Slashdot Mirror
Australian Gov't Seeks To Record Citizens' Web Histories
An anonymous reader writes "If you thought the Australian Government's Internet filter project was bad, think again. They have a new project — they are examining a policy that would require all Internet service providers to log users' web browsing history and email data such as who all emails were sent to and from. And that's just the start. Telephone calls, mobile phone calls, even Internet telephony. It's all in there. Looks like 1984 was a pretty prophetic book." Several readers also point to ZDNet's coverage.
So how long before Aussies figure out that "encrypt everything" is a great idea?
Om, nomnomnom...
than pedophiles and terrorists.
when you support spreading democracy and freedom in other countries. Bombing the shit out of them, to spread your so called "way of life". Internally your "perceived freedoms" are slowly eroded. Go ahead and mark me as troll and go back to living in your cocoon.
Trivially easy to circumvent once again. Google already offers SSL encryption for web searches and for Gmail and I don't even need to mention all the privacy tools available. I think the bulk of people have moved away from their ISP based email due to the impoverished email service ISPs offer. I myself have already moved all my email to cloud based email a long time ago - what is the point in sticking with ISP based email? Native email clients don't really offer much compelling functionality over cloud services other than a way to loose all your emails when your hard drive dies.
I already use SSL for Google and Gmail. Of course the ISP can still track and log your cleartext http and dns lookups etc, but it at least offers some privacy.
Everybody who has something to hide on the internet is already using these trivial methods and others. This is about spying on the average citizen. Poor privacy on the internet in particular social media is already hurting countless millions of people identity theft and scams, we really do NOT need the government spying too.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Why? Given the amount of data involved, this seems like gross overkill. Even for hardcore Big Brother.
Some of the people involved won't have a clue about the amount of data involved. Others will be rubbing their hands with glee as they bid for the data center contracts.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Google offers SSL access now
Encrypt your stuff. They can still track the target IP addresses, but no URLs. Next stop: Widespread use of foreign proxies, then TOR.
nobody who is devout, or even remotely religious, should be allowed into government.
Australian here- It's pretty simple really. (Disclaimer: I've posted this before, but it bears repeating)
We have a political system where, instead of directly voting for a prime minister, we instead vote for our local representative; the party with the most seats gets to elect the prime minister. Essentially.
The problem comes when the two main political parties own almost equal seats, but many seats are "safe" seats. Think Texas. Is a Democrat ever going to be elected in a landslide in Texas? Nah. Is a Republican going to take San Fransisco in a landslide? Nah.
So, politicians focus on the marginal seats. Think Florida, which could go either way.
It just so happens a number of those seats are, currently, in and around Adelaide; a highly religious, conservative city known as "The City of Churches". So, politicians on all sides of the political spectrum are metaphorically sucking our version of the Bible Belt's dick in order to get those precious one or two seats, which means they can keep/gain government respectively.
Which means our current administration is pushing through knee-jerk think-of-the-children legislation while the opposition is basically screaming "US TOO BUT BIGGER, BETTER, MORE KNEE-JERKY."
It's pure horseshit and doesn't represent the will of the Australian people at all.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
I think you're all missing the point here. The purpose of the net filter isn't to actually genuinely prevent access to those websites that are "evil". The purpose is to convince voters that the government is doing something about "evil" and thereby gain votes.
A system like this wouldn't be so bad IF governments could be trusted with keeping their hands off the data UNTIL a crime was committed. Then, when they had physical evidence of a crime, a bit of data mining and searching could dig up other relevant facts. However the Australian government (famous for Task Force Argos, who took someone to court for posting a video freely available on YouTube citing child abuse) and other governments around the world have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to refrain from abusing such data.
Mention the words "terrorism" or "child pornography", and suddenly governments want to go so far as to break existing laws to prevent these crimes. However there is only one problem - if the person has not committed the crime yet, they are not a criminal. So we get cases built on "conspiracy to commit" and "intent to commit", cases which erode our freedom each single time. Because any psychologist will tell you that some very nasty thoughts can pass through the heads of very average people AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. The insides of our heads must remain inviolate and not subject to the state, or we become slaves. The law must draw the line at "yes but did the person go out and ACT on those fantasies?", not "did the person think about it". Otherwise everyone guilty of watching, writing or producing a murder mystery show is guilty of murder.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.