Australian Gov't Drops Plan To Snoop On Internet Use — For Now

CuteSteveJobs writes "Australian Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has been forced to back down on her government's unpopular plan to force ISPs to store the web history and social networking of all Australians for two years. The plan has been deeply unpopular with the public, with hackers attacking the government's spy agency. Public servants at the spy agency promoting the scheme been scathing of the government, saying: 'These reforms are urgently needed to deal with a rapidly evolving security environment, but there isn't much appetite within the government for anything that attracts controversy,' but a document on the scheme released under the Freedom of Information Act had 90% of it redacted to prevent 'premature unnecessary debate.' Roxon hasn't dropped the unpopular scheme entirely, but only delayed it until after the next election."

Comments

90% of it redacted...

[Anonymous Coward]

"90% of it redacted to prevent "premature unnecessary debate."

Democracy at its finest....

Re:90% of it redacted...

[TubeSteak]

That is exactly how bad laws get railroaded through the process.

"More specifically, it is information concerning the development of government policy which has not been finalised, and there is a strong possibility that the policy will be amended prior to public consultation," [The Attorney-General's Department legal officer, FoI and Privacy Section, Claudia Hernandez] wrote.

The problem with this statement is that, if the first time you get to have input on a law is during the public consultation period, it's too late.
By that point, months if not years of work and lobbying have gone into the legislation.
That's why the flameouts of SOPA and PIPA were so shocking to the copyright lobby.

Re:90% of it redacted...

[vlad30]

No surprise its a extremely left wing government democracy privacy and what voters want is last on there list of priorities. Additionally "after the next election" also means her successor will have to deal with it, she will be lucky to keep her seat let alone her current job.

Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed

[bruno.fatia]

I had already moderated on this topic but after reading this post I felt like whoever mod parent down was -1, Disagree.

I understand OP point of view but with something as global as the Internet why should one government or another regulate it?
Either give it to the UN or better, don't regulate it at all. Why should US cops snoop on data that comes from say, Latin America to Canada?
I think that from now on we should be standardizing encryption because the overhead it causes IS worth it.

Politician and "police state" have same root word.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> a document...had 90% redacted to "prevent premature unnecessary debate."

I think they meant to "prevent mature, necessary debate on who will be elected next election."

assume

[IamGarageGuy 2]

I think we can all safely assume that every government regardless of locale will try to restrict it's citizens rights to the point that the citizens have to respond to stop them. This is the default criteria for a government in the first place. We all know that this will creep back in a little while when the issue becomes less volatile. The only real way to stop it is by acceptance or revolution (e.g. american revolution). I don't forsee any polititians being strung up in trees so it is the fault of the public. You get the government you deserve.

Re:assume

[__aaltlg1547]

I think we can all safely assume that every government regardless of locale will try to restrict it's citizens rights to the point that the citizens have to respond to stop them. This is the default criteria for a government in the first place. We all know that this will creep back in a little while when the issue becomes less volatile. The only real way to stop it is by acceptance or revolution (e.g. american revolution). I don't forsee any polititians being strung up in trees so it is the fault of the public. You get the government you deserve.

No, when the government is elected in open elections, citizens can get what they want without revolution. In the USA, we used to have an assault weapons ban (a measure many Americans found sensible). But it was allowed to expire because the National Rife Association heavily lobbied Congress to make sure it sunsetted. This is not about spying, but it is about removal of a restriction that was removed because many Americans wanted it removed. If you can get enough people interested, you can enact practically anything. Arguably, those in favor of repealing the ban were not even a majority. They were well-organized and well-financed, though.

That's the key thing. Citizens have to care about the issue. Most citizens are ambivalent about security-vs.-surveillance.

Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed

[slashrio]

Clearly one of those trollers hired by governments and spin-doctoring opinion agencies, which by the way are also hired by the government (or by whomever wants to influence public opinion).
Those people are paid to monitor blogs and step in with their 'opinion' whenever there is a controversial subject going on on which the one who hires them wants the opinion to be favourable to his own interests.
Saw the same happening lately on projectcensored.org: someone claiming to be totally innocent and proclaimed he totally trusted Google with all his personal data and wouldn't mind if it were used for anything Google and its affiliates wanted, as long as service remained free of charge. (puke) Anyway, clearly nobody with that kind of personality would never ever visit a website like projectcensored.org, so that was clearly one of 'those' 'mercenaries'.

Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, you're one of those people that had kids and lost all sense of reason (or you just never had a sense of reason) and now you're falling for every "give up your freedom to save the children" call. It's truly tragic when that happens. You're really not making the rest of us parents look good. I honestly hope you were just trolling.

No, I don't want to give up my freedom or privacy to save the children from some (nonexistent) threat. Come up with a scheme that doesn't punish everyone. Since you're always, always thinking of the children, that should be simple for you.

Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed

[martin-boundary]

Whoever moderated this -1 Overrated is clearly violating the moderation rules. It is clear -1 Overrated is for posts that have been already moderated. At the time, it had not. These is clearly done to prevent metamod, and to shut down clearly an ontopic opinion which the moderator did not agree, another violation. I see this quite often with opinions that do not jibe with the groupthink on this site.

That's the problem with policing the internet. You get parties who believe there should be rules that they invent, that may have nothing to do with the rules that are already in place on a particular forum. And these parties decide to police their new rules everywhere they think that those rules should be applied.

Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed

[Merls the Sneaky]

How about do some fucking parenting. Do not expect the government to trash everything others enjoy to do it for you?

As a father of a ten year old son I allow him free access to the internet. I do that because I have taught him the "rules" of the internet, and I trust him to do the right thing. I constantly monitor his usage and have NEVER had to have an uncomfortable conversation about his activities using it. This is after six years of him having net access.

I do not filter anything, because I actively parent. Maybe you should try it before advocating government spying on it's populace without warrant or cause.

Australian democracy working quite well

[Jeeeb]

So the internet filter was dropped and the government has been absolutely silent on it since then. We're not going to have browser history data retention laws. iiNet won its case and was found not responsible for its users copyright infringement and we haven't seen any government attempts to introduce French/NZ three-strikes or similar laws since then either. Oh and finally games are going to get an R-rating.

All in all, Australian democracy has worked quite well these last few years and the Australian internet is looking pretty free compared to a lot of other western countries. Oh and work on the nation wide fibre optic network continues as well.

Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed

[Dr Damage I]

This is nonsense. If I have a conversation with someone, the government has no right to a transcript of that discussion regardless of whether that discussion takes place in my home, a cafe, a public street or on an internet forum. The government cannot bug my home without a court order and the internet should be no different. The government already has the ability to search through the publicly accessible areas of the internet for information about my activities and this is analogous to law enforcement "watching and patrolling". What you are proposing is analogous to allowing police to randomly search peoples homes because a lot of our actions, interactions and transactions are conducted in our homes.

As a parent, the responsibility to protect your children is yours not mine. If you find the internet to be so hazardous that you are unable to properly protect them, don't allow them to use it. Easy.