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Australian Police Ask Facebook For Police Alarm Button
littlekorea writes "The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has requested social networking site Facebook install a law enforcement representative in Australia and introduce some sort of button in which users can immediately report online crime to the police in a single click. It is National Cyber-Security Awareness Week in Australia, so the AFP is on an all-out offensive — announcing it is also investigating whether Google committed offences under Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act when it harvested Wi-Fi data." Something like this has been in the works for a while.
Whats up with australia? its a development country yet seems to go crazy with censorship and crazy laws
With the use of facebook, many online identities have been progressing towards being just as anonymous as a citizen walking down the street. The fact that other sites can link to your signed-in profile is almost like walking around a mall with your ID card taped to your forehead.
"Police buttons" like this will only work when the identity of the user is known, sort of like how 911 works...
I for one don't particularly like this trend, and much prefer to remain anonymous on the web.
In other words: donotwant
won't get flagrantly misused
I'll see if I can come up with a Rossetta Stone that will enable one to translate between all four schools during my Psychology Dissertation. I'll start applying to some of the top schools after I ask the taxpayers of San Jose, California to spring for the taxi fare so a couple of San Jose's Finest can give me a lift to the Napa State psychiatric hospital in California's Napa Valley.
Crawfordian Psychoanalysis is derived from the following books as well as my life experience over the last twenty-six years spent treating the Schizophrenia of homeless people as well as counseling those with Bipolar Affective Disorder; it's more commonly known as Manic Depression as well as Bipolar Depression. I have been saving the lives of the suicidally despondent since I was just a toddler in the late 1960s.
During my year of volunteer work for the Suicide Prevention Service of Santa Cruz County back when I was an undergraduate Physics student starting in the Fall of 1987, it happened all the time that a man would ring me up from a payphone with a loaded gun in his hand, or that a woman would ring me up from her bedroom with a bottle of sleeping pills and every intention to use them. I never once so much as contemplated sending for the police, the ambulance or the coroner.
All I ever required was an hour of Active Listening, in which the counselor listens carefully to what the client is saying, then responds in such a way as to make the client feel that the counselor really heard what they were saying. That's It.
If I ever so much as opened my mouth about the gentleman who managed to track down my home number from the SPSSC answering service then asked for me by name so I could convince him to stop hanging around a payphone with his loaded pistol to his temple, he would lose his Top Secret security clearance. I'll have to leave the reason as an exercise for my Gentle Reader.
Far, far more important has been my work treating the mental illnesses of Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists as well as the Psychiatric Nurses and Social Workers who staff Psychiatric Inpatient Hospitals since my first inpatient psychiatric admission. In November 1984 during the first term of my junior year of my studies at the California Institute of Technology when I I abruptly and for no aparent reason switched my major from Physics to Literature right in the middle of the Fall Quarter.
The only other person I have ever met who regarded that decision as anything but delusional or manic was Caltech Theoretical Physics Professor Richard Feynman. Feynman's deep insight into numerical analysis led him to enable the Trinity Test - a Plutonium Implosion Bomb - to knock a man flat at ten miles. The Uranium Assembly Bombed totally vaporized Hiroshima on the first try. The Plutonium Implosion Bomb dropped on Nagasaki did much the same thing.
How did Dick Feynman work such a miracle? Just by having a bunch of smart guys hang out in a big room for a year or two with tables of logarithms and mechanical adding machines. That's It.
Now you know why I flip out so much about the North Korean, Iraqi and Iranian nuclear weapons programs. Don't even get me started about the Israeli Bomb. Just Don't. The mere contemplation of the fact that Israel is well-known to possess at least three hundred nuclear weapons as well as dozens of Medium Range Ballistic Missiles that can hit anywhere in Iran completely fills me with a desperate urge to paint the entire wall to my left with my own brains.
Just wait until I explain why five minutes spent sketching on the back of an envelope would give you a deep insight into the Hydrogen Bomb. That's why the Cold War was so totally batshit paranoid. In 1953 a phenomenon known as Radiative Transfer lit the Hydrogen Bomb's fuse by enabling a two-stage Plutonium Implosion Bomb to set fire to a chunk of styrofoam in the shape of a large pill capsule. That
"The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has requested social networking site Facebook install a law enforcement representative in Australia and introduce some sort of button in which users can immediately report online crime
Would they be specifying that it take on the form of an amber lamp? Would seem logical given the rest of Australia's wtf'ery.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"Hello, police? I want to report an online crime! Facebook is telling everyone in the world everything about me! It's not fair!! What's my name? You can check me out at www.facebook.com/EveryFacebookUser ..."
I am certain that as soon as this is implemented, some guy or groups of guys will abuse this for all its worth. Whether it be for political reason, activicism of anything else. This will be like a DDOS on the poor guy who will be in change of checking these things, it will be a waste of money.
Putting a single click police call on Facebook? Can you imagine all the false alarms - whether by accident or on purpose? Is Australia going to prosecute false alarms?
I think some folks really need to put the Foster's down.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
20 ga-jillion websites in the world, why should facebook and a select few others bear the burden? Australian police want a "report crime" button on a website, put it on their own...you know, where I'd look for one...if i was looking in the first place...whatever the aussie equivalent of dialling 911 is still going to be faster than typing a report into a website...which, in the unlikely event it actually worked, would instantly generate a phone call from the police to the submitter anyway...
can't see the website button getting abused in any way, no siree...
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
I have one, but admittedly it requires 3 keypresses not one click.
It's called a cell phone. "9" "1" "1" "Talk"
It works quite well for reporting both online and offline crime.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What type of crimes to they believe happen (often) on Facebook? And whatever other websites they might have contacted.
I don't see how this would result in anything but meaningless spamming of that "button".
We are all God's parents.
And I did, but it was just for the UK.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/03/12/0149233
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Hmm... What happens if you accidentally click the button?
Then you're committing an online crime and reporting yourself, so I wouldn't recommend it ;-)
did Australia run out of beer or something? Why are they all up in each other's shit lately?
I knew that Australia has had a neoconservative movement somewhat like here in the U.S., but they seem to have taken the GWB concept and really run with it. Any Aussies care to inform us Merkins wtf is going on?
Doesn't Jeff Bezos have a patent on that?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
We're going to report some crimes.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
You used to be cool, dude. You used to be out partying all night, thumbing your nose at the Man, man. What happened? It's like you just woke up as a geezer. What's next, bro? The Anti Hippity Hop Music Played Too Loud By Those Kids On My Lawn Act 2010?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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Amber lamps, for those who didn't know, is a reference to Thomas Bruso (aka Epic Beard Man)'s African-American ghetto punk arch enemy whom he encountered in a bus ride.
See video.
After talking smack to Epic Beard Guy, harassing and then hitting him, Epic Beard Guy hit back at Amber Lamps, thus making Amber Lamps say "I need an amber lamps" because of his bleeding nose.
visit my pal the xkcd explainer!
Misused? It's the "correct" usage that is the problem...
They (The governments, cops, the man, whatever) keep trying to lower the treshold of reporting a crime. In theory, this is a good thing: If a crime is committed against me, I might already be upset etc. and should not be forced to jump through additional hoops. However, reporting a crime is notable thing that should be carefully considered. I am not some right wing nutjob who thinks that government should never interfere and whatnot but if someone is harassing you online, you really should think carefully if there is some better way to deal with the situation than involve the cops and the justice system with all its weight! When we aren't talking about crimes that put you or someone you know in immediate danger (in which case you generally should call 911 or its equivalent, not use some online system that isn't designed for that fast response) I think that it is actually better if you are required to visit a police station, call it or at the very minium send a goddam e-mail! If the crime is so insignifcant that you can't be bothered to send an e-mail to report it, perhaps you shouldn't report it!
Think about how people use Facebook. People use it after all the major events in life (break ups, etc.), during night when they are sleep deprived, after they haven consumed alcohol... And when only communicating with text there are plenty of possibilities for misunderstanding the other party (something that was meant as a joke can be misinterpreted and so on)... We really don't need effortless one-click-crime-reporting in that enviroment.
Just as a note,
The AFP or Australian Federal Police is not just the 'Australian Police' like the title misleads you to believe. They are known as 'the feds' and would be most similar to what Americans know as the FBI. And then there's ASIO which is the Australian Security Intelligence Organiasation and is akin to the CIA and NSA.
So yeah, the AFP ain't your local cop shop.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Pranksters would NEVER target such a mechanism to trigger a wave of false reports. Such shenanigans would never happen in this day and age.
It's illegal to open the little box at the end of my neigboor's driveway and "sniff" the contents of their mail. It's illegal to open a pit in the footpath and "sniff" the contents of a telephone call....
I suppose if I repeatedly hit myself in the head with a hammer I could eventually understand how those type of privacy laws equate to Nazi eugenics but seeing that I live in a police state someone would probably lock me up for seditious use of a carpentary tool before I managed to properly educate myself.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
911? THREE buttons?
What is this? 1950's technology?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
This _is_ a country that has a toll-free snitch line to report 'suspicious activity', and frequent advertisements to remind everybody it exists -- "Be alert, but not alarmed..."
Australia has always been on the conservative side in culture, religion and politics, despite the national stereotype of being open and fun-loving. In that sense, we've got a lot in common with the US. I'll go so far to say that Australia is a real prude these days.
It's illegal to open the little box at the end of my neigboor's driveway and "sniff" the contents of their mail. It's illegal to open a pit in the footpath and "sniff" the contents of a telephone call...
The problem with your analogies is that they involve interaction well beyond what's going on in this case. With the mail, you have to open the mailbox, remove mail, and presumably open up envelopes to "sniff" the mail. With the telephone system, you're going a few steps even further. No sort of interaction is going on with wireless network sniffing.
To make your mail analogy work, we'd have to rework the mail system. We'd toss out mailboxes. Instead, there's a bulletin board. You tack your mail up on that when sending or receiving mail. If you're not too picky, you're just tacking up post cards. Anyone who's passing by who cares to look can see not only that you have a mail board up, but what you're using it for. Of course, some people have an issue with this - or are simply following trends set for them. They've taken to folding their post in half before tacking it to the board (WEP). Casual drive-by observers, such as Google, now can only tell that you've got a post board up and what it's called. They can see that you're using it. But beyond that, it takes effort to walk up to the board and unfold the message to read it (WEP being relatively trivial to decrypt depending on the details). Those in the post board industry weren't happy with that and developed envelopes that make it even more difficult to read your neighbors mail (WPA / WPA2). Most people are using these envelopes by default even if they don't understand why - it's the trendy thing to do (and most access point hardware has you set it up by default). All people would probably use these envelopes if they understood what's involved. A few people are running around screaming that Google looked at their post board - they're the same ones upset that a picture was taken of their front door.