Aussie Tax Office Wants Phone Tapping, Data Retention

schliz writes "The Australian Taxation Office has called for phone-tapping powers while backing a controversial proposal to force telcos to store web traffic and subscriber data for up to two years. It said such data may be crucial to investigations, with the Commissioner of Taxation previously explaining that the connection between criminals and their finances made them 'especially vulnerable to revenue collection agencies, because of the ability to identify the discrepancy between their wealthy lifestyle and modest tax declarations.' The Tax Office's statements come after this week's passage of new legislation that will allow law enforcement agencies to force internet service providers to store data on subscribers while an official warrant is sought."

Comments

Re:The power to tax includes

[roman_mir]

Each governmental agency thinks it's an entity unto itself.

- yes, and another wrong belief that many hold is that government is productive, that it can create something. It cannot. If government could create, it wouldn't need taxes to be extracted from the people. It is the people, the individuals that create, government takes it and does something with it, most often it ends up using the stolen resources to destroy.

Wars are ran by governments, don't forget that. Wars destroy. Governments run wars and kill people. They kill millions of people. No private entity ever killed anywhere near close to any number of people that governments kill. Governments murder people and steal their property, that's the point. That is why governments must be understood to be inherently evil in nature. Governments are concentration of power and the power that concentrated is not used for anything good, it's always used for evil. Governments are inherently evil.

Now, it's possible to argue that people must have government and use that inherent evil in order to make sure that it is the evil that is controlled. The controlled evil. There is one thing that people really need governments to do - make sure that they are there, so that a more evil thing does not become the government.

Government must have authority to do something and it must not be allowed to take a single step beyond that authority. If you do not explicitly state that the government has any other authority, it must not be allowed to do whatever it is it just wants to do.

The evil that inherent in government power wants to be unleashed. There are many people who want to go be part of a government so that they can unleash that evil. If you let them do it, you will all be subjugated to the people who will hold that power over you.