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Australia's Major Parties Vote Against Encryption In Wake of Apple FBI Case (delimiter.com.au)
daria42 writes: If you're counting on Apple to keep your digital information safe, you may want to think again ... at least if you live in Australia. Yesterday the country's two major political parties — Labor and the Coalition — voted down a motion in Federal Parliament calling for strong encryption to be supported in the wake of the FBI's demands that Apple unlock iOS. It appears that implementing comprehensive telephone and email retention in Australia may not have been the end of demands by law enforcement in the country.
This is interesting. I live in Australia and I have barely even heard about this vote. It's been a "non-issue" in the news, here. There has been minor coverage of the FBI issue with Apple but extremely minor. You'll note the link in the article, "delimiter" is hardly a mainstream news outlet. The main news outlets here (abc.net.au, etc.) haven't even got this on their front page (at the time of this post).
So basically, both sides of government have managed to keep it pretty much below the radar.
I'm not saying it's totally out of the news (I heard it in a news bulletin that lastest about 4 seconds) but the media is not running with this as an issue. So Joe Public will never care because he's never going to even know he should care.
The motion called upon the Senate to note that strong digital encryption protects the personal and financial information of millions of people; that encryption is an important tool to prevent identity theft and other crime; that encryption ensures that public interest whistleblowers, journalists and other civil society actors can conduct their activities more securely; and that the Government, through services such as Medicare and Centrelink, and digital platforms such as myGov, depends on encryption to keep client information safe.
The motion also called upon the Senate to note that any decrease in public trust in digital systems and services will present an obstacle to the Government’s agile innovation agenda”.
Secondly, it called upon the Federal Government to “support the continued development and use of strong encryption technologies; resist any push from other governments to weaken encryption on personal devices; and work with law enforcement to develop alternative avenues to obtain information through warrants and targeted surveillance that does not put every Australian at greater risk of identity theft.”
It called on the senate to "support" and "note". Sounds like it was a largely pointless bill in the first place. Not that both major parties wouldn't sell out their voters for a dollar if it was on the table, but whether this particular bill passed or didn't will mean precisely squat to anyone, ever.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Besides the fact that 90% of your country is completely uninhabitable by any sizable human population and you're all cluster-fucked to the coasts?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have travelled extensively and lived in multiple countries. I choose to live in Australia because it offers the best lifestyle for me. It is safe, rich, clean, good climate and has lots of opportunities to succeed.
Yes of course and if only Labor were able to vote to protect us, like they did with supporting the TPP, supporting internet monitoring of all citizens... No, both the major parties are for morons to vote for. Even if you dislike some of the Greens policies, like I do, you really should be voting for them if you have a pinch of intelligence. They are the only party able to help, they did an amazing job when Labor was in power and had to deal with them, the minor parties also did alright in saving us from the doom of Abbott and his 18th century views BUT with the recent changes we will no longer have minor parties get seats from 0.005% of votes (which is a good thing imo) so the only sensible thing is to vote Greens this fed election and have Labor second last and Liberals last.
A gun has pretty much one purpose and that is to kill something.
Then most of the guns in the US are total failures because, despite frequent use, they are never used to kill something.