Slashdot Mirror
Australians to Increases Surveillance Powers?
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that new laws being presented to parliament this week would allow police and spy agencies additional power to monitor communications of people not suspected of any crime. From the article: "Under the changes, police will be able to tap the phone calls and trace the emails and text messages of third parties to suspected crimes. Police will have 45 days to monitor a person not under suspicion in the hope it will lead them to the person or people they do suspect."
“Democracy,” too, was a catchphrase of Communist tyranny; whither our democracies appear to be degenerating.
To recap - This is just another assault on privacy by the Liberal Party. It may not pass now, but it will someday, and when that day comes - I'm moving across the ditch to New Zealand
In case you can't tell - I'm an Australian resident
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
The thing about the Australian government as it stands today is that it's just pure evil. If a report came tomorrow that John Howard likes to kill puppies it would not suprise me at all. The only reason he's still around is due to a generally incompetent opposition.
Hail! An Australian newspaper not owned by Rupert Murdoch!
And another victory for Bin Laden and co. Everytime a Western government implements laws like these, he comes a step closer to achieve his goal: Undermining Western civilization, economics and politics, and that without incurring any cost, be it monetary or people.
Doesnt come as a surprise given the following plans.
NSW plans new security camera regime.I think it is safe to say that we are all potential criminals.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
"Australians to Increases Surveillance Powers"
Well, for starters, it is the Australian Government, not "Australians" who are increasing surveillance powers. This is a Government who only go elected due to the ineptitude of all the other political parties, and by perpetrating a scare campaign on interest rates.
Plus, I'm no grammar expert, but that headline doesn't seem to parse all that well.
I've said it before... If you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about.
Privacy is a two way street, you can't cry foul when the government wants to listen in for a bit, find nothing and then leave you alone, and then want the government to have more power when tracking down somebody who's double crossed you.
What do you talk about on the phone? I talk about my programming, my life, what's happening to my friends. I don't commit crimes. What's the person listening in going to think or care of me? Absolutely nothing, because he's never met me. If one of my friends committed a crime in an area I hang around in, and I talk about it over the phone, what's the person on the phone tap going to do? Interview me and get some more information, then bring my friend who beat up ol' Mrs. Jenkins across the road to justice.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
1984 is creeping up on us from every corner of the planet. Australia isn't particularly special.
... clearly candidates for terrorist recruitment in the eyes of the police here.
In the UK, we're well on our way to being followed in our every move, our freedoms being "allowed" only if we carry the necessary papers, checked, validated and scanned in everything we do, and so on.
What it comes down to is this: politicians everywhere are scum. They don't work towards a better and freer life for ordinary people, but purely for their own self-aggrandizement and political power. And since it seems that they can achieve nothing without creating new laws, the public is continually being imprisoned within ever thicker legal walls and shackled with ever tighter legal chains.
"The Fight Against Terrorism" is of course used as the current excuse. In reality, the actual daily terror here is coming from the politicians and the police. Nobody worries on a daily basis about a true whacko blowing up the underground (because the likelihood is low), but everyone worries about being jumped on by a dozen police officers on the grounds of "looking suuspicious". God, that must be easy work for the police, looking for people with shifty eyes. And I really pity the poor blokes with beards, or those who look slightly middle-eastern
I don't think that this is going to change any time soon. You know why? Because people are dumb, and watch too much TV, and believe the messages that the politicians and media are feeding them.
It's sad times indeed.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
For Americans, at least, from Wikipedia:
Terrorism of all kind is about influencing the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion. Rather than mass deport people from "problematic" countries like Saudi Arabia, they'd rather screw all citizens and resident aliens alike. Turks and Albanians aren't very prone to hardline Islam compared to Saudis. Most Albanians are so supposed to be quite chill about Islam. Why restrict them when it's the Wahabi Saudis who are causing the bloodshed and spread of terrorist ideas in foreign mosques?
That's another point that needs to be considered. The Saudi-funded mosques and schools are Wahabi in doctrine. They're so hardline that they want even the Shia and Sufis exterminated. Why do we let these wild-eyed zealots who preach sedition and actively agitate for treason among our Muslims to operate openly? The best option for the US and Australia alike is systematic legislative and enforcement elimination of Wahabism from our borders. As long as they can continue to operate on our soil, they're an enemy, and their schools are akin to saying, "ok KGB, you can recruit at the Ivy League career fairs."
What is the goal of terrorism? It is a tool to wage
warfare against a population directly, rather than
hitting their military head on. Most competent
groups that wage warfare use this as a tool.
Given that, what do you call it when a few people
hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings? When
you cost your enemy Trillions of dollars, a significant
percentage of their GDP reacting to the cries of the
general population, and you didn't even pay for the
airplanes? This is called success.
When you can get your enemy to change their society,
make people less happy with the government, make that
government waste time and money reacting to what they
think you might do next (even if it is nothing), this
is also success.
I know this is trite, but so far the US is losing the
war against terrorism.
If they do it as dodgely as they do the rest of their law enforcement, she'll be right mate!
For example, your doing something dodgy in your car. Do you a) stick a GPS transponder to it b) follow them 2 cars back in a recently made australian car and match every lane change. While all the while sitting the there with a box on your dash and the both of you wearing suits in the middle of summer?
This is the same as for the internet a) sliding in a rootkit (maybe the could get some help from Sony) b) Continually ping the box with ICMP Echo requests to make sure its there. While outside you somehow notice that your cable modem cord has been diverted through a van with a big:
All
Flowers
Pronto
written in capitals. Seriously though, if I use a decent Operating System and End to End encryption, what have I got to worry about?
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
I posted this elsewhere:
For the love of god, someone get these politicians a hobby. They have far too much time and money at their disposal.
I'd like to see Blair, Bush, Howard & Bin Laden settle this over a good old game of marbles and leave us out of it.
Who the hell are these twirps? Never met them, never heard a SINGLE intelligent thing come out of any of their mouths and day after day they affect my life. They sit there in these strange black outfits with these weird nooses around their necks arguing about things which are obviously issues of semantics, breaking every rule of intelligent debate & rationalisation and prompting the media beast to artificially inflate these "issues" so that the bored apathetic masses get up in arms and keep them voted in.
We're throwing away our freedoms so the media can make you pay for & drink sugar water.
The extreme views speak in loud, inflamatory soundbytes that serve to sell advertising to gullible viewers: "X is EVIL" "ALL Y DESERVE TO DIE" while the moderate, intelligent, rational view is obscured and diffused by its truthful verbosity and its inherent "unmarketability"
Sometimes I just bang my head against the wall at the complete insanity of it all.
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
If you look on Google, you can find information on Wahabi preaching in the US... almost all of it being funded by the Saudi royalty. CAIR is a group that has reportedly been connected to Hamas, and is a leading "Muslim civil rights group" modeled on the NAACP. These groups preach sedition and agitate for treason in our Muslim populations. Eliminating Wahabism from our countries is the only way we can even attempt to integrate our Muslims peacefully and safely.
I'd like to see Blair, Bush, Howard & Bin Laden settle this over a good old game of marbles and leave us out of it.
God, not marbles. It should be settled with them all in a small room, using hand grenades.
Unfortunately, that would be quite unfair to them, as those four leaders don't have any unique claim to working against their people. It's a general problem with politicians worldwide, and the real difficulty is knowing whom to exclude from this "solutions room".
Is there a single politician in power anywhere who genuinely works to preserve the freedoms of his or her people, and not just as a pretext while enslaving them more each day?
I can't think of even one. The chains around our freedom become thicker with each new item of legislation, and these legal prisons are inescapable.
Surely the title should be "Australians to Increases Surveillances Powers".
Not sure about "tos".
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.ph p?ntid=72574&ntpid=1