New metadata laws

[pietillidie]

[stui magpie]

[David]

If you can find me one article from the mainstream media supporting Labor's stance on this, I'll be surprised. To Abbott's dwindling band of cheerleaders, they are and always will be the devil incarnate; to nearly everybody else, they are gutless cowards. The Saturday Paper article takes a rare middle-ground stance. Did you read the whole thing? I seem to recall it having some decent information about Australia's current metadata practices. As much as I support the Greens' stance on this, I think they sometimes neglect to give us the full context.

[stui magpie]

You're getting smarter there David. The Greens are just like everyone else in that they'll pitch the part of the story that suits them.

From my understanding, and i'll admit i haven't been following this closely, pretty much everything is already kept by the various providers and already available to Police on request, all this legislation does is formalise the requirement to keep it and the time frame.

Your ISP already has a log of every URL you visit on your computer, your Phone provider knows who you called and who called you, at what time, from where and for how long, who you texted etc etc.

Apparently the legislation has passed the lower house, I'll try to find and review it when my head is working better. This week has been insane.

[Dave The Man]

[Dave The Man]

http://pirateparty.org.au/2015/03/18/government-declares-war-on-the-internet-we-must-fight-back/comment-page-1/#comment-72699

[David]

Apparently MPs were only given 30 minutes to read the bill before it was debated. Bandt and Wilkie couldn't even find any reference to metadata being deleted after the two-year period. A black day for the country.

[pietillidie]

^Indeed. And most them wouldn't know the capability of current big data technologies from Adam. It's yet another case of incompetent people taking the word of people being paid by special interests.

This whole area of security is a giant black box. How is that black box protected from mal-access? How is that data protected from monetary incentive? You can't run systems a fraction of that size without access holes all over them.

Also, if the members of the Five-Eyed Monster are in each other's pockets, which they are, doesn't that mean they'll be forced to follow US dictates of the sort which see businesses shut down and people carried off without the right to even publicise what is being done to them?

The Snowden case is the tip of the iceberg. The corporate espionage alone will be phenomenal, with the Unaccountable Five-eyed Octopus trading favours on the basis of whoever needs a boost in the polls. Only a naive idiot would think that completely driven narcissists, with their grandiose life work and ambitions on the line, won't concoct justifications for pulling the levers.

This is not about conspiracy theory. It's extremely basic human psychology. If a person has power, then that person has a very strong ego, which is understandable and in fact necessary. If a person has great power, then that person is very likely under conditions of competition to also have strong narcissistic qualities by definition. Once that person has built his or her ego value around that power, unless there is a transparency and social constraints the chance of that person failing the ethical test is huge. This is how it works; we're a flawed species, especially once the psychiatric stakes are ratcheted up.

In other words, without a clear explanation of the checks and balances this approach will have, it is grossly unethical to rubber stamp it, especially when those doing the rubber stamping only understand infotech as a bunch* of cliched interfaces.

People are disinterested because in the simplest terms it only affects dissidents, and authoritarians conservatives want them hung and quartered anyhow. But, in fact, it goes to the heart of major decisions, from war and defence to elections, fair trade and market functionality--things which can easily reduce our quality of life in a jiffy.

*Americanism used strategically here to arouse Tannin's interest in the topic

[Dave The Man]

[stui magpie]

[droversdog65]

Every time I read or hear about 'the fight against terrorism' I'm reminded of the prohibition period in America and the Nazi campaign against the underground.

Both unmitigated failures because if you take away too much of peoples freedoms and expect them to sit still for it you are a bigger idiot than Canute.

People forget or are ignorant that the internet was originally partly a workaround for scientists on either side of the then 'Iron curtain', and itself an expression of independence from government meddling lol.

[Jezza]

Home-grown terror does exist (so it's not made up) and there are radical people within Australian communities who sympathise with Sunni jihadist groups like ISIS but most of those people either travel to Syria and Iraq and fight with these groups or they just simply hold these views without going around killing people.

Yes ISIS has encouraged lone-wolf attacks through their constant propaganda but this won't stop it. We have sufficient intelligence as it is in my opinion and this won't enhance it rather it will be detrimental to civil liberties in Australia.

The government has exploited an issue overseas and that primarily has nothing to do with Australia directly as a way to enhance 'national security'.

[Dave The Man]

[Jezza]

Well there's a reason why I have 'national security' in quotation makes Dave.

[David]

Passed the Senate yesterday. Welcome to Australia, surveillance state.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/26/new-data-world-order-government-can-read-every-australian-like-an-open-book