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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.
Congratulations Australia, you're fucked.
A big part of the issue is that voters demand 'total security' from their governments - Citizens expect to be wrapped in a big, warm security blanket. You can't have total security and total liberty, so the governments dispense with liberty. Voters don't mind because hey, their kids are 'safe.'
You demanded security in place of liberty
Now you accept vulnerability in place of security
And you'll never get the liberty you paid for all this back.
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
You didn't hear about it because it is a non-issue, not because of people not being interested, but because anything put forward by the greens or the independents in the senate is a non-issue. It's not even about the major parties keeping this below the radar, this is about as news worthy as a greens senator saying "From now on all t-shirts must be blue" and having that voted down.
This is solely and purely a political stunt by the greens to try and get some air time in the run up to the election later this year.
At least stupidity doesn't skip continents.
You are referring to the summary above I take it ... ;)
What has happened here is that a minor party (the Greens) have, almost on the spur of the moment, put forward a motion without any attempt to shore up political support in either House of Parliament, and --unsurprisingly, not being on the policy agenda of either major party, --said motion was not carried. There was never any intention by Sen Ludlam that his motion pass (he's not insane you know). This was done instead to highlight the issue (and perhaps his party's stance, though I note he was supported by minor parties of various political shades).
To conclude, as the summary does, that "[i]t appears that implementing comprehensive telephone and email retention in Australia may not have been the end of demands by law enforcement in the country" is either wildly misinformed, disingenuous, or outright insane. Now we probably haven't heard the end of demands by law enforcement in Australia, but the ineluctable defeat of this motion in the Senate has little to do with that.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
It's a bloke who stole a sheep, note a dude. Get it right at least!
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.
There was no debate. None. What so ever. A minor party figure got up and went on a rant and then said "I call upon you to vote on my rant".
The independents also voted for it so that they wouldn't be seen to be part of the major parties.
None of what you have said I disagree with, but it is also not relevant to what occurred.
Yes, Gillard was for the TPP, but the carbon tax is the main reason why the Murdoch empire came out against Labor. The oligarchs are very picky these days: They want total loyalty to their version of capitalism on all the issues.