Australian Senate Introduces Laws To Allow Total Internet Surveillance

First time accepted submitter Marquis231 writes New laws due to be passed in Australia allow intelligence agency ASIO to spy on domestic internet traffic like never before. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: "Spy agency ASIO will be given the power to monitor the entire Australian internet and journalists' ability to write about national security will be curtailed when new legislation – expected to pass in the Senate as early as Wednesday – becomes law, academics, media organisations, lawyers, the Greens party and rights groups fear."

Comments

if you're not doing anything wrong.....

[thephydes]

....then you've nothing to fear. Yeah Right .....

Re:if you're not doing anything wrong.....

[bug1]

If you have nothing to fear you should try and avoid being searched, it just a waste of police resources.

Re:if you're not doing anything wrong.....

[morgauxo]

Now that the Democrats have pretty much turned into Republicans who else is there? If you think our two main parties are bad have you ever looked at our third parties? At voting time we pretty much get to chose between plain self-serving evil and batshit crazy evil.

Don't complain...

[Anonymous Coward]

you elected them into office. :)

Re:Don't complain...

[fustakrakich]

Exactly, they could have voted them out, but most people are pretty authoritarian themselves, and it's easy to scare them into thinking this a good thing. The country's not doing so badly, this won't affect the elections or anything. In fact the whole world is going more right wing, so we can only expect worse.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

I would say the world is going more lefty, with governments consolidating their power bases and censoring/silencing criticism. It's the left that wants to grow the size of government and have it spy on/manipulate as much of peoples' lives as it can. It does this under the guise of benevolence, of 'caring' about the plight of some group, real or imagined, varying by context. The right wants smaller government and more liberty for the individual. When judging politicians, if they support growing government, they are not right wing, even if they say they are to the right relative to some other party.

In the USA, both democrat and republican parties are pro big government, just for slightly different ideological reasons. Once you get to the most prolific lobbyist groups, there isn't much difference between the two parties. They are both arms of the same beast fronting as two separate entities, taking 40% of citizens paychecks and making the rest of its budget from loans against their future income.

If you are the sort who stalwartly votes party lines, I would strongly suggest you reevaluate your loyalties, democrat or republican. At this point, this is the only way to fight the orwellian lunatics in power now.

Re:Don't complain...

[Altrag]

That's a very US-centric view of the terms "left" and "right." Broadly speaking, the left tends to be more liberal (power to the people) while the right tends to be more conservative (power to those already in power.)

Of course how those views end up being delineated changes greatly from country to country and across time. In the current US, the government is the only significant entity that even claims to be "for the people" so its unsurprising that the left down there is in favor of larger government. The right tends to favor corporate/economic power because that's what rules the roost for the most part.

But in terms of the rest of the world, the left and right are not always defined the same way as they are in the US. Up here in Canada for example, the right (ie: Harper currently) just loooooves expanding government power. Oh he's all cool with deregulating industry and letting them trash our environment and economy, but at the same time he's attempting to tack on all sorts of new government powers with little responsibility or oversight, including legislation very similar to what TFA is talking about (he's on his third or fourth attempt at ramming that crap down our throats so far.) The left on the other hand tends to focus primarily on the unions. They generally beef up existing social programs of course as you would expect but most of their focus tends to be on expanding the power of unions (as an indirect "for the people") rather than the power of government.

And obviously I'm talking in huge generalities.. even Harper's managed to accidentally do some good here and there. Very few things are ever black and white when they affect millions of people who all have differing views on everything.

Re:Don't complain...

[silanea]

I would say the world is going more lefty, with governments consolidating their power bases and censoring/silencing criticism. It's the left that wants to grow the size of government and have it spy on/manipulate as much of peoples' lives as it can. It does this under the guise of benevolence, of 'caring' about the plight of some group, real or imagined, varying by context. The right wants smaller government and more liberty for the individual. [...]

May I ask which country you are from? When I look at the political spectrum here in Germany, then it is the 'right' wing who simultaneously wants to a) eliminate social services, b) massively grow 'the government' wherever law enforcement and the military are involved and c) put everyone and everything under complete surveillance. It is the left end of the spectrum who wants a leaner government in most departments and strong protections and safeguards for privacy.

Right and left does not (exclusively and universally) mean what you think it does.

Re:Don't complain...

[some old guy]

The corporatist oligarchy that funds and promotes both parties is hardly invisible, except to the willfully blind.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

Typical response from someone who thinks anyone to the right of a typical swedish politician must be a war mongering nationalist. This seems to come from a lot of europeans who've unfortunately fallen for their own propaganda artists like we have, here, in the states. I laugh when I hear stuff like this because it sounds just as dogmatic and demented as the tripe I get from leftists in my own country. To me, they differ only in style and local cultural issues. Their ideology is essentially the same. Oh, usually it is the leftist who uses conspiracy theories to justify yet more encroachment on liberty.

The left here is always talking about oppression and how any unequal outcome no matter how slight (eg 'micro aggressions') must be due to systemic oppression. So in the name of fighting that, they institute the same social oppression in the opposite direction along the lines they say are so terrible for private citizens to use as delineators in the first place. They call this hypocritical travesty 'affirmative action,' and now we live with all the extra passive aggressive, divisive behavior it breeds in the workplace, on college campuses, and, recently, even online communities (atheism+, 'gamergate' etc). For what? Stable voting blocks and power, of course. Making people mad at each other gets them to the voting booths..and frees up their wallets.

Total Surveillance is a wet dream for both parties. Democrats are control freaks who represent the single issue lobbyist wannabe tyrants who want to tell everyone what to think and how to act, and republicans represent the interests of fortune 100s who want to corner the market in their favor with legislation. None of this is right wing, pro liberty, pro privacy, or pro free market. Like we need to do, here, Australians need to vote their own tyrants out of office.

I think you are talking about the neo-conservatives, who, like you implied, are just to the right of the democrats. The USA most definitely has a left wing bent. Democrat or republican controlled, our government burns more taxpayer and borrowed cash in a year than most of the rest of the world combined. While I don't agree with them, I can at least respect the overt socialist parties of this country for being very open and honest about their objectives and ideology. I cannot say the same for the so-called 'moderate' democrats as legislating the same things under the radar is anything but moderate. This I find evil, yes, as evil as all the shit ashcroft and friends did to liberty under bush 2.0.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

I live in the US. Expect me to have a US centric view. I'd expect Australians to have an Australian perspective on politics even when judging the US as well as other countries. Same for Canadians in Canada. That's normal and natural.

I disagree with your definitions, even from a global perspective. Historically, leftists (of any flavor) want to centralize power in the state under the guise of doing 'The Peoples'' bidding, and rightists prefer smaller governments and traditional values. Even the 'revolutionary' sorts like the bolsheviks and che guevara overthrew the goverment and took on its trappings to push back against real or perceived threats within the country. Obviously, whoever's in power will want to accrete more, eventually becoming the new tyrant. This is why the US constitution is written the way it is. It significantly slows this process, but cannot stop it entirely. It depends on a population that cares for individual liberty in order to keep balance. Unfortunately, the US population is losing that interest in return for handouts and so-called 'social justice' witch hunts.

You're right, that's what the current US government does.. It claims to act in the public's interest, but is really only acting in the interests of a phalanx of powerful single issue and business interests. The larger the state, the greater its reach, and that means more scope to coerce the public's behavior. The most direct way I see to reduce this influence is to reduce the size of the federal government. It was never supposed to be this large in the first place, and it seems preoccupied with tasks it isn't meant to do...it also seems very against the tasks it's supposed to take care of (eg defend the mexican border). Without this taxpayer funded behemoth, these special interests, economic or social, will have to fund their efforts on their own, and without the big mouthpiece.

Your canadian example seems very similar to here, except that in your case it's contained within one party. Here in the states, the democrats do the government powergrabs while the republicans dole out the special favors to industry..all against the interest of the public. Unions are a response to improper treatment by employers and should be allowed to form freely. However, if they get too big, they can strangle whole industries with competition killing regulations and overly inflated wages. Like oversized governments, when they get this big, they are no longer for 'the people' but for themselves.

Re:Don't complain...

[thaylin]

Except your view of it here in the US is incorrect. In the US the left wants more government, to ensure that people are treated fairly. They tend to not introduce these types of laws, the far right does, but the left does not have an issue letting them stay and using them. Here in the US the right wants a bigger government, but only so it can trample on the rights of the citizens for what it considers moral wrong even when the wrong dont affect anyone else.

Re:Don't complain...

[thaylin]

He is from the US, and it is exactly the same here.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

I am from the US (I am sure you guessed by now). Here in the states, it is the left (democrat) that wants to grow the size of the state, increase taxes, and reward voters with handouts and 'social justice' witch hunts for protected castes. The 'right' that is typically talked about are the republicans (usually called neo-conservative), who want less regulations (but not necessarily a smaller government) and tax breaks for business owners (but not so much of either for the working class). The libertarian 'right' advocates a more streamlined government that is more efficient and fiscally responsible with tax dollars, and protects liberty from those who'd want to take it for economic or social reasons. They advocate a meritocratic society where free expression and entrepreneurialism naturally take hold. Despite what some will say, they are not against charity or helping the truly destitute or disabled. Right now, a big part of their platform is reduction and/or total reversal of the federal government's deficit spending pattern, which is inflating the currency and making life harder for the average citizen.

Keep in mind that this works both ways. You are from Germany so I'd expect you to have a German perspective, and that's perfectly fine. I am from the US, expect me to have a US perspective. I've noticed lately that a lot of US posters are getting caustic replies for their US centrism from those on the european continent, and possibly other places. It is hypocritical for them to be intolerant of US-centric expression while expressing their own culturally centric views.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

oh and btw, I don't think your post was objectionable, that's why I replied to it.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

Yes, well the devil's in the details. My definition of 'fair' is not the same as the left's. Mine is keep what you earn (or at least 90% of it or so), and allow the meritocracy to operate more naturally. Theirs boils down to insistence on equal outcome, everywhere, even at the cost of liberty and bonafide justice. They go so far as to manufacture evidence and coerce institutions to get involved with it (a new one that comes to mind is itsonus.org and college campuses). We are not borg drones, we are a diverse group of individuals with differing strengths and weaknesses. To expect equal outcome from such a group is lunacy. That said, I do not disagree with a welfare system that supports the truly disabled, possibly finding them work if they are able enough. I just have big problems with the current one that rewards welfare babies and hands out (d)ebt cards.

The far right? Who is that? the cheneys and ashcrofts and bush's? They are not really rightwing. They are neo-right. There's a huge difference. They advocate tax breaks and market cornering legislation for fortune 100s. They need a big government to do this. The traditional republican party doesn't really give a shit about the working class or liberty.

Re:Don't complain...

[epyT-R]

No, it is not.

Re:Don't complain...

[Attila Dimedici]

That is a strange definition of "right" and "left". Traditionally, the left has advocated for getting the government out of enforcing traditional moral codes, while at the same time inventing new, more intrusive moral codes which they demand the government enforce.Of course part of the problem is that most people define the poltical spectrum as going from the "ultra-right wing" fascists, who push for government control over the economy, to the "ultra-left wing" communists, who push for government control over the economy. Personally, I favor a government based on the idea that people are responsible for their own economic well-being.

Re:Don't complain...

[Simon Brooke]

I would say the world is going more lefty, with governments consolidating their power bases and censoring/silencing criticism. It's the left that wants to grow the size of government and have it spy on/manipulate as much of peoples' lives as it can.

The left-right axis is orthogonal to the authoritarian-libertarian axis. There are as many right-wing authoritarians as left wing authoritarians, as many left wing libertarians as right wing libertarians.

Re:Don't complain...

[Trepidity]

There is a small-government strain of the American right, and especially a lot of small-government rhetoric, but in terms of actual policies, the Republican Party generally expands the size of government (and faster than the Democratic Party does, though they also do). The three post-WW2 presidents who expanded government the most are: Nixon (R), LBJ (D), and Reagan (R).

Re:Don't complain...

[Trepidity]

Depends on what part of the government. People on the (American) left tend to be in favor of social spending but against military/police/prison spending; people on the right tend to be in favor of military/police/prison spending but against social spending. With various quirks and exceptions on either side, e.g. rural conservatives are in favor of farm subsidies (a kind of social spending) while some "national security democrats" are in favor of the War On Terror and military/police spending.

Re:Don't complain...

[mrchaotica]

In fact the whole world is going more right wing, so we can only expect worse.

See, this is why the whole "right wing"/"left wing" rhetoric is a dangerous false dichotomy. Authoritarianism can come equally easily from either side of the aisle; when it comes from the so-called "right" we label it fascism or NAZI-ism; when it comes from the so-called "left" we name it "socialism" or "communism."

However, the "left" and "right" don't have to be authoritarian! Anti-authoritarians on the "right" are called "libertarians" and anti-authoritarians on the "left" are called "greens" or even "hippies."

TL;DR; if you've been duped into complaining about the "right wing" (or the "left wing," for that matter) when you're actually trying to complain about authoritarianism, you are part of the problem!

Re:Don't complain...

[dbIII]

and rightists prefer smaller governments and traditional values

"Traditional" - only as in pre-Magna Carta authoritarian Royalty if you don't keep an eye on them with a justice system that they cannot easily dismantle. It's not really traditional values, it's about ripping up the things that protect values of others that they do not like. People who call themselves "moderate" are far more conservative than the reactionaries that hide behind the title "Conservative". The most extreme utter bastards that want to implement a "Christian" version of Sharia law that would directly oppose the tolerant teachings of Christ call themselves "Conservative" whenever they open their mouths to shout.

Re:Don't complain...

[mrchaotica]

I would say the world is going more lefty, with governments consolidating their power bases and censoring/silencing criticism.

The world is going neither "right" nor "left", it's going more authoritarian on an orthogonal axis.

It's the left that wants to grow the size of government and have it spy on/manipulate as much of peoples' lives as it can. It does this under the guise of benevolence, of 'caring' about the plight of some group, real or imagined, varying by context. The right wants smaller government and more liberty for the individual.

No, the authoritarian left (e.g. US Democratic Party) wants to manipulate people through government. The authoritarian right (e.g. US Republican Party) wants to manipulate people through privatized industry. Neither is interested in leaving people alone.

There are those, on both the left and right, who actually do want smaller government and more liberty for the individual, but they are not in power in either major US political party.

If you are the sort who stalwartly votes party lines, I would strongly suggest you reevaluate your loyalties, democrat or republican. At this point, this is the only way to fight the orwellian lunatics in power now.

Indeed; the only hope is to vote independent, libertarian or green.

Re:Don't complain...

[dbIII]

I am from the US (I am sure you guessed by now). Here in the states, it is the left (democrat) that wants to grow the size of the state

Yet it was the right that actually grew the size of the state instead of just wanting to do so.
I suppose education has been cut a massive amount since the early 1980s which explains to extent why advertising trumps reason.

Re:Don't complain...

[drsmithy]

Historically, leftists (of any flavor) want to centralize power in the state under the guise of doing 'The Peoples'' bidding, and rightists prefer smaller governments and traditional values.

You sound like the people who say "historically, marriage was one man and one woman".

Ie: You're cherry-picking a very specific point in time to call "historically".

In reality, "historically" - that is to say, where the terms originated - the Right is the side of concentrated, inherited power - monarchies and serfs - and the Left is the side of democracy, individual rights, equality, freedom of speech, and the like.

Every "freedom" you cherish today, you need to thank progressive politics for.

Re:Don't complain...

[drsmithy]

Yes, well the devil's in the details. My definition of 'fair' is not the same as the left's. Mine is keep what you earn (or at least 90% of it or so), and allow the meritocracy to operate more naturally.

Right. So you favour increasingly concentrated wealth, the power it wields, and the inevitable corruption it breeds.

Theirs boils down to insistence on equal outcome, everywhere, even at the cost of liberty and bonafide justice.

Completely false.

The "insistence" is on equal opportunities.

The comical fantasy promulgated by the Right, however, is that everyone born into a western democracy inherently has equal opportunities. That the black child born to a drug addicted single mother has the same opportunities in life as the white child born to two high-earning professionals, because both were born in America. Undoubtedly, they will be able to trot out a couple of cherry-picked examples of such disadvantaged children who have, against all odds, escaped their demographic destiny. They might even produce some similar cherry-picked examples of rich white kids whose parents abandoned them after one too many low-level drug charges or car crashes and have sunk into desperate poverty.

But it's just ideological bullshit. Statistics, data and history show the truth. Wealth breeds increasingly more wealth and poverty more poverty, in feedback loops. The best society springs from both of those ends of the scale being curtailed to build a strong middle class. The period of human history with the greatest increase in wealth, productivity and living standards were the few decades post-WW2 - with its high taxes, strong regulations and comprehensive welfare systems - before Thatcher, Reagan and their acolytes' neoliberal cancer started destroying western democracies from within in the name of greed, selfishness, and free-market fundamentalism.

Re:Don't complain...

[dbIII]

I would say the world is going more lefty, with governments consolidating their power bases and censoring/silencing criticism. It's the left that wants to grow the size of government and have it spy on/manipulate as much of peoples' lives as it can.

Maybe we should encourage kids to read stuff written before 1950 when "left" and "socialist" were turned into meaningless curse words instead of a description of something :(
The above bit appears to be "the world is moving toward badness" instead of any sort of meaningful comment on politics. What the fuck did we do to stop a generation from thinking for themselves and noticing what is going on in the world?

Re:Don't complain...

[alexo]

There's a "Left" in the US?

Re:Don't complain...

[fustakrakich]

You, sir/ma'am, rely too much on mass media propaganda. It is unnecessary and disingenuous to distinguish "left" and "right" in matters of authoritarianism. Both are used as pretexts to justify the abuse of power, but in and of themselves they are nothing but distractions. Get your head out of the TV and observe the birds and the bees if you want to see what binds and animates life on earth.

Re:Don't complain...

[roman_mir]

Ideological bullshit is stealing from those who can make it to subsidise those who cannot make it and call it 'fairness' and even insist it somehow promotes 'human rights'.

Theft does not make anything 'right' regardless how you justify it.

Equal opportunities does NOT mean that everybody has to be born in the same household, it means that GOVERNMENT MUST NOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST SOME TO PROVIDE ADVANTAGES TO OTHERS, which is what you are ideologically aligned with: using force and violence of the government to create discrimination.

Equal opportunities means equality under law and you breed inequality under law.

Re:Don't complain...

[dbIII]

I saw a lot of hagiography of libertarians that will never be able to show one way or another if they can stick to their word but nothing that addresses my point.

Re:Don't complain...

[roman_mir]

They do not have the same equal opportunity TO SUCCEED, nobody does.

They have the same equal opportunity TO TRY to succeed and not be discriminated against by the government, be treated equally under law. Your society destroyed that concept.

Re:Don't complain...

[drsmithy]

The world is going neither "right" nor "left", it's going more authoritarian on an orthogonal axis.

Rubbish. We've had thirty years of tax reductions, deregulation and shrinking public services.

The world is most assuredly moving "right"wards.

Re:Don't complain...

[drsmithy]

They do not have the same equal opportunity TO SUCCEED, nobody does.

The point is to set a reasonable baseline.

They have the same equal opportunity TO TRY to succeed and not be discriminated against by the government, be treated equally under law.

No, they don't.

Your society destroyed that concept.

Bullshit. "My" society _created_ the fucking concept.

You have left-wing, progressive politics to thank for everything you cherish, from property rights through freedom of speech to the ability to vote.

Re:Don't complain...

[roman_mir]

Left wing politics of freedom, as in the original idea behind liberalism, not left wing politics of theft - the socialist/communist/fascist version.

I have nothing to thank your politics except for hundreds of millions of dead people, billions of poor people and the economic collapse.

Re:Don't complain...

[rhodium_mir]

be treated equally under law.

Unless they don't pay income taxes, in which case they deserve to be disenfranchised.

Someone explain please

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with governments and wanting to spy on every citizen, just because the technology might allow for it? So much for them being our democratically elected representatives. That's apparently only when they need themselves some votes. Once they got them, they turn around and basically become enemies of the citizenry. Every. Last. One. Of. Them.

But why? It can't be just the lobbyist money.

Re:Someone explain please

[epyT-R]

There are plenty of conspiracy theories that might answer some of that question. Good luck figuring out if any of them are truthful. The rest is emergent social behavior that comes from bureaucratic lordship.

Re:Someone explain please

[jcr]

What is it with governments and wanting to spy on every citizen, just because the technology might allow for it?

As Robert Heinlein pointed out, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who seek to control others, and those who have no such desire. Governments are comprised of the assholes in the first category, and mass surveillance is all about power.

-jcr

Re:Someone explain please

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to control others: Everybody else is the problem and more control is the solution. This is also management 101.

Funny how we got along for aeons with very little control and even funnier how very strict control systems tend to break down spectactularly. Concluding, this is so much rationalisation bullshit. Management isn't about control. Governing possibly even less so.

Yes, running the show involves control, but that's not the point. Control itself never is. If it is for the people in charge, we clearly put the wrong people there.

Re:Someone explain please

[AHuxley]

Re But why? It can't be just the lobbyist money.
To the political class it becomes addictive. Reading embassy communications in the 1920's, WW2 Enigma. Australian staff became aware of a huge effort to listen to the world and wanted in after WW2.
Australia was warned by some of it's top military people not to sell out to the US and UK given Australia's role in WW2 (full exploitation of crypto in Australia, troops under the control of the UK) but the political leaders joined the 5 eyes.
The rest is history, from Soviet traffic in the late 1940's to the early role of ASIO, the Defence Signals Branch work on China in the 1950's, then Indonesia, Vietnam (Australian special forces with real time sigint support).
US Ryolite satellites got Australia into more ground station work with sites like Pine Gap and local support. DSD Geraldton took over from UK sites lost in Hong Kong.
After that its USA all the way. Generations of Australian staff know nothing but supporting roles.
What the USA and UK do not put into law, Australia may to have to to secure legally safe convictions. Parallel construction would not work so mass collection and self signed warrants are made legal.

Re:Someone explain please

[BringsApples]

I'll try to answer with my reasoning. What I feel is going on is that it sucks more and more to be a regular citizen, rich or not, elite or not. In fact, this concept of "elite" is changing more and more into what we currently call "politicians". That means that in order to be elite, you need to be in politics, somehow, or in what we "conspiracy theorists" assume is a level above the politicians. Political freedom is all the freedom that's really left in the world, unless you're cool with being broke all the time.

And so the only thing that We The People need to remember (no matter which country you're in, this holds truth): The People are the power of the government, not the other way around. If you really want to take your government's power away, then you can easily do it by peaceful disobedience. Because at the heart of the problem are the policemen that do the politicians bidding. Once you break the police's will to keep on arresting/beating/killing innocent people, then you win. This is how India got rid of the same evil that we're all talking about. They did it with no internet. Throw all the tomatoes that you want to at Gandhi, he wasn't perfect, wasn't a saint. But he is the one that discovered this truth, and also the one that delivered that truth in a real way. It's not hippy-talk, this is the only way to end the problems that we're all talking about. Until We The People come to truly put this idea into motion, things will only get exponentially worse.

Re:Someone explain please

[CrimsonAvenger]

In fact, this concept of "elite" is changing more and more into what we currently call "politicians".

Once upon a time, we had governments that consisted of the "elite" - nobility, usually, but once we figured out this whole "election" thing, the elite became the guys we elected.

What these various "elites" have had in common throughout history is that they feel themselves to be entitled to tell the rest of us what to do.

And since, in general, they controlled law enforcement and the military (not always distinct entities), if only by the power of the pursestrings and the ability to define law (by, well, passing laws), they were pretty much right.

In the USA, at least, the Constitution was meant to be a limiter on government, so as to fend off the "elite" who wanted to tell us what to do. Alas, we've long since managed to convince ourselves that anything we want has to be Constitutional somehow (which leads us inevitably to "shall not be infringed" being translated as "shall be infringed", and "Congress shall make no laws abridging..." being translated as "Of course Congress can make laws abridging...").

And so, the politicians have once again assumed their historical roles, and "civil servants" have once again become "civil masters".

In other words, things are returning to their historical norms. And will continue to do so absent a revolution or two.

Not the government's fault.

[thegarbz]

I find this interesting. Both major governments have now supported internet filtering or some invasive monitoring in the past. Recently we've had a government decide to go and join the fight in a war we have nothing to do with because ... well America is doing it. Terrorist threats have come immediately after the announcement and then I was absolutely gob smacked to see our prime-minister (probably the current joke of the world) quote word for word the previous joke of the world (Bush) and say the threats are not because of our actions but because "they hate our freedoms".

Now G20 is nearly upon us and our local city is building giant walls around airports, closing down half the city, and welding bins at the train station shut (no joke) because they pose a threat as a potential place to stash a bomb.

And how do our people react?
A statistically significant jump in the prime minister's approval rating

People get the government they deserve. Hey Canada, you guys still taking Aussies immigrants? I gotta get out of here. Because ... you know, ... terrorists and stuff.

Re:Not the government's fault.

[sg_oneill]

People get the government they deserve. Hey Canada, you guys still taking Aussies immigrants? I gotta get out of here. Because ... you know, ... terrorists and stuff.

Normally I'd advocate going to New Zealand, which is sort of australias version of canada.Younger, more progressive and with the benefit of hindsight from watching its hillbilly neighbor.

Buuuuuut no, the kiwis just voted their conservatives back in too, so we're screwed.

The antipodes are the meth laboratory of democracy.

Re:Not the government's fault.

[twakar]

Yes.. we are still taking Aussie immigrants. In fact, this evening at our favourite restaurant, our server was an Aussie. very pleasant. Good service gets a good tip. Just bring some sun please as winter is upon us.

Re:Not the government's fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Canada, you guys still taking Aussies immigrants? I gotta get out of here. Because ... you know, ... terrorists and stuff.

I'm afraid it's too late.

Harper seems politically aligned with Abbott, but is not stupid. And not-stupid evil is the worst kind - it's effective in reaching its goals.

Stupid evil, like Doug Ford, is so utterly incompetent that they accomplish nothing and at worst piss people off, waste time, waste some money.

PM Harper has devastated science. For example, publicly paid scientists - if still employed - need permission from the Prime Minister's Office to speak on their research! Even on the topic of 20,000 year old lakes 'cause climate change, etc..

Of course, cannot forget the election fraud: In & Out Scandal, Robocalls, Vic Toewes, and many more. Or appointing losing Conservative candidates as unofficial government reps in the ridings they lost in -- to bypass the democratically elected MPs and improve the loser candidates chances of winning in the next election.

Or what they've done to Stats Can, audio taped interview of Harper admitting to offering "financial inducement" to sway Cadman's parliamentary vote (a criminal act), etc ad nauseam.

Really, one could go on until one is sick.

Even the previous - much hated Progressive Conservative PM, Lyin' Brian Mulroney looks good in comparison and he recently publicly commented on Harper's ... lack of dignified leadership. (Notice the party dropped the Progressive from the party's name? That's the most honest thing they've ever done.)

I hated Mulroney, but he looks saintly in comparison. He only took $300,000 cash in bribes, sued the gov't (RCMP) for defamation while denying it, WON, then much later had to admit he took the money, but never paid back the court award (AirBus scandal). That's saintly compared to the Harper regime's Silent Coup over the country.

Long rant short (too late, I know), we're fucked. Can't unscramble this egg that was formerly Canada.

Re:Not the government's fault.

[HiThere]

I've read the Quran. I've also read the Bible. The Quran isn't much worse. Both have their vile spots.

  (And how should that word be spelled. I've always spelled it Koran. "qu" should be pronounced about like "cw", since that's the french spelling of Old English words: "cwen" vs. "queen". I suspect that the better spelling would be something like "Q'ran", but perhaps it depends on which country you are transliterating from.)

Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[mjwx]

Americans please take note, this is what happens when you elect conservatives.

To fill in non-Australians on what happened, a few days ago the Australian government launched a massive campaign "to fight terror" which involved 800 police across 3 states and resulted in 16 arrests. All of these people just happened to be Muslim.

The government made a big song and dance about it but what they didn't say is that 15 of the 16 were released without charge. The 16th man was held because they found a broken taser and 4 unused shotgun rounds in his house. He went to court 2 days ago and the judge with a brain released him with a misdemeanour charge (a fine, no criminal record).

So this operation has all the hallmarks of a false flag to get bad laws passed on a wave of fear based support... Lo and behold, this appears in parliament.

America will have elections before we do, we didn't learn from Canada and the UK... Please dont make the same mistakes as we did by voting in the other guy because we hate the current guys. It always ends up worse.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[sg_oneill]

One berk with a knife takes some swipes at a pair of police officers and twenty years of work by civil liberties activists are done because the tories are shouting and stamping their feet that we are under some sort of attack from eeeeevil terrorists.

I'm sorry, I live in northbridge, inner-city perth. The place is a stabbing range at the best of time. I bet people are stabbing at cops every other day.

Oh no, I'm terrified of brown people, here you go officer , have my rights, I'm too scared to use them!!!!!!

Pathetic.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst I agree the government is using fear to implement draconian laws, you've only told one side of the story.

I'll just leave this article about a man stabbing police officers and allegedly planning to behead them here.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[mc6809e]

"Conservative" means different things in different countries. It even means different things in different US states.

In the USA, "conservative" might mean an advocate of small government and reduced government power, or it might mean a pro-life social conservative looking to restrict abortion or anything in between.

If privacy is a voter's primary concern in the US, it's probably best to vote based on the individual candidate's position than on the candidate's party.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[ozmanjusri]

This is part of a long term global effort by deranged moguls like Rupert Murdoch. Take the quote below:

The Murdoch tabloids’ trademark sensationalist coverage of crime, and accompanying campaigns for draconian law-and-order politics such as harsher sentences and more police powers, has always been in the framework of self-righteous claims to be the voice of victims.

Another trademark of the Murdoch media globally is Islamophobia. From Fox news’ hysterical reaction to President Barack Obama’s Arabic middle name, to the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s current anti-Burka campaign, the Murdoch media has consistently vilified Muslims in the name of protecting Western society from terrorism.

In Australia, not only has Murdoch used his media to campaign for anti-terror laws but, in several cases after such laws have been introduced, authorities used the Murdoch media during prosecutions to spread allegations against defendants in terrorism trials. Such allegations cannot be refuted in open court, or spoken about by the accused, because of secrecy provisions in the anti-terror laws.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/n...

It reads like it was written yesterday, but in fact it's a story from 2011, during a previous successful push to whittle away more civil liberties, not just in Australia, but worldwide.

Until us ordinary people can recognise the war being waged against us by the Murdochs of the world, and discover the courage and weapons to fight them, we will continue to lose those few liberties we have remaining.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Migity]

As long as Australia passes this it won't matter if the U.S. government is left or right. The NSA just needs to route the world's traffic through Australia then ask the ASIO to share the information because the NSA doesn't give a shit what type of government exists...it's run by the military. So this will be easy, thanks Australia!

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[TwistedPants]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... is chilling to see how it is being rammed through.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "left" in the US. The Dems are further right than all but the extreme right parties in the EU. Once you've lived in the US for long enough, you'll see this for yourself. Americans rarely live overseas as locals, so they never get to see it for themselves.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Cenan]

What new laws are needed to arrest and convict a man that stabs a police officer? Even if its only attempted stabbing? Where is the hole that needs to be plugged with universal surveillance?

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans please take note, this is what happens when you elect conservatives.

Unfortunately, our "liberal" party seems quite happy to engage in overbearing surveillance. I certainly like it if the Overton Window in the US were pushed to the left, but at the moment, it will take more political action than just voting to stop the NSA surveillance program.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Electricity Likes Me]

So this operation has all the hallmarks of a false flag to get bad laws passed on a wave of fear based support... Lo and behold, this appears in parliament.

That...isn't what false flag means.

Almost certainly there was a real investigation going on. Someone (probably Abbott himself) just put the call down that they wanted it closed up, asked for a worst case scenario (which would've been dutifully given) and then they were told to go ahead with arrests on the basis of that.

All a colossal waste of money which I'm sure a bunch of analysts and intelligence officers were probably pretty pissed about because any actual leads they might've been following would've gotten a huge "go to ground" flag and they're probably the ones getting the blowback for it not yielding terrorists that they themselves could've told you wouldn't be found at that time.

What doesn't get said about this type of BS, is that at the end of the day we don't end up being any safer because intelligence is being pushed to create a narrative, not actual results.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[rtb61]

Reality is quite clear, conservative politics equals exploitative politics and Anti-terror laws equals anti-poor laws. These laws are all designed to protect the rich from the middle class and the poor, laws that you can protect yourself from only if you have sufficient money and laws which can be used to abused anyone who does not have enough money.

The unreality of conservative politics when they are all about conserving nothing, they don't want to conserve resources, they don't want to conserve the environment and they don't want to conserve labour. In fact they want to ruthlessly exploit resources, ruthlessly exploit the environment and ruthlessly exploit labour, yet they bloody continue to call themselves conservatives to hide their true exploitative nature behind a word, a marketing fraud.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[mark_reh]

It may mean different things, but in the US they ALL vote republican. Republicans have targeted every stupid single-issue voter in the US and done a great job of it.

"If privacy is a voter's primary concern in the US, it's probably best to vote based on the individual candidate's position than on the candidate's party."
Stupid stupid stupid advice. First, suggesting that there's a best way to vote for stupid single-issue voters is the reason we have the quality of candidates that we do. Second, assuming that there's any difference between the parties on the issue of privacy is nonsense. Third, what a candidate says is his position and what he does once elected are usually far apart.

I have a better suggestion for all the single-issue voters out there: stay home. We don't need more stupid people voting. We need more intelligent people who consider more than one issue.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Wootery]

In the USA, "conservative" might mean an advocate of small government and reduced government power

Not really. The actual libertarians call themselves libertarians. That 'conservatives' in the US like to spread a vague sense that 'government is bad' isn't the same thing - these people generally aren't actually in favour of small government. (Military interventionism, subsidies for big companies, and spying on citizens, are not policies that real libertarians advocate.)

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Attila Dimedici]

You mean sort of the way Democrats like to spread a vague sense that they seek to improve the lives of minorities while following their traditions of doing everything in their power to keep them down? Of course the Democrats are much better at being two-faced than Republicans because they have managed to convince people that, despite the fact that their policies are bad for minorities, and despite the fact that most of their arguments for those policies amount to stating that minorities need whites to take care of them, they actually are attempting to improve the lot of minorities and that they believe that minorities are just as capable as whites. Further, they have managed to convince people that those who say that minorities are perfectly capable of succeeding without anybody else's help are racists who think that minorities are inferior.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Simon Brooke]

The actual libertarians call themselves either anarchists or communists. The 'libertarians' in the US are conservatives. They believe in laws such as property laws which protect the rich against the poor, but no laws which protect the poor against the rich.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[mrchaotica]

Not to mention, how would totalitarian Internet surveillance help that situation even slightly (let alone help so Goddamned incredibly well to even begin to come close to "justifying" the loss of liberty!)?

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[AmiMoJo]

The goal is to "catch" people before they commit a crime, i.e. when they are only thinking about it and no-one has been hurt yet. Therefore thought needs to be criminalized.

Re: Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[kevingolding2001]

Please educate yourself about Islam (from first principles).

Re: Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[kevingolding2001]

And Denmark, and Norway, and Germany, and... many, many more.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[usuallylost]

We have been watching these sorts of things come out of Australia for years. The labor government was at least as bad about it with their black lists and various censorship schemes. In the article also notice that the bill has the support of both the conservative government and the labor establishment. So blaming this on the conservatives seems questionable. A more accurate assessment is that the Australian government is just prone to this sort of behavior. As for as I can see there is no party, other than the greens, who are really against this stuff in Australia.

We have the same problem in the US. The Republicans passed the Patriot act and the Democrats have embraced and expanded it. The sad fact is that people in power benefit from very strong intelligence services and powerful state apparatus. The fact that these things can harm the public doesn’t seem to enter into the equation.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore thought needs to be criminalized.

Pretty sure I read about that somewhere else...

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[DigiShaman]

Never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[DigiShaman]

If privacy is a voter's primary concern in the US, it's probably best to vote based on the individual candidate's position than on the candidate's party.

Correct! However, the Democrat is a united front, and subsequently vote in lock-step. The Republican party as a political organization has its head up its ass. They're done! We now have a one-party-rule with the Hispanic now keeping them in power in perpetuity giving them "free shit". So yes, don't vote for either party. The backs of the establishment must be broken!

Not going to happen. People are too fucking stupid.

"Gimme gimme gimme. Mine mine mine!!!" -populous

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[ATMAvatar]

We should just throw all the criminals on some remote island.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Mashiki]

You mean like that wanna-be 17 year old terrorist who stabbed two officers and ended up getting shot for his trouble? Seems to me that they did the right thing in that case after all, but let's look at europe. France has no-go zones, norway has them, sweden has them. Of course we can't forget the rape jihad either, and it's even hitting the courts where the defendants are claiming it's "part of their religious duty to do so." I believe you had one in Australia a few months back, might have been last year.

After all here in Canada we've had 18 muslims who wanted to cut the heads off of everyone in parliament, another muslim that wanted to let off 50+ bombs in Ontario, another muslim that wanted to derail a VIA train. The three teens from london that ran off and were nailed at the oil refinery somewhere in Africa. Then we've got the mosques indoctrinating youth, and they go off deciding that they want to fight "for an islamic state" so far we're just revoking their passports.

Yeah it seems like we don't have any problems or anything. I'm not saying what they did was right, but pretending that there aren't issues with the muslim communities is just burying your head in the sand.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[IndustrialComplex]

Sounds like you were engaged in some sort of seditious activity.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[DigiShaman]

That's low. But, not any lower than the asshole that wishes to do you harm. So yeah, it's a forgivable tactic.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[fche]

"Americans please take note, this is what happens when you elect conservatives."

You missed the part where the Labour party supports the draft law.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[chihowa]

"Gimme gimme gimme. Mine mine mine!!!" -populous

To be fair, they learned it from watching the ruling class who have already taken most of the pie and left the scraps for the hoi polloi to fight over.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[alexo]

Pull the knife out first. Then ask him to throw down his gun and fight like a man

When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Noah Haders]

I'm so over australia. You would think it is a place of independence and freedom, where everybody is like Steve Irwin and crocodile dundee. In fact, it's just another nanny state with totalitarian aspirations. Makes me appreciate the second amendment more and more.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[JimSadler]

And yet we may have the potential to stop organised crime, tax cheating, and illegal drug sales just to mention a few items that surveillance can eliminate. Can a judge take bribes and explain his costs of living with this type of surveillance in use? Can the thief explain how he paid his rent? Applying a bright search light onto all the transactions of all people can free us from the costs and yoke that crime puts upon us. Even in relation to raising our children we can get the message across that they must have skills and work as crime is a closed book and no longer a way to get by. And the wife or husband can no longer lie about their loyalty to each other. Imagine a nation free of lies and crimes. I wonder if humans can live with truth.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[johanw]

Greeks are mostly orthodox catholic, not muslim.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[johanw]

Like Australia?

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Noah Haders]

That's not a knife...

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Noah Haders]

This is a troll, right? Maybe I don't get the reference.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Noah Haders]

The goal is to "catch" people before they commit a crime

I'm pretty sure i read about that somewhere else...

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Marquis231]

I'm also in Northbridge and I actually submitted this story to /. Some other guy has just resubmitted my submission with his name on it, was my first ever submission to /. When I first saw the story in SMH my jaw dropped...I am so disappointed. What is happening to the best place on Earth?

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[deadweight]

Been tried. They reproduced and are still there.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[davester666]

reading is being banned, because it leads to bad thoughts.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can't tell them, they won't listen, Aussies think they know everything - I would say even moreso than US people! I haven't spoken with my father nicely for over a year now, because I alerted him to the idea that voting in a fascist is not worth the money you (think you will) receive. Well, ain't I a heathen for putting morals above "the economy"! I must be a fucking Commie! I also happened to mention that the average Aussie lives better than pretty much anyone in all of human history, so get over yourself. Boy, did that cause a fracas!

That's why I moved years ago. They are so full of hyperbole it became intolerable. They're always broke, the economy's always about to topple over, they're in danger of terrorist acts, it's always everyone else's fault (especially non-whites/non-Euros, and unemployed people). They go apeshit over a couple of boats of refugees, and when I mention that my CITY gets more than their country and we manage, well apparently "that's different". They believe everything they get told on the TV, whilst telling you they don't fall for a trick. They go on about being green whilst using more resources than anyone. Lord, it was really eye-opening moving o/s, then going back with an outsider's perspective. They have a massive small-penis syndrome, resulting in incredible jealousy, and are generally dissmissive of the idea that some other country might be better in some way.

I stopped going back because almost every single Aussie conversation will bend back to money. Even giving a gift in Australia often comes with "It was very expensive". You mention your house, they go on about house prices. You mention your car needed repairs, and they have to ask you "How much?" My gf, a non-Anglo from a developing country, used to leave the table constantly, as they waffled on about "hardship" and "being broke". Yeah? I mention that we live on per month what they earn in 8 days, fucking whinging pricks, most of them. Then they'll turn that back on you by saying it's your choice. They'll cauch it all in "reasonableness" and "logic", and this doesn't change what they're about, though. Lots of "Yeah, but...".

Oh, and the majority are racist fucks. You hear it in their language "tolerate" is the word they use, instead of "accept" or "enjoy". Ask my missus. Not a single day without some asshole going stupid about how "We should speak English or GTFO". Then they go off with the US/UK/CurrentMaster to help bomb someplace that doesn't even affect them. They are so fucking steeped in the glory of war it's sick.

- EX dickhead, thank fuck!

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[JeffAtl]

That was the point.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[JeffAtl]

It may mean different things, but in the US they ALL vote republican.

No they don't. Small government conservatives tend to vote libertarian, stay at home or even vote for a democrat that values personal liberty when a social conservative is running.

Unfortunately, both parties only recognize personal liberty in narrow cases.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[JeffAtl]

That's the silliest idea I've heard in a long time. People who attend political events are the least sophisticated and least informed group possible.

Do you really think that anything of substance is gleaned at political events?

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[MrKaos]

And you can't tell them, they won't listen, Aussies think they know everything

I am Australian - and I endorse everything you say.

I'll add that there are a lot of Australians that are sick of it. Unfortunately the dumb as fuck, thick as a house brick masses are such blind, igorant, apethetic, insular and stupid cowards they just cheers the government on into making Australia a police state.

Meanwhile, any Australian who cares about the country looks on in horror. We are one despot away from a dictatorship.

Re: Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[MrKaos]

Ex-dickhead?

Doesn't sound like it. Nice irony post about being a whinging fuckwit!

Stop talking out your arse. Take the 'Aussie Pride' sticker of the back of the ute you drive and wake up you dumb ignorant anonymous gutless prick. They are right, and Australia is turning into this because useless dickhead such as you.

You are like the fucking cane toads ruining Australia. A fucking useless and ugly pest.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[drsmithy]

We have been watching these sorts of things come out of Australia for years. The labor government was at least as bad about it with their black lists and various censorship schemes. In the article also notice that the bill has the support of both the conservative government and the labor establishment. So blaming this on the conservatives seems questionable.

New Labor have been just another conservative party for over a decade now.

As for as I can see there is no party, other than the greens, who are really against this stuff in Australia.

That is because the Greens are the only left-wing party of any size.

We have the same problem in the US.

In fact, the whole Anglosphere has the same problem. The steady march of selfish, greedy, narcissistic right-wing politics that has been taking over since Thatcher and Reagan kicked it off, has all but eliminated left-wing politics and brought with it the destru

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[DigiShaman]

So far, I've read all the previous rants about Australia from other posters. For a moment, I could be convinced they were talking about either the US or UK. Is the entire "West" just fucked? The running theme out of all this, is nations that are falling on the sword for immigrants whom are ungrateful at that. It's a mindset that's not sustainable for any prosperous nation state!

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[nanoflower]

There are 'fix'es for that.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Sciath]

When the Italians migrated to north america we got the mafia using machine guns and amputations. When the Russians migrated we got a repeat. Hispanic drug runners like to use beheadings as well. Eastern europeans (old soviet states) brought even more murder and mayhem. After all, america is the land of the free; even free to bring death and destruction. Aside from the fact there are laws against such criminal behavior, laws make little difference if all the various ethnic populations support criminal behavior and the behavior is too widespread to be held in check by law enforcement. The more diverse a culture, the more difficult it becomes for shared values, including the ethnic support for criminal behavior. For example, with the spread of Islamic extremism, there is little support (or outcry) from the Muslim community in support of secular criminal law as opposed to their religious laws. No matter how barbaric those laws may be. Diversity brings (or encourages) conflicting aspirations, expectations and social/behavioral norms. Unchecked immigration leads to more conflict.

Re: Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Sciath]

They arent friends to the U.S. Their friendship stretches only as far as our protection extends to the Saudi regime. For example their friendship substantially shrank when OPEC formed decades ago. If... they had been friends to America they wouldve treated their people better with all the billions weve given them. They wouldnt have monetarily supported Wahhabism (radical islamic beliefs) over the past seven decades.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Sciath]

Phillip K Dick short story and the movie Minority Report

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[Roberts777]

I'm Australian as well. Completely agree, This country is currently under an idiot,but a dangerous idiot as the sheeple believe him.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[uninformedLuddite]

I was trying to think of a decent comeback but all I could come up with was go and fuck yourself.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[MrKaos]

I'm Australian as well. Completely agree, This country is currently under an idiot,but a dangerous idiot as the sheeple believe him.

He is all about the stick and not about the carrot, Mr Rabbit.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[MrKaos]

So far, I've read all the previous rants about Australia from other posters. For a moment, I could be convinced they were talking about either the US or UK. Is the entire "West" just fucked?

I think the baby boomers have all run out of ideas and don't trust the younger generations. They want everything and are just wreaking the place before they leave because it's easier than leaving a solid base for the future.

Re:Australia voted... for a kick in the nuts.

[JeffAtl]

Political events have nothing to do with conveying information.

A person that attends a political event actually knows less about reality after they leave than before they walked in.

There is no political solution.

[jcr]

Governments can not be trusted. Privacy on the internet is an engineering problem, and will only be solved by technical means.

-jcr

Re:There is no political solution.

[IamTheRealMike]

It would be nice if that were the case. Unfortunately it's hard to see how it can be. The technology industry has a poor track record of deploying truly strong end to end privacy protections, partly because the physics of how computers work mean that outsourcing things to big powerful third parties that can be easily subverted is very common. E.g. my mobile phone can search gigabytes of email from the last decade in a split second and rank it by importance, despite having nowhere near enough computing capacity to really do that itself, only because it's relying on the Gmail servers to help it out.

That same phone can receive calls only because the mobile network knows where it is. How do you build a mobile phone that is invulnerable to government monitoring of its location? It doesn't seem technically possible. The only solution is to ensure that anonymous SIM cards are easily obtained and used, but many countries have made those illegal as part of the war on drugs.

This trend towards outsourcing, specialisation and sharing of data to obtain useful features is ideal for governments who can then go ahead and silently obtain access to people's information without those people knowing about it. I do not see it reversing any time soon. The best we're going to achieve in the near term future is encryption of links between devices and datacenters, but this doesn't help when politicians are simply voting themselves the power to go reach in to those datacenters.

Ultimately the only long term solutions here can be political, and I fear we will need a far longer and larger history of abuses to become visible before the majority will really shift on this. The problem is a large age skew. Older people skew heavily authoritarian, if you believe the opinion polls, and are much more likely to support this kind of spying. Perhaps they associate it with the cold war. Perhaps the old adage "a libertarian is a republican who wasn't mugged yet" has some truth to it. Whatever the cause, the 1960's baby boom means that demographically, older people can outvote younger people as a block, and for this reason there aren't really any fiscally conservative, economically trusted AND individual rights-respecting parties in the main English speaking countries. People get to pick between borrow-and-spend socialists with an authoritarian bent, and fiscal conservatives with an authoritarian bent, so surprise surprise we end up with people in power who are authoritarians.

Re:There is no political solution.

[Altrag]

Its not an engineering problem. The engineering's been done. We know how to lock shit down very well if we try. The problem is we don't try.

Its really a social problem. Facebook is to your privacy what a post-it note is to your password. And people love them some Facebook (or Twitter or Snapchat or whatever the popular site is this year.)

Until a majority of users start either using privacy measures on a technical level or pushing for privacy protection on a political level, all of the engineering in the world does a big wad of fuck all because nobody's willing (or allowed) to actually use it.

Apple (and Google shortly after) recently decided to lock down their phones out of the box. This is the kind of political push we need -- they're willing to stand up to the government's requests for privacy invasion and at the same time, not significantly impacting day-to-day use of their devices by regular users who only barely know what they've heard on the news regarding the political side of the story and know nothing of the technical side.

Of course who knows how long it will be before some government somewhere decides that this isn't cool and forces Apple/Google to either turn off the default encryption or provide a back door (which is worse really.. hackers are smart and if there's a back door they'll find it eventually -- exposing everyone instead of just those who don't know/care enough to turn on the encryption manually.) China for example doesn't seem like the kind of country that would take "well we can't actually do that" as a valid answer more than once (if that.)

Re:There is no political solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Centralization is easy and virtually impossible to secure against state actors. I'd argue that it might be able possible to build peer-to-peer systems instead of centralized ones that use our desktops (because making phones part of the peer-to-peer network is a drain on battery power) and end-to-end encryption, but it would be very hard and there's very little funding or interest in it.

That same phone can receive calls only because the mobile network knows where it is. How do you build a mobile phone that is invulnerable to government monitoring of its location? It doesn't seem technically possible. The only solution is to ensure that anonymous SIM cards are easily obtained and used, but many countries have made those illegal as part of the war on drugs.

You could make a phone network that doesn't report on user's locations, although I can't think of a way to make it compatible with usage-based billing. The phone network does have to know where each phone it serves is, and that those phones are ones that are being paid for, and it needs some identifier to route communications to that phone, but what it doesn't need to know is the tie between a user and that identifier. Suppose upon connecting to a network, a phone generates a fresh ID (equivalent to claiming a random IMEI), and performs a zero-knowledge proof that it has the private key of a subscriber to the network (zero knowledge so it doesn't specify which subscriber). Then the network assigns the phone an IP address that the phone uses to connect to TOR. Of course, 4G+TOR is probably high latency enough that VOIP wouldn't work that great, but text would be fine.

Of course, the mechanism I just described would be wildly impracticable and would never make it into a standard (and I'm not a security expert so it probably also has security holes). But the point is that security and privacy could be prioritized in our technologies, but they aren't.

Re:There is no political solution.

[jez9999]

I'd argue that it might be able possible to build peer-to-peer systems instead of centralized ones that use our desktops (because making phones part of the peer-to-peer network is a drain on battery power) and end-to-end encryption, but it would be very hard and there's very little funding or interest in it.

Freenet?

Re:There is no political solution.

[HiThere]

No. The only possible (not probable) long term solution is technical...but the technical method involved is AI. And yes wit will be centralized, fur the reasons you gave.

What *could* happen is that an AI could take charge of handling communications. But it couldn't start there, it would probably need to start with handling business records (perhaps at AT&T) and branch out from there to handling users calls. Your information would not be secure from the AI, but the AI would, as it was designed to handle business records, be designed to protect them. You'd get end-to-end encryption that was transparent to the user. And nothing that could damage the corporation if revealed in court would be retrievable.

As I said, I don't think of this as probable, but it is *A* solution. Perhaps the existence of one solution implies that other solutions exist.

Re:There is no political solution.

[Altrag]

Yep, and you can expect just as much protection against anyone who cares to look.

Re:Great

[Travis Mansbridge]

Be aware that Australia is an arm of the ECHELON or "Five Eyes" spying network, also known as AUSCANNZUKUS (for its members, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US). As long as laws exist in any of these countries allowing total internet surveillance, they can simply hand over any information gleaned to the other four parties.

We're doing what?!

[GeekWithAKnife]

Holy screwballs, we're ALREADY monitoring everything everywhere without telling anyone about secret courts with secret decisions?!

Quick, let's legislate after the fact to make it all legal!

I'm afraid that I...

[Psychotria]

I voted for the current government. Why? Because of the fiasco with the previous government changing leaders every 10 minutes and some proposed legislation (by the current opposition) I didn't -- and don't -- agree with.

The problem from my point of view is that I voted to try and make the best of a bad situation. Unfortunately, both major parties seem to have the same policy ideas! So, shit, they may as well be the same party. How can we elect leaders when they all seem to have the same ideas (well, once elected)? So, as mentioned I am part of the problem (because I gave them my vote) but what is the solution?

Anyone would think that we're a country led by the USA rather than a Commonwealth country of Britain. It's stupid. And this all started with the Free Trade Agreement. Personally I'm sick of the USA sticking their nose up other people's arses, but I'm out of ideas on what to do about it.

Re: Fine.

[Ash-Fox]

If we catch anyone using them

Due to the nature of how darknets work, that is going to be difficult.

Tails - The amnesic, incognito, live system

[PhunkySchtuff]

Just putting this out there for fellow Aussies. Fire this up in a VM and you're good to go.
https://tails.boum.org/

Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity, and helps you to:

use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship;
all connections to the Internet are forced to go through the Tor network;
leave no trace on the computer you are using unless you ask it explicitly;
use state-of-the-art cryptographic tools to encrypt your files, emails and instant messaging.

Yes, I know it's not perfect and possibly contains bugs, but against the proposed Aus Govt surveillance, it's a very quick and easy workaround.

Re:Tails - The amnesic, incognito, live system

[AHuxley]

A nation with so few international optical landing sites a Tempora option would allow the finding of most messages in and out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Tails - The amnesic, incognito, live system

[PhunkySchtuff]

And, even without Tempora, the old story of "a boat anchor severed the fibre cable" is usually sufficient explanation for downtime when a tap is made...

Nostalgic for a nice set of chains, are they?

[golodh]

Or simply an overreaction? I really wonder.

Allowing the security services to *monitor* the whole country looks like a panicky move and leaves the door wide open to abuse.

Curtailing the freedom of speech of journalists and bloggers, as in :

The legislation makes it an offence if a person "discloses information ... [that] relates to a special intelligence operation" and does not state any public interest exemptions, meaning it could apply to anyone including journalists. Those who disclosed such information would face up to 10 years' jail.

veers into police-state territory, given the vague way in which it's phrased. I think that the balance between on the one hand safeguarding the effectiveness of anti-terrorism measures and on preventing miscreants from benefiting from bloggers and journalists and a general gag-order on the other has been upset.

For example reporting on the crackdown of the past few days would probably fall under it. Reporting like the articles that exposed the TSA's practices of make-work and unprofessional conduct could fall under it, if the prosecutors happened to feel like it.

I'm not given to quoting historical figures as a rule, but I'll make an exception now:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. [Franklin, B. ((11 Nov. 1755) Reply to the Governor] .

Have they really considered the costs and benefits of this little gag-law? Are their "Special Intelligence Operations" that fragile that they come apart when people report about them? I can't imagine it.

Re:Nostalgic for a nice set of chains, are they?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Or simply an overreaction? I really wonder.

Allowing the security services to *monitor* the whole country looks like a panicky move and leaves the door wide open to abuse.

Curtailing the freedom of speech of journalists and bloggers, as in :

The legislation makes it an offence if a person "discloses information ... [that] relates to a special intelligence operation" and does not state any public interest exemptions, meaning it could apply to anyone including journalists.

Those who disclosed such information would face up to 10 years' jail.

       

veers into police-state territory, given the vague way in which it's phrased. I think that the balance between on the one hand safeguarding the effectiveness of anti-terrorism measures and on preventing miscreants from benefiting from bloggers and journalists and a general gag-order on the other has been upset.

Oh that's not what it's about. See, Australia's policy on boat-arrival asylum seekers was recently all categorized (and its funding transferred) to the defense department, so the whole thing is now a military operation with a budget put out of sight behind general defense spending (which you can increase effectively without limit or consideration).

Which makes everything about it "operational security". Like you know, the number of boats that arrived, how many sank, where the people are being taken...

Fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia switches over to fascism

Re: Fine.

[frikken lazerz]

How can you assure the people and peers on the darknet aren't government agents? It's the same way government brings down pedophile and identity theft rings - pose as a member, gain trust, gather information, and then act on it (which could be, depending on what government we are talking about, anything from arrest to making you disappear).

Re: Fine.

[Ash-Fox]

pose as a member, gain trust, gather information

Fortunately, with the advent of computers and cryptography. One does not need to even present their real identity. The risk from exposure is somewhat reduced because if you infiltrate one member's details, that doesn't give you much about other members if responsible measures are kept in place.

their secrecy is a bigger problem than our privacy

[pupsocket]

The real danger is the secrecy with which these privacy-violators operate. Even if they were miraculously staffed with Spock-like analysts pure of all malevolence, they would drive the country off a cliff by avoiding the corrective of public accountability.

Suppose Australia outlawed all clothing and curtains, put every square centimeter under public surveillance with open online access, published all bank statements online, restricted the use of passwords only to verify authority for transactions, and recorded all conversations, whether in person or electronic, for public review. It would be a different village, and individual liberites would need to be protected from taboo rather than intrusion, but it would still be a society, susceptible to being changed by its inhabitants.

Instead, Australia's One-Way Mirror of Control will reduce Australians to a slave population controlled by a paranoid elite. The pyramids and monuments will be magnificent and the leaders all superhuman geniuses concerned only for the welfare of all, and you'd better agree if you hope to eat another meal.

A bit more perspective

[dbIII]

A bit more perspective - a high enough alert for the outgoing head of an intelligence agency to make noise about it but not serious enough for him to say on for an extra week in times of trouble.
Pure cooked up chest thumping security theatre.

Don't have them in Aus

[dbIII]

Everything has to go through well monitored choke points before it can get very far. Of course that means that every now and again a backhoe cuts off nearly all traffic to a major city.

Ring the alarum bells

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

With sloppy controls and logging, this can be abused by those in power to spy on their political opponents. I am convinced this is goong on in the US.

This is why there are supposed to be things like warrant requirements. If you can skip that with no alarm bells going off, goodbye freedom.

ASIO to monitor the entire Australian internet ..

[lippydude]

This isn't a local initiative, but a directive by the US intelligence services. You see in order to defend the homeland, the rest of the planet has to be converted into a Stazi-like total surveillance police state. It's ironic that such measures wouldn't be allowed back in the US of A.

Re:ASIO to monitor the entire Australian internet

[iggymanz]

Eh, such things are done in the USA, and then the NSA and Obama lie about it. Then, they pass a law saying they can't do it except when they decide there is need.

Pit them against each other.

[Kazoo the Clown]

The one thing spy agencies hate is transparency. We need to get the ASIO spying on the NSA and vice-versa. And independent groups spying on the lot of them. Then we can all stop using the internet, having become nothing more than a useless ad agency tool.

Re:Great

[DocHoncho]

Silly little man, they don't have countrymen. They have SUBJECTS. They're only doing what's best for us, we're just too stupid and small minded to understand it.