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ASIC Seeks Power To Read Your Emails
nemesisrocks writes "ASIC, Australia's version of the SEC, has called for phone call and internet data to be stored by Australian ISPs, in a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into mandatory data retention. Not only does the authority want the powers to intercept the times, dates and details of telecommunications information, it also wants access to the contents of emails, social media chats and text messages."
Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, and a quick web search does not yield anything on the word "Inquity". Can somebody explain the word?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
According to Harry Seldon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon), if a people begins as a prison colony it must necessarily end up as a police state. It's inevitable.
Going to have to start encrypting everything
Not being american *or* australian, the summary was not terribly helpful.
What is the SEC?
Do they even comprehend the amount of data this will be? This is just one step away from recording all telephone calls as well. 1984, we didn't learn anything.
Encryption of all your Internet comms has been recommended forever and a day, but the bulk of the population hasn't bothered so far because the "postman opening letters" hasn't been very overt and in the public eye.
Now that the politicians are all in the game of demanding their "right" to monitor everything, perhaps it's time that people will respond by finally encrypting everything and telling the police state advocates to sod off and stop terrorizing the population.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Wouldn't it be cheaper to close down the Australian stock exchange? Or just monitor the people who actively trade?
Not that this will prevent people from encrypting messages, or passing insider messages face-to-face.
be smart
Dear Australian Government,
I am having a yard sale next weekend. In order to achieve fair market value for the more valuable goods, I have implemented a closed bidding system. I am worried that some of my neighbours might game the system by discussing their bids and making backroom deals. I am seeking the power to log their phone calls as well as access to the contents of emails, social media chats and text messages.
Sincerely, John R. Citizen
So in effect:
1. You're only innocent because you haven't committed a crime yet
2. Thus they capture your data and store it
3. After you've committed your crime, the data is there to prosecute you
4. They've justified with reverse time causality.
5. Ergo time travel is real.
And if you don't commit a crime? Well obviously you haven't YET committed the crime that justified us putting you under surveillance in the past. So you must be a super cunning criminal. We'd better keep your data longer than 2 years, otherwise it might break the time-space continuum.
That's what it amounts to, calling everyone a criminal and using that to take away their right to privacy.
ASIC is an absolute joke.
Their failure to act borders on the laughable, and now they want to read our private communications, presumably so that they can .... wait for it.... yet again, do nothing.
Australia, you used to be cool. What happened, bro?
Never mind frog boiling, they've just tossed the toad of liberty into the seething cauldron of totalitarianism and slammed the lid.
Seriously, guys, you're even making Soviet UKistan look like a shining beacon of individual rights now. Poor show.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I was actually excited from the title, fabricating a custom chip to do this. Then the summary quickly dispels that.
Fear is the mind killer.
Just goes to show that you can't trust a single-purpose microprocessor...
Well, it's already begun, but it's another interesting example of how the police state develops. In an established democracy it's kind of difficult to simply introduce something akin to the Stasi - that worries people.
The trick is to grant unreasonable powers to a group that doesn't appear to have much to do with the average citizen (such as ASIC), or instead give it to a group with what people see as a very specific remit to act only in certain areas (TSA). In the case of ASIC, why should the average guy in the street worry about those stock exchange guys having this power - it's not as if they'll be using to snoop on regular guys. With the TSA, turning airports in to constitution free zones, people are fine with that because they think it's only happening in airports, when in fact they're spilling out in to other aspects of transport. Get people used to presenting documents at airports, train stations and state borders, and before long you'll be able to stop them anywhere and do it. Same with intrusive physical searches. When stopped on a random road, the patriotic dad will proudly hum "God Bless the USA" as his daughter allows a former Wall*Mart shelf stacker with a badge to get his hands down her pants in the name of security and freedom.
Asking for such a broad and patently unjustified ability to snoop has no place in a modern democracy. Ship them out to an embassy near to a country such as North Korea or Iran - in the hope that they'll defect to a place where their Orwellian urges can be sated.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
They forgot to ask for all of your snail mail to be scanned and GPS tracking logs in case you have secret meetings in person so they can at least suggest a conspiracy depending on who you're with.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
That the descendants of a rather cruel attempt of the ultimate prison colony are slowly but surely allowing their own government re-imprison them is mind-boggling. Turns out the most dangerous animal in Austrailia is Ministerus Fascismus
ASIC Seeks Power To Read Your Emails
In best Yakoff Smirnoff voice: "Wow, what a chip!"
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Their next grand initiative will be to eliminate all the SPAM so they can actually find something in the hulking mass of emails they'd collected.
"The issue of injustice has taken a backseat to apparently how many of our make population are unable to maintain an erection!"
let the (redundant) data creation wars begin ... and buy stocks in western digital, seagate, samsung etc.
Can anyone explain any advantage to these rules, other than "it makes the cops job easier".
And they casually talk about destroying our privacy (and by association related rights like freedom of expression) not to mention security.. .... just to make their jobs easier..
Imagine if every new road, even out in the desert had to have cameras and microphones, to record not just who drove on the road, but what they were talking about. All installed at the users expense.
And the authorities have complete access to it (without judicial intervention),
Yet somehow that data will remain secure?
Move along... there is no sig here.
Before, I was worried that the big, faceless government might be snooping on me, so I resisted the proposed laws and changes. However, now ASIC is asking, I can see that actually it's far more important and far less dangerous. I'll be supporting this move, as I'm sure will all my fellow non-Australians.
I'm really hoping that the likes of Fosters will ask for all pubs to log who drinks what beers, how often and with whom. I'm sure that'll be for an equally important reason, and so obviously supportable.
I hope your watching. Not that we in the U.S. are any better but we do try to "look" we care about privacy. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/apples-wozniak-wants-to-become-australian/story-fn3dxiwe-1226481489824
"In the interview with the Financial Review, Wozniak said the national broadband network was one of the reasons he wants to become a citizen."
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
to keep it simple?
Do they have an idea of the amount of data "to be stored"?
Politicians are all the same everywhere. They rule over things they don't understand.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I'm in Melbourne right now, I have some popcorn and a small telescope set up. I am waiting for the sky to fall. From all the slashdot reports I have read it should be spectacular. Granted I was disappointed by the great Aussie firewall hype, spent years observing a politician blowing smoke up a freshman senator's arse, but still haven't spotted the mythical beast. No hard feelings though, those long observations made me confident that what I was seeing was just some Machiavellian politics aimed at said senator.
As for TFA, regardless of the merits of the ASIC recommendations, I find it odd that the people who are ferociously against data retention for law enforcement purposes are often the same people who want the law to put corrupt executives/politicians in front of a firing squad. Now I have no delusions that corrupt executives/politicians are not (in general) dumb enough to incriminate themselves, so if they even suspect their electronic comms are being tucked away somewhere for a couple of tax returns then at a minimum they lose the benefit of those comms.
For the most part the "sky is falling"/1984 crowd are of an age where their worldview is driven by how their parents treated them and what they just started reading about on the net in the past 5yrs, they are outraged when they find the world is a messy place. It's like the first time they open their pay slip and start screaming about all the acronyms they don't understand taking a bite out of their hard-earned. It's the shock of moving from a sheltered idealized world paid for by mum and dad, to standing ankle deep in turds like the rest of us. They can't get past the turds, they can't understand why everyone else just shrugs and laughs at them squishing through their toes.
The wild west days of the internet are gone whether we like it or not. Businesses have been coming to the global village for about 15yrs now and they brought the sheriffs with them. It's still a wonderful place but in a different way, it has been domesticated and this generation of urban cowboys need to move on and find their own intellectual frontier.
1984: One of the greatest works of the 20th century, my 1970's government forced me to read it at HS. I went on later in life to read more from Orwell. He was without doubt a brilliant critic of all the major political ideologies. Yet the take home lesson I (eventually) got from reading Orwell's political critiques was best summed up by another Winston - "No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you send death threats to yourself, and your email gets intercepted and flagged, can you get charged?
Am I the only one who read the headline "ASIC Seeks Power To Read Your Emails," and thought the story was about a chip?
Why can't I be programmed to read your emails?
Sounds like the UK porn law. Possession of any 'extreme' porn is a crime in the UK, so when they charge men with anything, they search their computers, and that becomes the easy to prosecute fall back crime they use. Since it also puts you on an sex offenders register, damages your life, and appears on any criminal background check etc. It's easy to use that lever to get other charges to stand.
They started out charging Chinese pirates selling DVDs, they'd trawl through the DVD's find porn, find something they could define as extreme then add that charge.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/16/extreme_pr0n_convictions/
They had a go at prosecuting a gay man who was into fisting and had photographed himself. They even lied to the jury and claimed the other person was 14... experts said he was in his twenties, if it was 14 then the jury could have been denied the right to check the photograph themselve. You can see a pattern of pushing laws and lying in the UK police, and nobody is really capable of stopping them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/aug/08/extreme-porn-trial-simon-walsh
"Police also regularly misclassify images they discover. In the Stafford extreme pornography trial, my client was initially charged with being in possession of over 1,250 "extreme" images. Upon viewing them, it became clear that over 900 were of clothed performers not engaging in any form of sexual activity. That defendant was eventually acquitted by a jury of all charges."
Jacqui Smith is the one to blame for that law. Remember that name.
They went through quite a few alternative solutions.
1) Ask criminals to copy ASIC on all emails and Facebook messages sent. It's about as effective as what they proposed, and will be way cheaper and less intrusive for the public.
2) Have the Internet burn a daily DVD of the entire contents, which will then be sent to ASIC to be stored in boxes. Estimated physical storage space required for first 3 months: New Zealand.
3) Have vagina-cams installed in all female residents of Australia in case they happen to be naked at the home of someone considering fraud, and positioned in such a way that the camera catches the content of the suspect's screen.
4) Require that all Internet communication stop at the ISP level, who will then print it and send it on to the ISP of the person to whom it's address, with a copy being posted to ASIC.
5) Crime is committed only by the living. Kill everyone.
6) Receive funding to have ASIC agents stationed in every home, to sit behind computer users. Agent will periodically tap the user on the shoulder, and ask "Whatcha doin'?"
Number 4 was the preferred option. Greg Tanzer prefers reading personal emails on his tablet while relaxing in a hotel room full of semi-naked pre-teen girls. Having to carry around print-outs was out of the question.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Next stop, thought police.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
... the many? Are they becoming that skerd of those they are supposed to represent? If so then why, unless they are lying their asses off to the people they are supposed to represent and fear retaliation by the people if or when found out.
No, we didn't.
My high school English teacher had it pegged:
1984 was neither predictive nor prescriptive. It was descriptive.
An allegory for society as we know it, through a lens double-tinted ever-so-slightly to two extremes, to bring a known secret out in sharp relief.
1984 is the world as we know it, viewed through the glasses of someone who thinks he is smarter than the rest of us trying to see it from the eyes of the rest of us.
Which is why it gave me a headache to read.
Very instructive book. Too bad most people don't think far enough to see the real message.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
There is a guiding force, but the leader of it all has this compulsion of self-contradiction. Likes to cause a lot of confusion by pretending to be God, and then saying that, since he is not God, God cannot be,. Etc., etc.
But you are right. Corruption is a continual and necessary part of the present natural world.
Which is the reason that national constitutions that waste little space on idealisms and focus primarily on checks and balances seem to be the most stable. (And why traitors to those constitutions attack them by trying to overload the checks and balances with idealisms.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I agree to it if it is for the continued ongoing investigation of fraud that the SEC is investigating. SEC should also consider getting a court order allowing such investigation to be taken for evidence in an ongoing investigation. My 2 cents worth David O'Rourke. Question to the SEC, can I have a regular job with you guys? I am good at doing what i am told, only I will be in a wheelchair, so do you accommodate those with disabilities? Thanks