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Inside Australia's Data Retention Proposal

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-have-nussink-to-hide dept.

bennyboy64 writes "New details have emerged on Australia's attempt at getting a data retention regime into place, with meeting notes taken by industry sources showing exactly what has been proposed. In a nutshell, the Australian government wants Internet service providers to keep anything and everything they have the ability to log and retain for two years 'at this stage.'"

6 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Sup? by markdavis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well the hell is going on in Australia lately??? Seems like every few days it is yet another article about YMBB (Yet More Big Brother). Does the populous want this stuff or did a new political machine take over or something?

    1. Re:Sup? by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Could be thin edge of the wedge global politics. With the Australia government being put under pressure by the US and Europe to try to squeeze in these laws, so that they can be used as an example by others to introduce them elsewhere.

      Silly stuff recording emails sent and received, so what happens if you run your own email server (something that will eventually become the norm), by law you will be required to monitor your own activities and dob yourself in. Broadband always on connections, so you logged in on april 2005 and are still logged in, no what is the point of that. Recording all web site visits, easy solution web accessing equivalent of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3173/ track me not a search engine obscuring addon .

      Likely also in the future in will be more common to have a home web server that you and your family can log into remotely, to get and leave messages, access your content, to work on your content from remote locations, so will you have to record this and report any suspicious activity by you or your family.

      The cloud services in their real application are distributed services (not big data centres renting access, the deluded dreams of the lock in monopolists). The traffic flow will be enormous and intertwined, as people collect, collate, alter, update and redistribute data in every direction imaginable. Logging all of it all of the time is simply a ludicrous idea, especially when people will take the logical step to protect their privacy by burying their actual activity under a mountain of automated obfuscating activity.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. Re:A classic example... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Of course, TCP session information could be used to figure out which website on a particular server was actually visited. A certain pattern of connections resulting from the loading for off-site content (i.e. advertising), for example, might be used in making such a determination.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
  3. Re:So...what's the next stage? by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The new masters will be the same as the old masters (we know - the new guys still renewed the Patriot Act). A wiser course would be a lawsuit saying the central government was never given the power to store private citizens' records, therefore the law violates the Australian constitution.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  4. Re:Do Australians care? by crafty.munchkin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    interest rates are still fairly decent (around 4%).

    WHAT?!?!?!? can you tell that to my bank? they seem to be consistently increasing my mortgage, and have been since the GFC. Currently at 7% and scheduled to go up again RealSoonNow.

    Frankly, this issue hasn't really got any mainstream coverage. People simply don't know about it. And if they did, the classic government response would be "well, if you're not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about"

    And this is the problem. We geeks/nerds/whatever derogatory term you want to use for the people who fix your PC when you've visited a dodgy porn site have been trying desperately to get this issue (and the internet filter) the attention it deserves, but it's only just come to some peoples attention that the internet filter is going to be mandatory and most people still think it's a good thing. Seriously, most people just couldn't give a flying fuck sideways - and bringing up the topic for conversation is a great conversation killer and way to make sure you don't get invited to parties.

    It's not going to stop me trying though.

    --
    ... wait, what?
  5. Re:So...what's the next stage? by Eskarel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, unfortunately it's not that simple.

    Here in Oz we have a choice between the current party who have a particular bent towards nanny stating but otherwise aren't too bad, the Liberal party who are no longer liberal and seem to support the idea of moving back to the 1950's, xenophobia, conservative religious values, privatizing things even the US hasn't privatized, and bending over backwards for big business(and is also a direct continuation of the bugger we voted out last time), and the Greens, who are one of those parties who have a lot of really good ideas, but who are also raving lunatics.

    So we have the choice of giving up our freedom, giving up our freedom, or giving up everything else in exchange for our freedom. It's not a whole lot different than the upcoming US election except that our lunatic fringe party is on the left whereas your lunatic fringe party is on the right.