, and opposition, have mastered the "sophistication" of the telephone.
Anybody can work under ideal circumstances. -- Jeff K. (January 4, 2001)
A friend of mine was raided by the Federal Police in full gear. They spent over $1 million ($500,000 $US) trying to get this guy..... And they turned up _nothing_ We found out from a contact in the Federal Police that naturally his phone was tapped, as were all his closer friends (this includes me).
It disturbes me that I was watched because of guilt by association with someone who was NOT guilty of anything.
Yes, Australia has a constitution!
http://www.dpmc.gov.au/docs/constitution.cfm
For instance, with regard to freedom of speech, the UK government can use something called a D-notice to suppress press reports that it doesn't like
As I understand it D-notices was/is a somewhat bizarre scheme, a kind of gentleman's agreement between newspaper editors and the Department of Defense whereby the DoD would supply the newspaper editors with privilaged access to certain information if they agreed not to publish it. It wasn't a legal thing as far as I am aware - the editors could (and some did) tell the DoD to stuff their D-notices.
With regards to freedom of speech in the UK it is something that is pretty fundamental. For instance UK journalists and newscasters are really hard questioners and don't give politicians an easy time in the way they do in many countries...
Last night I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep when I thought I heard a strange noise coming from the bathroom.
Knowing that I wouldn't be able to doze off until the mystery was solved, I hauled by sad ass out of bed and stumbled down the hall to the "little room"
At first I thought it must just be tinnitus because the sound was really indistinct and seemed to be coming from multiple directions at once.
After a few minutes walking around the bathroom with my hands cupped to my ears I finally traced the source of the noise to the basin.
Yes, those bastard law-enforcement officials -- they'd phoned my tap!
It's a far larger amount certainly, but of a fairly small number.
To recap, Australia did 2150 taps in 19million people, the US did 1490 taps on 284 million.
For Australia, that's about one in 10,000 people, compared to about one in 200,000 people for the US
a grrl & her server
so ggod in living in a developing country .. our phones dont work half of the time whew ;-)
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Hmmm. I don't think I would call Johnny Vaughan, Richard and Judy or Ali G news journalists.
Mind you, I remember Ali G asking Edward Heath if she ever fancied giving Thatcher a quickie, which is a pretty tough question...
Actually, Australia's constitution came into effect on 1 Jan 1901 - the day we federated. So it was quite a significant day. It established and defined the relationship between the all states. It took a long time to develop - and was done by a group of clear-thinking, diverse people in a fiery debate - where no one got killed.
(People often walked out, but no one got killed. And the process went for years) until finally the fiction that is the Australian constitution was born. Somehow, we managed to develop a Clayton's monarchy, (the monarchy you have when you're not having a monarchy).
And now lots of people want to change the constitution - because of this very clever fiction. But I'm sure in the process they'll remove a lot of the freedoms that are currently afforded to Australian's if they are allowed to change it one iota. Then we won't be able to walk down the street with the right to be free from fear of drive-by shootings and there will proabably be more allowances and less restrictions phone tappings by incompetent organisations like ASIO.
If ASIO were so good at tapping phones, how come the newspaper knows about it? Is it just me, or is the real story - we know about more Aussies having their phones tapped than we know about American phones being tapped?
Now the CIA, there's an agency that really knows where its towel is (and how to keep its phone-tapping under wraps).
---- *dog sitting next to a computer, with his beady eyes shifting left to right*
that's nothing. in america we spent over $30 million investigating one guy over a land deal and ended up barely being able to prove that he lied to people that he had an affair - and that was just because a private citizen illegally recorded some phone conversations.
as usual we americans are better at everything - including abusing civil liberties. so there.
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No. It involves the Offical Secrets Act, and basically amounts to "information about the theft of that anthrax from Porton Down is classified. If you tell anyone about it, we'll lock you up." There's a specific exemption to our Freedom of Expression for "national security" - basically, the Ministry of Defence (MoD; DoD is the US version) can just turn up and gag you on any matter they feel like. They can't gag you about, say, a politician screwing his secretary, but anything military or relating to the security services is another matter: just ask David Shayler...
(The theft I mention was actually referred to by one paper at the time: the British lab at Porton Down was broken into, and had three things stolen - one being a sample of Foot and Mouth, another being Anthrax. For some strange reason, it wasn't referred to again...)
No. It involves the Offical Secrets Act,[..]
Nope, I think I was correct in my orginal post. From the official web site (www.dnotice.org.uk):
"The DA-Notices are intended to provide to national and provincial newspaper editors, to periodicals editors, to radio and television organisations and to relevant book publishers, general guidance on those areas of national security which the Government considers it has a duty to protect. The Notices, together with a General Introduction, details of the Committee and how to contact the Secretary, are widely distributed to editors, producers and publishers and also to officials in Government departments, military commanders, chief constables and some institutions. The Notices have no legal standing and advice offered within their framework may be accepted or rejected partly or wholly."
I have also read an opinion piece about D-Notices by the editor of a national publication (I don't remember which), in which he said he basically ignored them. It is a system that apparently used to work - when it was a gentlemen's agreement type thing - but doesn't really any more.
I really hope you were trolling. I'll bite anyway.
The Australian Constitution does not guarantee us any freedoms at all. If you read it, it's all about how power is divided between the State and Federal governments and the Governor General. There's no Bill of Rights, no guarantees of anything for the citizens save the right to vote in elections. Australian governments can pass any oppressive legislation they want.
We do have a pretty lame kind of freedom of speech, but you won't find it anywhere in the constitution. That's because the High Court invented it out of nowhere in the late 80's. It was an interesting case - the government of the day tried to pass a law restricting spending on political advertisements, the TV companies sued, and a one-judge majority in the High Court decided that we had a "freedom of political speech" implied in the constitution. In other words, "It's not there, but it should be so we'll pretend it is." The logic they used was tenuous to say the least.
Being a High Court decision, and a narrow majority, it could be overruled any time.
So there's no wonder we have more phone-taps than the USA. They have constitutional protection against unreasonable search, all we have is a Common Law doctrine of evidence that will mostly (but not always) suppress evidence that was illegally obtained.
Charles Miller
(Who isn't a lawyer, but did pass Constitutional Law before he dropped out of University to become a programmer)
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
I know a lot of you out there think that your home countries are a lot safer, more interesting, etc.... and I agree. But you forget one thing about it. America is a real soup of people, and NOTHING COMES EASY IN AMERICA.
That is the nature of the soup that is the good 'ol USA. Most of the people that are from Finland and Norway say that there are no tensions and no problems at all with others.. well, move to Minnesota or the Upper Penninsula in the USA and you will notice that there is less violence there too... on the count that there really are less ethnic-religious-governmental-general-people tensions. Its the land of happy, slightly overweight hockey playing white guys. Lots of cheese.
I mean honestly, what the hell is there to argue about in Finland? Do you have a thousand cabbies that come from every country in the world and can't understand you, nor you understand them when they speak? Do you have hundreds of religious groups pining for their big piece of the political pie? Do you have anything that might get you annoyed like that? Unregistered illegal Mexican drivers that ran over kids in a schoolyard and then get no punishment because they are not US citizens, and caused all of this becasue they can't be bothered to read and understand English road signs?
WHY DOES AMERICA HAVE ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS? Because when poor, uneducated, huddled masses think of travelling to a land of prosperity they don't look around their straw hut and say, "Let's go to Iceland!"
Don't get me wrong. That's a good thing about being an American. But also you don't get this: when a Mexican punk drug dealer shoots a Texas cop on a sting in front of police, you also don't get an international incident where Vincente Fox shows his ass as a "show of power" to the American people over a P.O.S. drug dealer. The last time I checked, the Netherlands hasn't sent troops anywhere to save people. SO the Netherlands hasn't drawn any heat for it either. Believe it or not, there are several places in the world where people are excited to see me because I am a representative of America. Not everyone will try to kidnap me.
America-bash away. I don't blame anyone for liking a home country where everyone basically acts and looks the same as you... sounds great. Never had that. Probably pretty nice.
WE ARE JUST DIFFERENT, WITH DIFFERENT PROBLEMS. NOT BETTER OR WORSE THAN ANYONE, JUST WITH DIFFERENT PROBLEMS. But you can't really blame the USA for going crazy every day. You'd be nuts too if you had this many people that can't agree.
And another thing. When everyone says we don't need an army it just makes me laugh. Well, that is because we are doing the job for you. Keep in mind that if anyone invaded Norway, Iceland, The Netherlands, Australia, beautiful New Zealand, or anywhere else civilized... we might have the jets in the air faster than you might have yours. Why?
NOT BECAUSE AMERICA WANTS TO BE MR. BADASS ALL THE TIME. Its actually simpler than that.
That is what true friends do for friends when they need help. We'd kick butt again for France or Germany (or the Netherlands) in a second if they needed it. Of course, the UK doesn't even need to ask. You get punched silly for even looking at the UK in front of the USA.