Slashdot Mirror
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!
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
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.
How is Department of Homeland Security not the Stasi? Even the name doesn't even try to hide this fact.
Here in Europe we really crinch about "Homeland" because it sounds to close to "Fatherland". But we also crinch about the pledge of allentience, and saluting to your flag, becuase it feels to much like the hitler greeting.
Because most of the voting populace believe telephone to be a real communication medium and email, chat and texts just some toy for the youth.
Because the vast majority of people is inherently short-sighted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You presume there is some giuding intelligence overseeing these power grabs with a view to a long term outlook. Having spent a big part of my career working for a secret 3 letter Australian agency, the reality seems more like everyone (particularly mid level management) simply needing to show they've been productively adding value between reporting periods. The vision extends no further than this.
These all start out as imaginary problems, some can be monetized, others enable dot points on power point presentations with much self aggrandizement for those involved.
Funny how Australia gets the rap as being a prison colony, when in fact one of the key reasons for it being so was because, post-1776, they couldn't send prisoners to the American colonies anymore. The two countries have a more similar early history than most people know. Australia seems to have ended up with the convict stereotype though.