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Australian Spy Agency Offered To Share Data About Ordinary Citizens
An anonymous reader writes "Australian spy agencies offered to share personal information about law-abiding Australian citizens with overseas governments. This includes legal, religious and medical information, which was shared about this Canadian women. Departments in the Australian Public service has also been caught spying on citizens. Even low-ranking public servants can look up information such as phone calls and email metadata without needing a warrant. The target is not notified."
Government officials behaving like Internet businessmen!
All the way back in 1995, when I first started using the World Wide Web, some users were advocating for strong privacy protections. We were ignored, then laughed at, then insulted with the "tinfoil hat" labrel.
Are you ready to reconsider our point, that society is better off if governments are corporations do NOT have free reign to collect, store, and mine as much data about us as they want?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
In retaliation, from this point forward I'm going to make jokes about Australia being a country full of dim-witted criminals.
Q: What did the government do the public servant who broken into private computers and stole private data?
A: Awarded him with Australia's highest prize for thievery, the Stealybaloo Award.
I've never been much of a fan of democracy (well democracy as we call it in Australia). As such we need someone to play watchdog to the corrupt government officials who bleed our wallets and souls dry. I would have thought that this was the Governor General's responsibility; if not then who or what can we do to expose the government when they don't act in our interests or good faith?
That these came from leaked Snowden documents can't be true. cold fjord told us that Snowden's leaks were only to harm the US government and would never include things about other governments. *rolls eyes*
yeah so if you write a book then it's free game to share medical records about time after writing the book?
I guess that explains hemingway.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
we want to do that...
oh wait no we don't... yes thats what centrelink etc are trying to do is catch fraud...
its not like they leave windows machines administrators full access to classified documents...
how many australians are concerned about immigration ?
thanks
John
The book were published in 2009, the agent that prevented her entry specifically referred to a hospitalization that took place in 2012. How did they know about events that should be shielded under patient privacy laws and took place years after publishing of mentioned book? Unless you can point to a source describing her 2012 hospitalization that were publicly available at the time of her entry denial, then I'd say that her story have a very interesting place in this matter.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
And also angry at the Departments in the Australian Public service that has been caught spying.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The interesting thing to me is how little(except for places like /., etc;) extrapolation is done regarding our erosion of privacy and rights.
No one seems to think we are on a slippery slope here.
Yes, I know it's BEYOND trite and redundant to quote or reference Orwells' 1984, but hey, a guy having to stand in the corner of his apartment to stay out of view of telescreens and microphones is essentially where we are headed.
We are almost there now.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
it is all fucked up now. I think we need a reboot.
This includes legal, religious and medical information, which was shared about this Canadian women.
How does the Australian spy agency share medical data on a Canadian woman?
'If you're not cop, you're little people.'
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Why doesn't the summary mention Snowden?
You better run, you better take cover.
This is something that I truly worry about it. We are constantly bombarded with new outrages and many people are like "meh, it sucks. but what you gunna do?"
Is there an antidote?
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Quite simply information is power. Governments might claim (and potentially truthfully) that they won't abuse this power; but it is power that they have quite simply grabbed without much debate. On the otherhand we the people are denied much information about government with them saying that it would be a security issue to hand out much of the most powerful information. So why is it that minor nobodies with little or no oversight can go through my most personal banking, telephoning, and medical information while the most basic information such as the exact details of how government officials are spending my money are hidden.
Few if any freedom of information laws have real teeth and governments push back against them as hard as is possible with outlandish fees, redacted information, delays, byzantine application and appeals processes, and in the end no consequences if they obstruct or don't comply. Let's see what happens when the government demands information from you and you start hitting them with per page fees, redacting information, or just saying no.
I have a simple suggestion: that laws be put into place that severely limit the government's ability to gather information about us. And another set of laws that give the public pretty well open and near total access to any government record. The only records that should be "secret" are ones where the harm greatly outweighs the public good and even then there could be time limits. Two examples would be a few things involving criminal investigations such as informants, undercover officers, wiretaps, etc. The other would be individual medical records as people would otherwise be reluctant to seek treatment for embarrassing conditions or at least be honest with their doctor.
But severely limiting the government would almost certainly result in their doing an end run and using private organizations to do their spying. So the law would have to reach out and limit any organization from gathering or sharing data. A simple example that I would love to see is that a company would not be allowed to disseminate/sell data even in the aggregate that they gathered for a specific purpose beyond that purpose. So if a contest gets your name they can use it for picking a winner, not for further marketing. If the power company gets your address they can hook you up and send you bills. If the credit card companies see you make a purchase they can bill you for it but that is it. A critical part of such a law would be that a contract can not depend upon someone waving that right, nor can their be negative option waivers.
A simple way to formulate this law would be to find out the various data sources that junk mailers use and make them all illegal; that plus a bit of common sense would make for an awesome life improving law.
Yes. It's called prison. For that you need a judge.
For that you need the law.
It's a grand idea. It should be implemented.
Why is Australia a sad joke compared to the USA. Both have a similar recent history, with their significant origins in the British Empire. Both are effectively continental nations with unthinkable levels of natural resources. But the USA was developed by the British (every philosophical aspect of the so-called American Revolution was designed by British thinkers to create) to create Britain II, whereas Australia was kept as a crap-hole to serve various nasty purposes.
Today, Australia has a level of social engineering that rivals that seen in some of the Scandinavian (old Viking) nations. Austarlia is what is know as a 'soft' or 'hidden' police state, where the population are coerced from birth to think they willingly demand obscene levels of sheeple control.
In Australia:
-voting is compulsory. You break the law if you refuse to vote. Of course, since anyone who votes, no matter how they vote, gives active support to the current system, every citizen of this sick nation is FORCED to actively support the current system- BY LAW.
-your driving licence can be removed, by simple a simple police request, if you have 'broken' the law in any regard.
-the Orwellian 'department of statistics' has (and uses) the legal power to forcibly 'interview' any citizen, asking them the most intrusive and sickening questions about their sex lives and other personal issues. Such 'interviews' also include forcible physical inspection of the victims body. To make this clearer, this department sends MEN to the home of single women, to grill them on their sex life, and to take intimate body measurements, and if the woman refuses, she can be imprisoned.
Now the usual vile shills will try to tell you that POWERFUL, informed citizens can fight things like the above, and to a greater extent this is true- but irrelevant. In any highly abusive society, the well informed and well educated people in better positions of power suffer least. No police state, hard or soft, gains by butting its head against people with the ability to make large numbers of others UNHAPPY about the nature of their society.
It is the ordinary Australian woman, for instance, when confronted by the official pervert from the Australian statistics department who will find it 'easier' to just accept to horror of the questioning and physical inspection, rather than demand to know what here 'rights' and options really are. On the OFFICIAL site of the State Statistical department are instructions for their employees and how to intimidate their victims by referring to their power to have the non-compliant jailed.
Those in high office in Australia are the worst forms of petty corrupt filth. Australia has no elite class at all- Australia simply does the bidding of the elite in the UK (and to some extent the USA). Australia, like Canada, are faux-'independent' nations that are actually part of the British sphere of influence (the way that the Ukraine, to use a recent example, is really part of Putin's empire).
Australia spies on its citizens, and invites the world to use this data, NOT because anyone gives a damn about anything any Australian ever does, but to lay down precedents monsters like Tony Blair want to be followed in more important nations across our planet. As Blair travels the world he says "if it is 'good' enough for the Australians, we should be doing the same in Britain, America etc". Of course, there already is full surveillance in Britain and America, but Blair wants a future where the sheeple are AWARE of this fact, and 'comfortable' with it, and its daily visible consequences.
Except the sociopaths, those in power (police etc) and especially those who are both.
The only source we have that she was denied entry based upon an event in 2012 is her own word. Please note that this news story will help sell more copies of her book.
-voting is compulsory. You break the law if you refuse to vote. Of course, since anyone who votes, no matter how they vote, gives active support to the current system, every citizen of this sick nation is FORCED to actively support the current system- BY LAW.
You are not prevented from casting an invalid vote.
we want to do that...
oh wait no we don't... yes thats what centrelink etc are trying to do is catch fraud...
its not like they leave windows machines administrators full access to classified documents...
Er, that was Work and Income New Zealand, not Centrelink Australia.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
-the Orwellian 'department of statistics' has (and uses) the legal power to forcibly 'interview' any citizen, asking them the most intrusive and sickening questions about their sex lives and other personal issues.
Sorry, but what are you even talking about?
I can't find anything online called the Department of Statistics (except for in various universities, of course). Do you mean the Australian Bureau of Statistics?
They're the ones who send out a census form to be filled in and mailed back. I have never heard any suggestion that they send representatives to question people directly, let alone "physical inspection" or wielding the threat of jail time.
Do you have a source for this?
Am I just feeding a troll, here?
however being invalid means it wouldn't count... so don't waste your time.
Ohhh... you dont mean Invalid aka handy-capable