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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.'"

10 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. As a Danish immigrant to Australia... by aojensen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... I have to say that this is nothing but seriously scary.

  2. So...what's the next stage? by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (Hopefully 'voted out of office'...)

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    No sig today...
    1. 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
    2. 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.

  3. Re:Sup? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    what's going on is that it's popular to make a big deal of every vague intention by the Australian government, without reference to the fact that none of it is law yet. (And in the case of the infamous filter, never will be).

    What is also usually missing from at least the summaries of these articles is that most of these things are based on already implemented existing laws in either Europe, the UK, Canada or the USA

  4. Re:A classic example... by mabinogi · · Score: 3, Informative

    it would be true though. There can be many different (and unrelated) sites hosted on one IP address, and of course there can be many different pages on each of those sites.

    There's a big difference between logging the ip addresses used in tcp connections and actually inspecting the http and logging page requests.
    (Not that I'm in favour of either of them)

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    Advanced users are users too!
  5. Will eventually lead to more robust anonymity by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, the more that world governments try to push these proposals, the more demand there will be for robust anonymity online. Whatever data they collect will eventually be used against the citizens, and when citizens start seeing their friends in legal trouble, they will start looking into ways of preventing the same from happening to them. It will become a cat and mouse game, and if the game is allowed to continue long enough, we may see things turn violent (e.g. what happens in countries like China).

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    Palm trees and 8
  6. Re:Sup? by mabinogi · · Score: 4, Informative

    why?

    I don't see any evidence that the filter will ever go through.
    The government isn't even trying.

    Even if they win the next election with a majority in the senate (and currently it's looking like they might not win at all), to put it before parliament Conroy is finally going to have to write down exactly what it is, which is something he's been utterly unable to do to this date.

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  7. Re:Sup? by schwaang · · Score: 4, Informative

    I remember backpacking around Europe 20-ish years ago. You run into many Aussies on walkabout, and some of them complained to me that this one guy was pushing their politics far to the right. By controlling the newspapers he had every politician running scared. The guy? Rupert Murdoch.

    Murdoch's grip on the Australian press is extraordinary. Of all the daily newspapers published in the capital cities, where most Australians live, two out of every three copies sold are Murdoch's. Three out of every four Sundays are Murdoch's. In Adelaide, he owns everything, including the printing presses.

    At the time I remember thinking "Well, good luck with that!"

    Fox News and the George W. Bush presidency later, I'm no longer surprised by Australia's bent towards authoritarianism.

  8. Re:Vote em out I say by Eskarel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Personally I'm hoping for a situation where labor can only pass legislation with the help of the greens. That should tone down the crazy of the greens, and tone down the nanny of labour.

    Of course it would be even better if we could get that combination plus a liberal party who had some policy other than "oppose everything" so that some debates went right and some debates went left depending on the interests of the country.