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Australian Government Rejects Data Retention Law After Report
mask.of.sanity writes "The Australian Government has shelved its plans to proactively store communications data of every citizen ostensibly to assist with law enforcement and intelligence efforts. The shelving (video) comes after a scathing report by Australian parliamentarians who investigated the Government's plans, and three months ahead of a federal election in which the Government is expected to lose office."
They will have their asses handed to them in the next election.
"A Senate committee has slammed Australia's proposed data retention scheme, recommending it only be considered if it only collected metadata, avoided capture of browser histories and contained rigorous privacy controls and oversight." - Basically, we want the American system and not a bit more.
Fosters: Australian for beer.
Edward snowed in, autralian for hero
Thank goodness there's a pacific Ocean between Aus and the USA. Or this subversive thinking might infect us.
Have gnu, will travel.
In other countries, occationally orwellian laws are blocked by elected officials.
In the US, they all shrug and try to explain away our rights.
Exactly what the subject title states.
You don't really think that the gigantic Utah Data Center was created to store a few thousand phone conversations, do you? Nope. I suspect that the NSA is storing ALL electronic communications such as phone and email from everyone in US. It might examine only a few thousand by hand, but it is all being recorded.
When the current opposition party was Government they took Australia into Vietnam and Iraq and copied the 'war on terror' mantra. While no Australian politician can be anti-American, the current opposition party are arse-lickers of American politicians.
"The Australian Attorney-General Department's pig-headed push for Internet data retention were rejected by an Intelligence Oversight Committee for being vague and violating civil liberties. Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said the government needs to get the message and drop the scheme, and warned data retention could be used by PRISM. Head Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says data retention is off the agenda for now, though when the last AG made a similar promise they caught everyone off guard and passed new laws 12 days later"
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/06/24/national-security-inquiry-declines-to-endorse-data-retention
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/06/24/keane-a-debate-we-had-to-have-on-security-measures
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/465679/data_retention_needs_oversight_inquiry/
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/465152/australia_suspected_prism_data_ludlam/
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/roxon-puts-web-surveillance-plans-on-ice-20120809-23x9l.html
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/312771,senate-passes-lite-data-retention-laws.aspx
The government is expected to lose office
Yes they are, but the opposition hasn't ruled out doing the same thing.
Australia Don't Become America... enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdw1Pw4nIv0
It seems to me, that our elected representatives can sometimes do the right thing. It's when the executive and the faceless men do it all in secret that we have problems.
The owners of Slashdot LOVE stories like these- the ones designed to roll back public awareness of domestic spying after the NSA revelations. Every sophisticated nation on Earth current gathers and stores ALL electronic communications that are within its reach. Those nations in the West use shadow-Google installations, massive computer database systems using the same software/hardware designs as those used by Google itself. Google is, in fact, actually an R+D arm of the NSA.
Google was created as a direct response to the fact that government IT projects always crashed and burnt- falling prey to the inherent corruption and incompetence in the system. Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' business logic found within the capitalist system meant the best IT projects would have to occur in the 'public' sector. It was simply a matter of seeding multiple public IT projects that could be re-purposed as military/intelligence systems if they proved successful.
So what is this piece of BLACK PROPAGANDA on Slashdot? Well, if a government admits to storing information on all you sheep, it can then use that information OPENLY in court, or as part of an overt political/social engineering agenda. If, on the other hand, it keeps the truth of domestic spying secret, while it loses the small advantages I mentioned, it avoids public disquiet.
Despite what the owners of Slashdot would have you believe, domestic spying occurs for 2 reasons:
1) to find blackmail information that can be used to coerce any powerful person in society. Say, for instance, to get backing for nuclear strikes against Iran. Sexual relationships, private conversations, dodgy business deals, odd beliefs- every Human has weak spots simply by living a life, and these weak spots can be used to 'persuade' 90%+ of targets to take the carrot, rather than suffer the stick.
2) to read the mind of the general population, in order to monitor the effectiveness of mass media propaganda campaigns. The near real-time feedback allows psy-op campaigns to perfected, or abandoned in short-order if they prove to have no traction.
Nothing important happens in Australia, but the manipulation of the populace acts as 'practise' for methods that can then be migrated to nations were the people do matter. Australia sees an ever growing mass of social engineering operations (which is also how the colony was first used by the British, where monsters in the field of penal 'research' were allowed to set up their own prisons and experiment on the prisoners).
Currently, single women are terrified when burly thuggish males force their way into their homes, and subject them to a sickening barrage of personnel questions, including the intimate details of their sex-life. In Australia, these depraved idiots are NOT criminals, but officials of the Australia's so-called bureau of statistics. Women who object to this terrifying abuse, and refuse to suffer the depraved interrogation, are imprisoned. In Australia, citizens have no rights, and all so-called civic duties (like voting for god's sake) are enforced with the penalty of imprisonment for those that don't comply.
Not voting means REFUSING to support the (current) system. In Australia, you are forced by law to support the system, forced by law to answer intimate questions about your sex life (if 'randomly' chosen by the bureau of statistics). Any forum where outraged citizens dare to express objections are overwhelm by Stasi Australians trained to scream "shut your mouth and do as you are told". We call this COMPLIANCY TRAINING. We see similar situations happening to the members of the more 'culty' churches in the USA.
I don't fall for the delusion of voting.
Instead I go right for the actual influence: I target lobbyist groups, while acting like a lobbyist myself.
A bit like the Yes Men.
The funny thing is that lobbyists themselves somehow never realize when they're brainwashed (by me) themselves.
Unfortunately it takes a lot of time. I should start a Kickstarter project to finance a ThinkTank(TM) with a billion dollar budget (that's about threefiddy per US citizen), and STEAMROLL the whole thing.
The current government and it's immediate predecessor (of the same party) has done a brilliant job. Compare to the rest of the world. The wanna-be's keep making statements contrary to the facts, but Rupert Murdoch and Gina Rinehart want a change, and with control of most of the media consistently push outright lies. Their media has, for example, reported the current Prime Minister would be dumped by their party EVERY WEEK for the past 130 weeks. Ain't happened yet - it is a bare-faced attempt at destabilisation.
Australia's Liberal (i.e conservative) Party - the finest politicians money can buy.
It's great to see that Snowden's actions have had a positive effect on the world already. He is a hero.
The worst thing about all this stuff is, they say they reject the data retention law now, but, no one has questioned what the government will be doing with the planned centralised "National Broadband Network", owned and run by the government.
They won't need data retention laws for ISP's nor companies such as google, the government owned infrastructure will be the isthemus of all digital communications in Australia. I just don't believe for a second that some sort of all-encompassing surveillance program isn't being planned or implemented with the NBN, yet this question is just not being investigated at all by the media.
If its anything like Britain, the Aussie secret service is already doing it in secret, and that's why the push for the law. To make it legal. That's the problem we have with GCHQ, NSA etc. the democracy part is there, but the spook part drives the government part, not the other way around.
shelved = "I'll be back"
...with some irreverant comedy rap : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnMPQmIPibE
Check out other stuff by these guys... they're great.
Why store data when the Americans are already storing it for you?
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
1.Too bad most peoples personal data are hosted on US servers (Facebook, gmail etc). Is it legal for Australian law enforcement/intelligence agencies to request data in order to avoid the legal complication of actively acquiring it themselves?
2.Of course they don't want to talk about this before the election. It will probably just go ahead at a later date once the dust has settled.
3.Also why is everyone so concerned about PRISM but paid no attention to the stories about Stellar Wind? At least they politely requested the data with PRISM.