Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours
tutanota.comIt took me just a couple of minutes to find the bill in question, read up on it and find that most of the claims made in this article are incorrect.
It's not "rushed through parliament in 24 hours", it's been in a process since at least December 2020. The 'without a judge' part is strongly misleading:
(5) If subsection (4) applies, the applicant must:
(a) provide as much information as the eligible Judge or nominated AAT member considers is reasonably practicable in the circumstances; and
(b) not later than 72 hours after the making of the application, send a duly sworn affidavit to the eligible Judge or nominated AAT member, whether or not a warrant has been issued.
The AAT's decisions "are subject to review by the Federal Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court of Australia" (Wikipedia).
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
This is just the digital equivalent of a police officer being able to arrest you without a court order.
5.b ...or what? In practice these kinds of rules are unenforced because governments tolerance for their own busy schedules, giving exceptions for unavoidable delay, is infinite.
And then it happens so much it's standard practice and attorneys lose social credit for even bringing it up.
I would say it depends. If it takes 80 hours to get approval and it turns out that the warrant was, well, warranted, then I don't consider it to be a big problem.
If it takes 80 hours and it turns out to be abuse, then heads would probably roll.
However, in most cases these things are legitimate. I've worked in government and most people have good intentions. We don't have to protect ourselves, as a society, against the legitimate cases, we have to protect ourselves against the abuse.
Good intentions means nothing. Most people have good intentions but that doesn't prevent them from abusing power, lying and causing damages intentionally and unintentionally.
Then we mean different things by "good intentions".
What if it turns out to be 30 days?
Unless there are stated penalizations for violations, rules mean nothing.
"Judge or nominated AAT member" AAT members are not judges, so does a judge need to nominate these AAT members? Even if they do, I think many would argue that the AAT should not be fulfilling this role. Only judges should, as they are talking about crimes with seven or more year sentences.
Source: Section 13 of the law https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2017C0019313 Nominated AAT members (1) The Minister may, by writing, nominate a person who holds one of the following appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue warrants under this Part: (a) Deputy President; (b) senior member (of any level); (c) member (of any level). (2) Despite subsection (1), the Minister must not nominate a person who holds an appointment as a part‑time senior member or a member of the Tribunal unless the person: (a) is enrolled as a legal practitioner of the High Court, of another federal court or of the Supreme Court of a State or of the Australian Capital Territory; and (b) has been so enrolled for not less than 5 years. (3) A nomination ceases to have effect if: (a) the nominated AAT member ceases to hold an appointment described in subsection (1); or (b) the Minister, by writing, withdraws the nomination. (4) A nominated AAT member has, in relation to the performance or exercise of a function or power conferred on a nominated AAT member by this Act, the same protection and immunity as a Justice of the High Court has in relation to proceedings in the High Court.
I don't see the necessity and equivalency to be honest. A police officer isn't allowed to search your apartment for example, why should he be allowed to search you documents without court order?
In many jurisdictions, a police officer is allowed to search your apartment under special, urgent circumstances. I'm sure you can think of cases where immediately issued warrants make sense, whether its for apartments or documents.
Recent and related:
Australian Police get online account takeover, data disruption powers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364140 - Aug 2021 (77 comments)
‘Extraordinary’ hacking powers pass Australian Parliament - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28311722 - Aug 2021 (212 comments)
Australia is becoming a surveillance state - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048 - Aug 2021 (423 comments)
418 votes submitted 3 hours ago and the story can't be found on the front page
The top commenter is throwaway created an hour ago
Curious how ranking works on HN. If that hasn't been answered already.
It set off the flamewar detector.
Comment ranking doesn't depend on account age.
i recommend using hckrnews.com as your front page for many reasons, including this one
I'm most curious about what they mean by "ADDING" data...
Does this mean the police can create a social media account in your name? Imagine for instance that they suspect one of your family members of tax evasion. Can they create a fake social media account or email account registered to you, and impersonate you for the sake of entrapping someone else? Like hey uncle, love your new car, got any hot accounting tips? I don't even see anything in these laws that says the person whose data they're accessing has to be the target of the investigation.
Imagine if at any time in any chat, even with your partner or parent or child, you couldn't know whether you were actually talking with them or a government agent, perhaps because someone they know is tangentially suspected of a crime - without the matter even being brought before a judge. Terrifying. This is how societies turn into places where everyone is completely fearful of saying anything at all.
The law generally allows the state to abuse its people in all kinds of ways. That’s the social contact: that abuse is seldom, and when it occurs the abuser gets punished. If it occurs enough then usually something big socially occurs, like a revolution.
I responded to the child comment, but I do have to say that this kind of dismissive aerial view of all world history and the progress made toward freedom in liberal democracies in the last 200 years really irks me, and has a decidedly millennial / tweet-like ring to it. It's all nice and great to have theories about how everything is fucked and all government is corrupt, from the relative security of a permissive western country where you've never lived under anything resembling totalitarian oppression. Worse is to believe you actually are a victim suffering under it and have no choice but revolution. A more rational and educated stance, undertaken by generations of civil rights activists before you, is not to dismiss the entire premise of government as a pure ugly display of power, and instead to fight tooth and nail against the individual attempts that culminate in its going out of control (in contrast to saying they'll get away with everything up until there's a revolution - which again, is defeatist posturing).
A contract is consent in both ways. Most people have not consented neither explicitly nor tacitly to any of this. I understand what the term means, but most people seem to stick with the enlightenment-age definition while in reality what we currently have in most states (eastern or western) is not a social contract, but a hostage situation.
I think you and the parent you're responding to agree more than you realize. They're describing the modern nation state as if totalitarianism and a Hobbesian state of nature were the only two alternatives, sprinkled with revolution. You're describing it as if the social contract was premised on mutual consent, missing the larger point that consent of the governed has historically been just a stopgap against revolution. (Really, if you believe you're in a hostage situation then revolution is the only way out).
I agree and disagree with both of you. They're right that institutional power can and does get away with trampling the social contract, to the degree it feels it can. You're right that the contract itself is (supposedly) premised on mutual consent. But both of these strike me as defeatist postures. They both have in common the idea that the contract is with the state which holds all the power. What I think you both miss is that every state and every government is just made up of people. Whatever durability liberal democracy has, or the fact that it's emerged repeatedly over a couple millenia and shown itself capable of out-producing and out-warring autocracies, is not as much premised on a Hobbesian contract or a legal contract, or even the consent of the governed, so much as it is on the consent of those in government, their own sense of social status, and the degree to which that status results from their exclusion of the people they govern or their need for approval from those people. To the extent that all these incursions on privacy are still being done in the name of protecting children or stopping terrorism, as phony as that is, it gives the people in power a psychological pass for doing what would otherwise be Stasi or KGB style intrusion. It makes them acceptable at parties and makes them able to believe that they're "the good guys". The collapse of the USSR came about because the individuals tasked with oppressing the population - from Gorbachev down to the border guards - could no longer view themselves as the good guys if they did these things to their countrymen. The last stages of an oppressive society are where fear of punishment is no longer as bad as the need to escape oppression. For reasons that dovetail with the simplified explanations offered about what governments naturally do, etc, it's easy for a free society like Australia to slip into totalitarianism, and quite hard for it to get out. But all it really boils down to - and I mean, even down to the level of these universal observations we're all making in online comments, and up to the Congress or parliament or the inner circle of the CCP, is an individual dick measuring popularity contest. If the people in power are made to feel they are the bad guys, they'll overthrow the system. But that does require the revolution coming for its own. In this case, it will be no time at all before some MP gets entrapped by one of these things... the question on the table is really who is in charge there now and where does power flow from?
This is an important piece of legislation - however OP doesn't provide the best link (it's a blog post from a company that sells encrypted email service?).
This should be a helpful - it's a list of politician speeches when the bill was debated in parliament.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary%20Business/Bills%20Legi...
For non-Australians, politicians with (LP) or (LNP) belong to the party in government.
For example, speech by government party member: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansardr...
Speech from opposition party (that still supported the bill):https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansards...
Speech from a third party: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansards...
Australia is turning itself into a prison state. Citizens are allowed to go outside for maximum one or two hours, total surveillance, unconstrained searches of the property... About the same set of rights as a supermax prison inmate has, it looks like.
Minor nitpick: Australia is turning itself back into a prison state.
Back then they didn't really have a choice. Now it's all on them - they elected those people.
Putting it on us electing them is doing us too much credit. You can elect someone and then have them do things you didnt expect and disapprove of. Australians are clamouring for more oppression.
You obviously have no idea, everyone we have elected has been thrown out and replaced. Its pointless even voting any more.
The part about being "allowed to" go outside isn't true. Take it from me, I live here and am free to go wherever I please.
Also live here. Cant leave my house without a valid excuse and even then mostly only 5km. You can easily find videos of people being arrested for doing yoga in parks. Probs get arrested even if I have a valid excuse because its 5km from your registered address and they froze address changes before I moved.
You might not be as restricted but large parts of your own country are off limits to you, oh and also the rest of the entire planet.
My point was that the entirety of Australia isn't in some dark fascist curfew (not just yet anyways) like the parent seems to suggest.
> ... oh and also the rest of the entire planet.
That wasn't what this thread was about but yes I am aware.
So your counter-argument to "Australia is turning itself into a prison state" is "Australia is not yet 100% a prison state, there are still some places where you could roam free, if you're careful not to go to wrong places and don't try to get out". That sounds like arguing supermax prison conditions aren't so bad because there are also county jails that people get more time for walks in the yard.
You're putting words into my mouth. There's a goddamn reason those places are in lockdown. 1000+ covid cases, while small in comparison to other countries, is the highest a state has ever had here. Lockdown has kept numbers down in the past. If state governments didn't constantly lockdown and then come of out lockdown and instead stayed locked down for longer cases would have remained in the 100s. But people are morons and they want to do whatever it is they do and pretend that people aren't dying from this goddamn disease.
This is probably what they are referring to. Some areas are limiting outdoor time and fining people who are "outside without a reasonable excuse".
"From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be given new freedoms.
Residents of hotspots can leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour, while people in other areas can meet five others outdoors."
> will be given new freedoms
Wow, that's Orwellian to say the least.
Freedom is never granted, it is earned.
And not all freedoms are equal. My freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road is lesser than your freedom to drive safely, so we restrict the former over the latter. Australians have chosen the freedom to live free of the virus over some temporary freedom of movement.
In Auckland (NZ) we are in probably some of the strictest lockdown conditions in the world, with schools and non-essential business closed, travel only permitted for exercise in a local area or visit to the supermarket, and mandatory isolation and testing for close contacts. Lockdowns are still viable here because we have been so vigilant and basically everyone understands the shared responsibility. That's how we earn that freedom.
>Australians have chosen
Have they?
It's called a lockdown...
The question is not how it's called but whether it's happening or not.
So this report, touting additional hour of outside time (within the limits of curfew and for fully vaccinated families of course, we're not savages!) is a complete fabrication?
https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-nsw-restrictio...
It's either fabricated or you're reading it wrong. I'm out and about right now.
Depends what state you are in from what I've seen in news reports. States that failed on COVID have lost their freedoms (quarantine/lockdown) since the hospital system is under strain. If you are in 5 of the 7 states (not NSW/ACT, VIC you probably have the most freedoms out of many developed countries right now.
Its a tale of two opposing extremes.
It's only a matter of time before the other states have rising case levels and lockdowns, vaccinations rise high enough that case levels are not important, or the states realise that it's not sustainable to be on eternal lockdown.
This virus is with humanity forever now.
Let's hope the right choice is made with the least amount of time. The only proactive thing a government can do is vaccinate and increase medical capacity.
yea but the food is better
edit: found information about emergency authorisation
Here's the bill under discussion [1] :
This article states that it brings in new warrants, and makes no mention of "without a judge's warrant" [2].
Perhaps the original article is keying off of:
"(aab) to establish procedures for certain law enforcement officers of the Australian Federal Police or the Australian Crime Commission to obtain warrants and emergency authorisations" [3]
"emergency authorisations" would appear to not require a warrant, but it does include language of "it is not practicable in the circumstances to apply for a <warrant>" [4]
However, I'm not Australian, and definitely not a lawyer.
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
[2] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/even-hacking-field-gove...
[3] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
[4] https://pinpoint.cch.com.au/360document/legauUio1949041sl318...
Can we change the URL of this post to a more normal news website?
The current one is a blog post from an email provider company, not a journalistic entity.
It has unnecessary hyperbole ("End of Human Rights"), and has a clear conflict of interest given that they provide secure email services and one of their main competitors (FastMail) is Australian. (though I do share their concerns)
I find @jpollock's links a good replacement.
My girlfriend is Australian, stranded abroad here in Germany like many other Aussies. I’ve bern following the news from down under for quite a while. I have the nagging feeling that Australia is currently the Western country with the highest chance of turning into Gilead.
Nah, we lack the political motivation for really any major change. Australian politics is about not losing vs winning.
Gilead...? You mean Gulag?
I assumed they meant this https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Republic_of_Gilea...
Yep, as per the other comment. Reference to the Handmaid's Tale.
Interesting. I’m not from Australia but I thought the concept of an Administrative Appeals Tribunal interesting. It seems like a way to offload work from the main court system. According to Wikipedia it also does seem to have oversight by the Federal Court of Australia. [1]
While I agree that this seems like a massive overstep. The actual body seems similar to the FISA court in the US. There wasn’t any detail in the article but I would hope there is a massive audit trail on the ability to modify data or impersonate someone online.
Anyone have any additional details on the AAT’s effect on the average Australian citizen?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Appeals_Tribuna...
Not to directly answer your question, but my trust of "the system" in general is severely shaken by recent cases involving the treatment of whistleblowers.
Australia's powers-that-be seem to be promoting a chilling effect on any revelations that may cause negative publicity about said powers-that-be.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/10/witne...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-29/prosecutors-proceed-c...
The AAT is basically what’s known as an administrative court in other countries [1], or a consolidation of the numerous tribunals presided over by administrative law judges in the U.S. [2]. The average person in Australia is most likely to interact with the AAT by appealing a decision of the federal government in relation to child support, workers’ compensation, social security, immigration or tax [3]. Although the distinction between an AAT member and a judge is constitutionally important, it is not that obvious or practically significant. Both conduct public hearings and provide written reasons for deciding the legal disputes within their jurisdiction, which can be further appealed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_court
Really appreciate the detailed answer @sjy! That makes sense, so it seems odd to me that this article is claiming this is effectively "warrantless". Functionally, it sounds like law enforcement still have to present their case to a judge and then there is a path for recourse on behalf of the citizen.
>The actual body seems similar to the FISA court in the US.
This is your daily reminder that FISA was originally created as a way to provide oversight for intelligence agencies after things like MK Ultra and COINTELPRO. Instead it became a rubber stamp legitimizing their actions.
I don't know where this is going. Perhaps prepping for the global warming riots. Is there a way out of surveillance?
The Australian government has always dreamed fondly of China's control over there population and has been working tireless to get there.
> Is there a way out of surveillance?
Vote with your feet. Divest out of Australia.
Make sure there's a brain drain out of the country.
Leaving Australia is currently very difficult for Australians in Australia even if they reside abroad. But if one could leave, where should they go to?
> Leaving Australia is currently very difficult for Australians in Australia
Just like Cuba and Eastern Europe when the USSR was still around. Wonder why.
going by the number living and moving to canada/west coast it can't be to hard for those under 35 with the working holiday visa
Australians in Australia are not allowed to leave the country they way they were prior to covid. Before, like any other reasonable country, all you needed was a valid passport. Heck, the U.S. doesn't even require that much. But now Australia requires more than just a passport, and to my knowledge that has had the net effect of not letting any Australians out.
They've even made it so citizens who reside outside Australia can't easily leave again if they want to temporarily re-enter the country.
Previously living overseas was an automatic exemption to the exit ban, but now this must be applied for with proof of overseas residence.
As Australian bureaucracy is barely up to the task of organising a chook raffle this is pretty scary. The news articles I've seen give me the impression that the application process is a bit of a dice roll as to whether you get it or not with people re-applying dozens of times over months and no transparency on why their exit permits are rejected. Whether it will be this hard for overseas resident Australians to escape home remains to be seen.
As a way of discouraging Aussies abroad from popping back in for a family funeral or holiday and clogging up the quarantine system it seems a rather effective deterrent (stay awhile, stay forever!) but the minister responsible reckons that's not the motivation for the rule, so you have to wonder what they're thinking.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/government-defends-ne...
Wouldn’t a brain drain lead to even dumber laws?
Democracy leads to dumb laws. It's a tyranny of the bottom 51%ile.
I say this a little tongue in cheek, but it's a real problem I've yet to understand -- how can an outlier intelligent person thrive in a system that caters to the masses? The masses have an incentive to drain any marginal value out of the intelligent, and have the political power to do so.
Edit: @majormajor sorry HN wont let me reply. The reason would be because the bottom 51% have something to gain from extraction. The top 51% however are already superior and dont need to rely on extraction to fulfill their wants/needs.
51% might have been too broad a number, but do you get my drift? Those in the lower intelligence brackets have a lot to gain, but those in the upper intelligence brackets do not have a lot to gain
This is true, and that's why there's constitution. Constitution makes sure that government power is limited to issues that don't change power balance from people to government or from minority to majority groups. It makes sure that no matter who runs the country, they can't ruin it.
The implication here is that there's a sort of "pareto distribution" of capability when it comes to voting "well". This was an issue that the founders tried to solve (in a bad way) by attempting to limit voting to property owners.
Of course, at the time this almost exclusively meant wealthy white men - which is obviously a terrible way to run a voting system.
The converse of this is the "bread and circuses" problem with Democracy. This was supposed to be mitigated by the "House of Lords" equivalent in the U.S. - The Senate.
The Senate was supposed to have been a buffer that protected against popular vote because they were assigned by the state legislature. They were beholden to the welfare of the state, not to direct-democracy political campaigning and all its ills.
Personally, I think its time to re-evaluate the 17th amendment to see if it had the desired effect, or resulted in massive unintended consequences.
Why would the bottom 51% have more influence than the top 51% or the middle 25-76% or whatever other random fraction you pull out of your butt?
>Why would the bottom 51% have more influence than the top 51%
51 + 51 = 102%
The bottom 51% have more influence than the top 49% because one is a majority. There is your answer.
I think you missed the point. By this logic, the top 51% have more influence than the bottom 49% so why isn't GP saying they're the ones driving democracy?
As an aside, if you look at the elected representatives of Australia, I suspect you'll find most of them are highly educated.
or you might not. some of the highest ministers are country bumpkins catering to the lowest common denominator. the country was however founded by very well educated persons.
Why must the 50% percentile vote with the bottom half rather than the top half?
Most of the early Federalist papers deal with this problem of democracy in very damning terms. It leads to failures of the state -- usually within a hundred or so years. That is why the US decided to be a Republic instead.
Outside the US, countries after WW1/2 opted for democracies instead of republics with strong foundations. We're witnessing the point of failure due to the exact issues outlined in those papers.
If there is such a convincing answer, why don't you actually state it, instead of just saying that others have talked about it?
It's very non-obvious to me why there's a natural "coalition of the bottom" versus that just being one possible way for things to shake out.
(It's also worth noting that the original American system already suffered a MASSIVE failure of the state - coincidentally also around the hundred year mark - which makes me think maybe they didn't have things perfectly figured out anyway. It hurts the credibility of the appeal to tradition/authority.)
It took them almost a dozen papers to cover all the points and explain them. Asking me to cover all that in a short post is rather unfair (and your various counterpoints no doubt appear in the anti-federalist papers which are also great reading).
What crisis are you talking about specifically? The closest they came to failure was definitely the civil war. Most people would put that as a crisis of absolutely irreconcilable moral differences rather than of normal politics. No political system ever devised could solve that problem without violence or complete separation.
Well then why should I believe the set of arguments from the federalist papers over the counterpoints in the anti-federalist ones, then? The reason I ask you to summarize is because you're the one claiming their existence should change my views, and that they show that democracy has to fail.
The civil war sure seems like a bigger failure of a state than anything we've seen in Western Europe since the world wars. The "irreconcilable moral difference" was known when the constitution was being created, so punting on it is a pretty giant red flag to me about the ultimate wisdom of the founders, and about the constitution as something we should revere - we should change it constantly as situations change.
Other kind of dumb laws. Authoritaranism is a special kind of dumbness historically associated with really smart people.
Authoritarianism is an expression of fear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
disclaimer: I distance myself from the groups currently associated with these schools of thought. I also think the English version of this article is lacks scientific savoir faire.
The gender inequality part is empirically and historically wrong.
edit: To be honest the whole article is trash, better read it here (Psychological theory):
Not the problem anymore for the brains that fled.
Kinda weird for the attitude toward governments allegedly violating freedom to be “it’s okay as long as it doesn’t affect me.”
Why shouldn't a person exercise their most powerful vote, voting by their feet and exit the system to reintegrate in a different system.
Serfs did it in the past when feudalism become to harsh and moved to the cities to make a living. Europeans did it when life became to harsh in Europe and moved to the Americas.
Of course one can avoid most domestic laws by moving to another country. My point is that when someone asks for a solution to this problem, I’m assuming they are looking for something to actually help solve the problem in that country, because they’re probably already aware that simply leaving is a viable way out for themselves (if they can afford it).
No, it's not okay. But if you can't fix it, why stay in a bad environment?
At that point, who cares? You live somewhere else, not your problem. That's sorta the whole point of leaving a country for political reasons, you feel it's unfixable and not worth hanging around. It's defeatist and doesn't help the people still in Australia, but it's a valid value judgement.
Or vote with your… vote. The relative benefit is that it can actually work, in theory at least.
Theory isn't very useful when something like this comes to the table.
How many times has this theory been cheated in the last thousand years?
the answer is, a lot
You really think any of what's going on in Australia is the will of the people?
They have people voting over 3% tax increases and gay marriage, not surveillance. Doesn't matter who you vote for, every party is in favor of increasing their power.
We never had a vote on same sex marriage. It was more a completely optional mail in survey whose results the govt. was completely welcome and within its rights to ignore.
On that one, at least, the politicians were too spineless to take a stand.
So which country is better in that regard?
Yes
> Divest out of Australia.
Time to sell AAAU etf, you can't trust a bank if the gov't is corrupt.
If you have been trusting Australian banks I would refer you to the recent Royal Commission:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/20/banki...
Join the bureaucracy executing it. Make the experience of being surveiled as onerous and intrusive as possible so that the fever can break sooner.
If there are riots, then a worldwide crash of the financial markets seems like the more likely cause
Vote. Or be more active in politics.
Voting is how this mess started... how is voting harder going to fix what voting created? Nothing short of a common national ethos of trust in an almost unremovable leader can solve this problem. A leader who can listen to experts and make a choice, even if unpopular, without fear of next election and without the need to aggrandize more power and wealth.
That's the kind of rationalization which got Europe into WW2...
"Fear of the next election" is one of the few things that keeps elected leaders in line.
You want a wise, just dictator for life, and maybe you luck out and get one who reigns beneficently for a few decades, but who's to say their successor will be as good, or the next one, and on and on until you inevitably get a Stalin.
Put another way: if the leader dies, and heir A spends all their effort on ruling effectively, and heir B spends all their effort on beating heir A to the throne, how can heir A succeed? You'd need metrics for being a good ruler which are immune to Goodhart's Law.
Given that—over time—power inevitably centralizes and inevitably is abused, those tendencies must be counterbalanced; or else power must be regularly reset by more crude means.
and if that doesn't work wait 4 or 5 more years and vote again, hope for the better!
Voting is mandatory and it has bi-partisan support.
Voting is already mandatory in Australia.
Too late.
You can take a man out of surveillance but you can't take surveillance out of a man
Take the red pill?
What does this mean, and how does one take it? Googling it comes up with misogny and a documentary of the same name.
From 'The Matrix':
Oh sorry, yes it the matrix reference.
Right, but like besides a reference, is there something you'd suggest as an action? (which represents taking the redpill)
The "Red-pill" in the Matrix signifies an action which one cannot go back on. It is an action which requires the user to shatter their built-up version of reality forever (signified by the the blue-pills they have been taking all along).
We need more people to challenge their view of reality, and accept that things may not be as happy and comfortable as we want them to be for the security of our futures and our children's futures.
And no, I don't mean "global warming is destroying the ability for life to live" wise, I mean in terms of how much our politicians and public servants are truly serving us at this point. Voting for lifelong politicians more or less got us here, the red pill is accepting that these people may have always had more sinister plans in mind than we thought.
Ok, so this is what I was after in my question. Thank you.
So "Take the redpill" is (in this case) a statement about taking a different path with politics (politicians) .
Couldn't have described it better. Well put @hatware
The Matrix
Being a gray man is probably the realistic solution for most people.
What do you mean by this?
Australia's penal colony origins are beyond ironic anymore.
I bet they're pretty worried about unrest from climate change. Most of the continent is pretty hot and arid already and it's not going to get better when temperatures start rising.
I guess my days as a paying customer of FastMail are coming to an end. I don’t expect to ever become a legitimate target of Australian law enforcement, but there is always abuse.
Agreed, which sucks because no other service out there is better at their prices. And I have everything important tied to that address. I have never been to Australia and don't ever plan to, but the fact that any government can legally plant data on my account and then try to prosecute me for it is scary as hell. Given that Australia and the US are part of the "Five Eyes", it's not a stretch to believe they can construct a case out of planted evidence and push it to the FBI as a joint investigation.
Stop allowing email providers to control the domain of your email. Buy a $10/year domain and point it at GitHub pages (so it gains some trustworthiness). Send your email to that domain, and point the MX records at a mail provider (Fastmail or GMail or ProtonMail, doesn't matter).
I own several domains, and I have two valid email addresses at two personal domains hosted with a small US hosting provider, but I don't want those to end up in spammer lists so I use them sparingly. For a main email address I'm better off with a large email-focused provider that has tools to handle all the spam that builds up from an address used for online purchases and forum/social accounts, and as I mentioned Fastmail has the absolute best tools for managing all of that. Gmail is not an option, nor Microsoft.
When people say use your own domain, they mean use your own domain at the email provider of your choice. You don't miss out on any of their tools by using your own domain.
I get that, and as I said Fastmail has the best tools for managing email, so since none of the other major email providers have the features I want it wouldn’t do me any good to move my own domains to any of them. I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear in my previous message.
I've done quite a bit of searching for a good mail provider and mailbox.org is what I would recommend.
Me too, and I just submitted a support request seeking clarification. I'll update with any reply I get.
Update 2:
```
I have heard back from our privacy team and I’d love to share their responce to your query:
Thanks for reaching out to us about the recent bill in Australia. We love that our customers care about their digital rights and want to find out more about how companies are looking after their information.
Your data is held in datacentres in the US, but we require all requests for access to customer content to be served through Australia where our company is headquartered.
The police can't intercept, access or modify your messages without us receiving a warrant, and we take our duty of care seriously. Fastmail responds to well formed warrants only and challenges requests for access that are inappropriate, either in scope (not adequately targeted), or depth (asking for information that seems out of proportion to what's being investigated). We will continue to do so, for any legislation that applies to us both now and in the future.
The new bill still doesn't allow 'trawling' for suspicious data: they can't request access to a wide variety of accounts hoping they'll come across something of interest. They need to have a particular account under suspicion and something that gives them grounds for that suspicion, and the offence in question needs to be suitably severe to be worth the intrusion.
Where we are permitted under a warrant, we will notify the accountholder of the access request, and due to our existing measures to help customers stay aware of any hackers compromising their account, police can't also enter your account without leaving evidence you can see.
What this means for you: Fastmail remains a privacy-first provider. We will comply with our legislated duties, while taking care to ensure that we do not act unless compelled by law and that all legislated preconditions have been properly satisfied. Your data remains under your control and you can rest comfortably knowing that your account won't get caught up in a surveillance net.
Please let me know if you have any other questions. Sincerely,
```
Update:
``` Hi,
Thank you for contacting Fastmail support.
I’ve escalated your ticket to our privacy team, who is best suited to assist with this issue. You can expect to receive an update in approximately two business days.
I thank you for your patience as we work to get this addressed for you.
Sincerely, ** ```
I got the same as well. I look forward to hearing what they have to say on it.
hey, have they replied to you yet?
Interested in that too. I checked their blog, they seem to be talking about everything privacy except for this.
thanks! an update would be much appreciated when you get it
Well fuck I just moved to Fastmail. Who else is out there?
And no I’m not self hosting.
I use Mailbox.org. My only regret is not buying my own domain name for it ahead of time in case Germany started doing things I wasn’t cool with.
I’ve been sufficiently satisfied with their service. Sometimes emails take a bit of time to receive, like 10 or so minutes. That’s about it.
10 minutes? The 30-60 seconds Runbox (Norwegian) takes to deliver 2FA or other types of confirmation emails already bug me. Not enough time to do something else, plenty of time to overthink my choice in email provider.
Privately (Runbox is my employer's provider) I run my own server and desktop notifications of new mail are often faster than the page loads where it was triggered. Maybe I'm spoiled.
It takes 10 minutes because they use greylisting. You can also turn it off if you don't mind getting a bit more spam.
https://kb.mailbox.org/display/MBOKBEN/Customizing+your+mail...
Ten minutes seems problematic. I use a few services where the MFA codes I receive (via email!) expire in only 5 minutes.
Same, I paid for 3 years upfront. I love FastMail UI and nothing comes close to it. :-(
Tutanota and Mailbox.org are 2 good alternatives.
I've been using Mailbox.org for a few years.
protonmail?
TIL Fastmail is an Australian company. I wonder if this bill applies to data hosted outside of Australia for international clients by a company based in Australia?
I'd really like to know what they have to say about this.
As far as I know, Fastmail has been backdoored for a few years now by Australian government (and hence I assume the USA, too). It is Fastmail’s biggest disadvantage, in my opinion.
While that may be true (and I'm sort of disappointed to find this out), I don't think there's any server _at all_ that I'd trust if I'm worried about certain governments snooping in on my email. That level of communication would prompt me to use PGP.
Yes, that is is why I continue to be a Fastmail customer. I do not think there is a comparable alternative with no government snooping.
Snooping is one thing. Full blown legal access for law enforcement to view and tamper is another.
Being able to tamper is a game changer and would cause me to end my subscription. As far as I know, the US government does not explicitly condone that...yet.
They don't seem to mention any special treatment for international clients: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/law-enforcement.htm...
I recommend reading the actual law before panicking. The article is pretty exaggerated. There is still judicial oversight to protect you from abuse, making this the same as most other laws in most western democracies.
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
> There is still ...
You're probably right. Although seeing it in context, those news coming from Australia suggest a very slippery slope where "There is still ..." might not be true sometime soon. On the one hand it could be negativity bias, on the other hand there's also the fear Australia is being used as an experiment and the rest of the Five Eyes will follow suit.
That is quite possibly the case, and we should never cease to be vigilant. But that said, we were worried about the same slippery slope 20 years ago, and at least in my country it is less worrisome now than then.
It seems to me that Australia is lagging behind more than being an experiment, considering they're still talking about encryption laws etc. But perhaps the US is as well?
Each of the Five Eyes benefits, so one doesn't need to be the target of just Australian law enforcement.
Also: Atlassian
Oh, god, that's just dawned on me too. Time to look for another provider
In what way was this bill "rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours"? The bill in question is dated 2020 and the committee was requesting submissions by 12th February[0]
[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joi...
You’re quite right, but it is exceptional that the bill passed the House of Representatives on the same day as its second reading speech, and passed the Senate on the following day [1]. This means that there was little time for debate and amendment within Parliament itself, including by minor parties [2] and independents [3] not represented on the committee that reviewed the first draft of the bill.
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
[2] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
[3] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
Doesn’t it pass that quickly because it got enough votes? In other words there wasn’t enough dissent to require further readings and debate because enough people were happy with it.
That’s a necessary condition for any bill to pass, but as explained in [2] and [3], this one followed an exceptional procedure which reduced the opportunity for parliamentarians outside the two major parties to consider, propose and persuade others to endorse amendments to the bill. The opposition was also “concerned” about aspects of it, but voted yes because of the “tension between how quickly criminals can adapt their trade craft and how long it takes to properly scrutinise and introduce the legislation required to counteract and disrupt criminal activity” [4].
[4] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
In similar news the well-known direct democracy of Switzerland just voted a new rule giving police similar surveillance powers without judicial oversight. So it's obviously the people wishing to be better surveilled and we're the outliers here.
That means the government and media successfully manufactured consent with the population.
A majority of the US supported the War on Terror. That was manufactured consent with thanks to the corporate press. It was only the outliers that protested from the beginning, only proven correct after 20 years, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted in Afghanistan.
Now that this has ended, be on alert for the next campaign of fear that will be used to erode freedom and increase the surveillance state. Australia is a look at the near future of western "democracy" if they are successful.
Democracy is rule by the media. This has been a criticism of it for hundreds of years.
Agreed. My expectation from a community like HN would be total rebellious culture from the mainstream attitude, full of interesting perspectives, data-backed arguments, anti-mob pro-objectivity discussions, and no shortage of nutjobs posting crazy theories - the good ol' hacker culture.
What terrifies me is that HN community continues to double-down anything but mainstream and conformity. This is in direct relation to larger societal trends that you're highliting. Even the slightest neutral stance will get you downvoted.
If no one on HN is doing the legwork for raising concerns, who will?
Plenty of us are still libertarian and think for ourselves. (Including you, I’d guess.)
Every platform is likely to eventually reflect the most common forms of groupthink from the culture. The reason I love HN is that I regularly see counter points and good perspective here that I simply don’t see anywhere else.
Trillions of dollars wasted in the war but it should also be mentioned that the US lost over a trillion dollars shorty before the attacks on the world trade center. The war swept that topic from the table but the money has to be somewhere.
That's unfair. People are exhausted. The world is too complex. We have almost no control of anything. People just want to eat, sleep and spend time with their family. They don't have hours a day to get up to speed on the most complicated new tech law that will just be rubber stamped by people who are supposed to represent our interests for campaign dollars. Some of these laws get push back and trend hashtags for a couple of days. Then the powers that be just try again in 2 months. And again, and again. You know, because of the children......
That's terrible news. I wonder how this will interact with ProtonMail (which I just switched to.)
On the other hand, I don't think you can draw your conclusion from those two examples. Also, other than the cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, Switzerland isn't really a direct democracy, semi-direct at best. You'll notice they have representatives in a federal structure, despite having mechanisms for some direct democracy, and that's not for nothing.
One advantage of ProtonMail is that they are not easy to tamper with, as the data is encrypted with the password you provide at login which is (hopefully) not being stored.
Is that password sent anywhere or is it just used on client side decryption?
That might be a different discussion but the mentioned police surveillance law was voted in a national referendum.
This is why I've always had doubts about direct democracy. Most people are idiots who scare easily and whose views should not be considered.
I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country, people start new companies all the time to solve problems, I think it’s time we start a new country for the first time in how many years? Maybe a government that actually does respect privacy and doesn’t just throw it out the window because of “terrorism” or whatever the thing of the moment might be. Also would be nice to live somewhere that doesn’t have atrocious wars on its historical record or hundreds of years of exploitation of other peoples.
Technically, it is not hard (assuming you have the money). Your biggest hurdle is getting some sort of recognition from other countries. Enough to be able to trade, and enough not to be bombed by some military out there. An island will be a perfect choice as it'll be hard for "refugees", terrorists and militias to slip through your borders.
Your next hurdle is getting a police / army force as police can take over your city if they are not faithful to you. Since you can't protect your island, you'll need some diplomatic deal with a bigger country (USA, France, China, etc...) to pledge for your protection. Gotta pay them somehow for that kind of protection.
Don't be deluded. There are no dictators out there, but representations of the current forces and powers. At some duration in the timeline of this earth, the powers and forces enabled the creation of democratic nations with generous freedoms afforded to its citizens. Of course this would change as these powers and forces shift.
Australia is a de-facto military dictatorship given that it is a resource-export-oriented nation. The forces at the time (being part of the Common Wealth and an ally to the US) has made it a democratic and free country.
> I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country
Really really hard. You have only a few choices and they're all terrible. First one is revolution, see history for how that tends to go. Second is conquest and then colonization followed by eventual independence, again see history for how much this sucks for your stated aims. Seasteading might work but if you develop and build the stuff to make it work you're unlikely to get any acknowledgement of your statehood from any other nation but might get attacked by them [1]. The last option is outer space somewhere and self-sufficient space colonies are still science fiction and once they're not the early pioneers are going to die a lot and their living situation is going to be awful.
1: https://reason.com/2019/10/14/how-two-seasteaders-wound-up-m...
I think the closest you can get these days is a village in some poor but relatively stable country. In Eastern Europe for example.
The government will ignore a lot of things for a pretty long time as long as you're building, doing stuff and paying taxes.
But an independent country? Maybe on a bunch of ships in international waters.
Otherwise you'll quickly find yourself with a small army at your "borders".
Too many people these days, soldiers, guns and ammunition are cheap and all land is taken.
An idea I've heard is that some tech billionaire decides to purchase a little-used state of another country - say in Central America - and turns it into a technolibertarian country of sorts. While treating it like a company, and thus paying the country for its use, iirc.
Maybe, but that should be their right. We need fixes but as long as you can buy a Senator for 4 or 6 years for $100K, we have no chance. Things get a lot harder if that same voting power for 1 vote costs $5M. The problem is that the people in power want to stay there and keep feeding at the trough. What we really need is the ability for public resolutions to put directly into law. Then we could have a chance for reform, unfortunately most states don't have provisions for this path.
I would expect as much, just based on how badly direct democracies have performed historically.
John Adams said, "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy."
In the past, democracy was viewed as a form of government that republics devolved into.
Well, it's interesting, then, that Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe. This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it.
If we are on topic of exchanging opinions of famous men, I think Machiavelli said that the people can be misled and go astray but are not prevented by pride from correcting themselves, like rulers would.
> Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe.
The age of their regime has nothing to do with their history of practicing direct democracy, that happened well after the founding of the US.
> This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it.
On the contrary, I'm just defending the wisdom of the existing constitutional republic framework that we have currently. There's obvious value in constitutional safeguards against the whims of the mob, while still giving the citizenry a say in the long-term direction of the state.
Yeah - democracies are downright miraculously stable in comparison to dictatorships. Look at a period of 200 years of the US - one civil war. Look at the history of England. If you say its "civil war" you need to be more specific than even by century!
Stability of dictatorships is a "trains run on time" style Big Lie.
I don't think anyone was saying that dictatorships were good either - that's another system of government that was considered to be a devolution of a republic.
This was covered by Plato 2,500 years ago. But we don’t learn about that ancient outdated stuff anymore, as it isn’t beneficial for the economy.
As an Australian, how concerned should I be about this authoritarian trend?
I've heard people saying that Australia is used as a test-bed for government policy. I've also heard the creep of China could be the cause of this trend.
I've seen how quickly a functioning country can dissolve (Syria, Ukraine, Hong Kong). Just how concerned should we be about this? And apart from voting, is there any kind of action that can be taken?
Well, just added Australia to the list of places I'm never going.
> The two Australian law enforcement bodies AFP and ACIC will soon have the power to modify, add, copy, or delete your data should you become a suspect in the investigation of a serious crime.
How would one prove the bodies didnt add/modify incriminating items? in the US that would be nigh impossible to argue against as the system implicitly trusts police testimony over accused
There is no defense against a legal power that does not limit itself.
States almost-by-definition have total power should they wish to exercise it.
Western states generally have limited their exercise of power, and they have structured themselves to make it difficult for one government to obtain and exercise total power. That is now changing.
I'm reading this book "You have the right to remain innocent" [1]
And it brings up amazing cases where the system is definitely not limiting it's powers and it's leading to false convictions.
Here's a youtube of more or less the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FENubmZGj8
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30532856-you-have-the-ri...
EDIT: errm actually that YT video is actually a little scant on details. The TLDR is say nothing except make an absolute demand for your 6th amendment rights (a lawyer). And don't be soft about it like "maybe I can get a lawyer?" ... say "I have a right to a lawyer and will not answer anything without first speaking to my lawyer"
People might be thinking "I thought it was the 5th ?" Ironically , the same conservatives that have been trumpeting the 2nd have concurrently been undermining the 5th and now can be used against you as evidence of guilt.
The content in the book you're talking about is probably better represented by Professor Duane's original viral video on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
I think he wrote that book in part because he was frustrated by the lack of nuance in his presentation and the fact that it sort of "went viral". 13 million views for a lecture about law is pretty astonishing.
Yes, but iirc the best advice at the time of the viral video was invoke the 5th, but it has since evolved to do not invoke the 5th. Insist on your 6th .
There's quite a bit of nuance in that recommendation. It's also very much about how you invoke your rights.
Since Salinas v. Texas you cannot stay quiet. You must invoke your 5th amendment right to not speak to the police, else they can use your silence against you at trial(!).
Professor Duane has a video on that topic.
I seem to recall the correct thing to do is to ask for council.
That too. "I will not speak without a lawyer present" should do.
> Ironically , the same conservatives that have been trumpeting the 2nd have concurrently been undermining the 5th and now can be used against you as evidence of guilt.
Just out of curiosity - are you possibly confusing civil vs. criminal cases? The 5th amendment does apply in civil cases to the extent that you cannot be compelled to testify - but a judge can interpret your lack of response in a negative light in a civil setting. This differs from criminal cases where the lack of testimony is not admissible nor can it be considered in determination or sentencing.
I think GP must be referring to Scalia's vote in Salinas v. Texas, which decided that a defendant's silence can be used against them at trial unless they specifically invoked their 5th amendment right to be quiet.
Most directly I am referring to Duane's advice, of which I do not know his direct source (but I'm sure it's in the book as there are extensive notes).
Just thought I'd help clarify where I was coming from. That trial does seem to fit the scenario though.
Both sides of the political spectrum cherry-pick the Constitution. Liberals hate the second amendment. Conservatives hate the ninth.
They've limited themselves because people wanted it (often violently). Now the majority of people are complacent and that's when the "leaders" accumulate power.
In Europe for example, complacent with the police taking away the homeless, complacent with the laws slowly eroding everyone's freedoms, complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people.
It's the same old tired trope of "first they came for X, and I didn't speak out". In the end there will be no one to speak for the majority, either.
We have it coming and we'll get it.
And just because you are comfortable with the current regime having these powers and all knowing insight into your life, it doesn't mean you will be with the next and the next...
>complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people.
Odd choice of topics to be outraged about.
i will add anecdata that I know many healthcare professionals in Canada and they are down right burnt out and angry (even before Covid19) about how the system is giving terrible care to people. They want to do a better job but cannot with quotas and rules dictated by the rule makers.
Canada may have better outcomes on average, because it picks up the very bottom (imagine how easy it is to help the bottom quartile of health). But I think it also drops the ball on people who are proactively trying to optimize their health because then the answer becomes "Not indicated, you're not sick enough for us to care", and then it's outright illegal to say "fine I'll pay out of pocket for the care!" (save for going international)
I wake up every day hating I'm alive and can only sleep with alcohol. Apparently, I'm far from the only one being denied proper mental healthcare. I'm not talking therapy, just medicaiton. So close, yet out of reach. So yeah.
Indeed. To say it another way, state power is total by default. Every individual right is carved out of that default total power.
The 9th and 10th amendments to the US constitution limits the US government only to the powers explicitly enumerated in article 1 section 8.
But in the real world, unfortunately, you are absolutely correct. Even the idea that there are only a short list of things that a government can do is a foreign concept to most folks.
Unfortunately, a depressing number of people believe that an all-powerful government is the solution to all their problems. "There outta be a law" runs rampant.
>There is no defense against a legal power that does not limit itself.
Correction: there is no legal defense.
There are other defenses, historically.
While you are correct, these other defenses are messy and miserable to live through. Let’s hope we find a less bloody path forward.
>There are other defenses, historically.
Indeed. Revolution, rebellion. None of these *have* to be violent per se. The Pax French have handled massive changes in gov without armed conflict in the 20th Century (not counting WWII and Nazis occupation.) It will be very interesting to see how well their democracy will counter this.
> Well, just added Australia to the list of places I'm never going.
Don't worry, they won't let you in anyway.
Won't even let their own people in (or out) at the minute.
Tyrants are going to tyrant.
Well, the police can also temper with any other evidence all the time anyway.
So it is anyway about trust - and how to check reliable, if they deserve trust.
This is how I would choose, which places to visit.
Australia is still quite good on that list, as cases where the police officers for example - are the ones doing the kidnapping and ransoming and investigation about it all by themself, like it is common in other places - are still quite rare.
My experience with australian police officers are a friendly warning for me, for ignoring a red light while at foot. And a asshole police officer stopping and handing out a hefty fine for us, for not "deadstopping" at a stop sign at a empty roadcrossing at night - explicitely, because we were driving a backpackers car and not a local one (he said so)
So all in all, I would probably visit again.
> Well, the police can also temper with any other evidence all the time anyway
Yeah, they do, but that's illegal and NOT encoded in law
So Aus has just made police tampering legal
Well, I did not read the law in detail, but I am pretty sure, that tampering with evidence is not included and still forbidden with the threat of criminal investigation for the officers doing it.
What is allowed here, is hacking for the police. That necessarily can include changing files on the target computers (e.g. deleting logs) - this is the way I read this. And I would see the point in it - if it really only get applied in serious crimes like terrorism to catch the whole network for example. (back to trust)
But yes, it maybe makes it more easy to tamper undetected with evidence in sneaky ways, but not if for example you would log the hacking activities by default of the police. In fact, I strongly believe that this should be done, but doubt, it will be.
> tampering with evidence is not included and still forbidden
> What is allowed here, is hacking for the police. That necessarily can include changing files on the target computers (e.g. deleting logs)
How is this not tampering with evidence?
Not everything is evidence.
When there is an email on the computer that will be used as a proof - then why is this been tampered with, if just a system log was altered?
Courts are usually very strict to only allow "clean" evidence. Cases have been thrown totally over, because of a minor fuckup of police. It is all a question of how it is implemented and used. And sure, it is a very extreme thing and sadly the use case "only for serious crime" is in danger of soon to be applied to allmost anything.
Check the source, and try to verify it against any other information. I can't seem to find anything from a credible source to verify the extent this article claims
EDIT: since I can't directly reply - the article linked below directly contradicts the URL on the HN post - it clearly states that warrants would be needed. It is also political hyperbole and contains very few details about the actual bill. I recommend scrolling down to jpollock's response for credible sources.
>power to modify, add, copy, or delete your data
Since when is it legal in any democracy that the police can temper (modify, add) or delete proof? That's just beyond my understanding.
Democratic != righteous, no matter we wish they coincide.
That's not what i said.
But strong judiciary and executive (and strong borders between them) is a core understanding in every real democracy.
If the executive OR the judiciary can do everything (or are completely intermingled) you have no democracy but a "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
It’s nothing special anyway, not worth the long flight
Nothing special??? It has some of the most diverse and crazy flora and fauna in the world...
I can watch documentaries in 4K about Australia’s flora and fauna and get 95% of the benefit without being treated like a drug lord at a border crossing on the way
In the U.S. we have the 4th Amendment to our Constitution, which reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Why was this downvoted?
Anyways, the Fourth Amendment says nothing about alterations by LEAs to seized documents. That hadn't been invented yet, I guess, back in 1789. Though arguably Due Process requires a well-behaved justice system that wouldn't do that.
And the EU has GDPR. Which is intended to protect its citizens globally. It seems like AU parliament is doing their best to ensure their chartered companies be unable to serve European customers.
Over the past two years, Australian and New Zealand's governments have become great examples of how statism can take over so quickly. As an outsider, I feel really sad for people in Australia and New Zealand.
What have NZ done?
Reminds me of anti-free speech laws that was almost passed in France.
It was designed to help fight « hate speech ».
It enable police to remove literally ANY content from the interne t as long as it was « hateful » of course there is no legal definition of hateful.
I think similar laws have been passed in Belgium and Germany.
I find it funny that has economic growth from the post war era is slowing down and climate change is accelerating our fundamentals rights and freedom are slowly being taken away from us ,bits by bits with more or less the same laws everywhere.
Very strange.
At least in France people will protest. Places like Australia, NZ and Canada have far too much trust in the government...
As an American's American (Guns and Liberty for everyone!) I really appreciate the French people's intolerance of government overreach. They say no, and they don't sit down.
Your overstimate what we protest for and the effectiveness of it.
Also protests have been heavily repressed during Macron, it's becoming scary to actually go sometimes.
>Your overstimate what we protest for and the effectiveness of it.
I don't keep up with all the protests but it's a far more active middle finger against infringement than most countries where we sit around and watch our liberties erode away in the name of progress and security.
That erosion is really all a front in the US for increasing power of already concentrated power and we sit back idle and watch it happen as we struggle to stay afloat in a set of abstract rules we must follow to survive.
When I see France, I at least feel like your citizens haven't given up and are still trying to fight for their rights. How effective it is is another thing, but at least there's some will left. In the US we just bend over and say, "oh boy, this again..." We seem to have already given up the fight, are unaware, and/or simply don't care anymore. I'll take an ineffective attempt at retaining rights over complacency any day. It's not like we have more clever strategies that are more effective, we just don't participate at large, period.
> Your overstimate what we protest for and the effectiveness of it.
I don't care, it's the spirit that counts.
> Also protests have been heavily repressed during Macron, it's becoming scary to actually go sometimes.
You helped us during our revolution. Maybe it's time to become state #51?
Regarding Australia's limits on protest during the Sydney covid lockdown, one official basically said "people can exercise their freedom of speech other ways, like writing a letter to the newpaper or sending an angry email" (paraphrased). I think he seriously thought these circular-filed complaints carry the same weight as a protesters in front of government buildings.
> "people can exercise their freedom of speech other ways, like writing a letter to the newpaper or sending an angry email" (paraphrased).
That's what the founding fathers did, ironically. Didn't work either.
> I think he seriously thought these circular-filed complaints carry the same weight as a protesters in front of government buildings.
They do carry the same weight.
They are both useless.
Standing around holding signs and marching and chanting has never been effective.
Having the crowds filmed and broadcast, on the other hand, is effective. If the media isn’t making a story out of it, it means nothing.
In the 60s and 70s people began to believe marching and protesting en mass was effective. But, it was only effective because the media, for their own reasons and agendas, decided to broadcast the Freedom Marches and anti-war marches and all the rest.
I don’t believe that prior to the 60s, anyone would have considered milling around in front of govt buildings effective at all. To be sure, having mobs tearing down the buildings was effective and happened frequently.
You could assemble a million protestors in DC and, if it’s not shown in CNN, you might as well have stayed home.
As an American with staunch opinion about civil liberties, I love France for this matter. I recall Charlie-hedbo and their stance towards freedom of speech/press during the shooting that killed several cartoonists a few years ago. The entire world mourned that moment. It was sad and beautiful to see everyone raise their voices against supression of speech.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oVOE5Hsl8E
I don't know about the French. For the most part, they protest for the wrong reason.
How “Hate Crimes Against Police” Expose the Fatal Flaw Within Hate Crime Statutes
https://truthout.org/articles/how-hate-crimes-against-police...
Offenses Against Police Could Be Hate Crime
https://www.post-journal.com/news/page-one/2020/09/offenses-...
If you squint enough, lése-majesté starts to look like hate crime legislation. Paul Kagame maintains his dictatorship on a foundation of hate speech and genocide denial accusations.
When the enemy is an abstraction like "hate" there's no way to create a bright line between it and "disagreement" or "opposition." Are you publicly condemning a politician's behavior, or are you inciting hate against him?
I do have a question.
'Data disruption warrant: gives the police the ability to "disrupt data" by modifying, copying, adding, or deleting it.'
What does it really mean? Can they now legally change what website says to me? Intercept and change what signal message says?
I am genuinely trying to understand what functionality hides behind this broad language.
I'm not trying to answer your question as I don't know the full extent of this new law, but based purely on the article it's not hard to imagine the AU government can construct a case against a politically subversive but otherwise innocent person by planting illegal data/content on their cloud storage and social media accounts. The fact that they can do this with zero judicial oversight mean that it's not a question of "if" this will happen but "when".
All the countries and regions that have been "soft" captured by China over the last decade+ will do similar.
The bigger and more important issue here in my opinion is that this completely paves and protects the road to breaking Apple style CSAM detection systems by any 5 eyes country for other uses. Game Over.
Is there anywhere where you aren’t being watched now?
if you hike more than 6 miles from any given trail-head, there will still be people but they usually aren't the kind to have their phone out.
if you start from a place without reception, doubly so.
Brain waves, atleast for now.
I think these draconian laws are actually motivated because police forces have severe barriers to get access to peoples communication. Since tech giants do access private info, it has become some form of competition.
This is only the legal framework, I doubt they can surveil your traffic without getting physical access to your devices.
If the police have a warrant to watch you, then, no. But that is as it should be. As long as there is correct judicial oversight of these capabilities, then this is the correct way for things to be. Nobody should have an expectation of being able to conduct criminal business without surveillance.
The issue comes in when the justice system is not providing correct oversight for this capability. That is wrong and should be vigorously opposed. The capabilities themselves I have no problem with.
> If the police have a warrant to watch you, then, no. But that is as it should be.
Is it? Any government could make $thing illegal tomorrow. Anyone associated with $thing could then be watched and imprisoned. With judicial oversight.
Some possible values from $thing taken from history: being gay, (not) being christian, being a pacifist, being poor/homeless
The above have all been persecuted in the past. Sometimes in the present. All quite legally. With judicial oversight. With political (and often popular) support.
Edit: formatting, HN doesn't seem to like lists
Yes because societies are built on rules and enforcement of the societal contract has always come, in some measure, by the government's ability to enforce the basically decent behavior that the majority wants.
The fact that the majority has often historically been in the wrong doesn't mean that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of enforcement of the laws: Anarchy is not preferable to a well ordered peaceful society.
Hmm, I don't think I'm advocating for anarchy. I find it hard to put this into words in a coherent way; but I think it's preferable that the state's capabilities are somewhat matched by the populace's. Not just the legalities of checks & balances. The people need to be able to watch the state if the state is watching them.
This capability is currently very much lacking. We (by which I broadly mean western countries in general) are seeing less and less government transparency. Trade deals are brokered in secret, surveillance bills are rushed through parliaments, terrorism and child abuse are being used as blanket excuses for pretty much everything. Journalists get less and less access. In some countries (Italy comes to mind) there are very strong ties between the government and the media.
And sure, we have some form of representative democracy, but it seems like governments in many cases don't represent their people, but rather their own interests. The people are often unaware of what their governments get up to (various atrocities in the Middle East come to mind). By the time the next election comes up, the damage is already done, with zero accountability.
Long story short: it's good for governments to be able to enforce laws that benefit (all? most?) people, but the people need to be able to stick it to the government if need be. And with all this government surveillance, that's become virtually impossible.
Anarchy is not opposed to a well ordered peaceful society!
How so?
Anarchy just implies no ruling authority. It may lead to chaos and disorder, but that only follows if you prove (or believe) that ruling authority is necessary to prevent chaos and disorder.
In my constitution surveillance is illegal and I am also obliged to resist an unjust law. That doesn't result in anarchy at all.
> Any government could make $thing illegal tomorrow.
Okay, but if a government wasn’t legally allowed to surveil you, they could change the law tomorrow so that they could legally surveil you. I’m not sure what this mode of argument really shows.
That's true. I don't think it's the legality of the surveillance that's bothering me, it's more the vast and ever growing capability of the surveillance apparatus. Which is fueled by the legal framework.
Would this philosophy extend to phones then, too? Assuming a phone is being used for criminal business. A Ring camera, assuming the house is being used for criminal conduct?
I’m playing devil’s advocate, and am interested in a stance arrived at reasonably.
Yes, it would. Wouldn't detectives watching through your windows as you type on your phone be functionally the same as having your phone surveilled?
Warranted, targeted surveillance is less bad than surveilling everyone to see if they are committing crimes, which less bad than recording what everyone did so they can be charged with crimes retroactively, which is less bad than charging people for crimes they're only predicted to commit.
> Phones
Sure. Wire-tapping has been a thing almost as long as phones themselves. With a warrant, it is best that the police should be able to surveil your phone calls.
> Ring camera
With a warrant? Absolutely.
You confuse legality with morality. Privacy is, in part, the right to act on our own convictions. Breaking the law is a critical part of protest ("civil disobedience").
Besides which, the state has done just fine without such invasive measures before. Even with perfect oversight, the goals themselves can still be horribly corrupt, and no one should consider it "correct" to go about enforcing clearly immoral laws.
> You confuse legality with morality.
I did not confuse anything. You may be confused about what I mean, and if so, I'm sorry for any unclear communication on my part that led to that state of affairs. Feel free to ask for clarification of my position if you're curious.
> Besides which, the state has done just fine without such invasive measures before.
That is not obviously true to me. For most of the period of time during which the people have had the capability to communicate remotely, the state has also had the capability to surveil that communication when warranted. And it seems plausible to me that the lack of that capability before permitted much criminality that since has been prevented.
Crime rates have been going down for decades in the Western world (including Oz). Yet governments continue to pass surveillance laws to “fight crime.”
If that doesn’t highlight their true aims, I don’t know what else does.
Perceptual and judgment creep.
Do we think that a problem persists even when it has become less frequent? Levari et al. show experimentally that when the “signal” a person is searching for becomes rare, the person naturally responds by broadening his or her definition of the signal—and therefore continues to find it even when it is not there.
They’ll claim the drop in crime is a direct result of their draconian overreach. So, if a little has worked so well, why not heap more on?
Incidentally, it’s really hard to counter this reasoning, no matter what subject it is applied to. The truth is, we don’t know what crime would have done without such a system in place. It may have dropped even further. It’s the typical causation / correlation confusion.
Why is Australia trying so hard to become an authoritarian state? It's an island nation with few serious internal or external enemies.[1]
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2016/12/australias-enemies-looking-w...
Perfect place for that, tbf
One downside to all this surveillance that's never considered are the consequences of all this intel after a foreign invasion and life for the surveiled after a defeat.
It would be much easier to occupy a foreign territory if all of this intel were available as you roll in. Makes one wonder...
I’m appalled at this legislation, but also curious about how they intend to do this. Are they going to be compelling service providers to comply with specific requests, or give them admin accounts, or…? Do targets of their activities receive notification when their online content is modified or removed? What recourse is there in cases of abuse of these powers?
What is it about Australia that is driving it to be so uniquely totalitarian among the English-speaking countries? I always envisioned it culturally more individualistic than the UK, but they've gone even farther down the path of state control and surveillance.
It's because AU is used as a test bed for all the really fucked up laws that the powers that be would love to pass, but can't due to significant citizen pushback and/or armed citizens.
Individualism in Australia is usually about fighting social control, but that just leads to being under government control.
We have fewer cultural roots so it makes the above process faster.
Serious question. How concerned should I be if my email is hosted by an Australian company?
Something really bizarre and unsettling is happening in Australia. Despite a small number of covid deaths, they have by far the most totalitarian lockdowns and are pursuing some of the most extreme social control measures of any country on earth. They are building quarantine imprisonment camps, doing national manhunts for people who aren't quarantining, arresting people for anti-government speech, using the military to limit movement. You are not even allowed to leave the country anymore! Things really happened so fast and with so little debate that it rivals the speed and severity of loss of rights that occurs in a communist revolution. What the heck is even going on there?
Hyperbole, mostly
Versions of all of those things exist, but not in the way you describe them.
I have been reading message boards where Aussies are saying they are no longer allowed to leave the country for any reason. Isn't that like the old Soviet Union and North Korea?
There are exemptions to the travel restrictions[1]
So "not allowed to leave for any reason" is hyperbole. It has a grain of truth but like the other things on your list is a gross exaggeration.
It's almost as if you shouldn't take everything you read online at face value
You could get an exit visa from the Soviet Union under certain circumstances too. Just cause there's an exemption doesn't mean it's all ok.
The discussion isn't about if it's good policy (although low case numbers and low death rate are fairly compelling arguments). What's being called into question is the exaggerated nature of your claims.
We can leave for business, compassionate grounds, medical reasons etc etc. The line that we cannot "for any reason" is being pushed by people with an agenda and a particular interest in politicising a public health crisis just like all the other exaggerations you have parroted here.
I'm sorry you refuse to see that and in fact choose to participate. I'm not saying this is you, but the hilarious thing about the "free thinkers" on the pandemic is that they refuse to even entertain the possibility that they might be being used as pawns to peddle misinformation while accusing the rest of the world of being just that.
Always remember that Session is also developed in AU....
Makes me really consider the information I was told about FM.
When the system will refuse something that benefits them ? It’s applied Kafka
“Disrupting data” sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.
I make the same observation as other people have made. These types of laws are being passed with increasing intensity and scope in most western countries.
They seem to follow the same idea. Purportedly they are being passed to stop crime or at least aid the investigation of suspected criminals.
The other set of laws are purportedly meant to stop the spread of infectious disease.
But the laws are clearly not well balanced in terms of privacy rights and personal freedom.
There is also this ominous synchronization between government and trans-national bodies such as the WHO with major technology firms; having the latter act as uncritical propaganda arms of the former - no matter the evidence or reasons for doubt.
Rather than discussion and reasoning, there is this flow of labels thrown around at dissenters, regardless of who they are and what they say.
If they critique transwomen competing with women they are called transphobic and accused of hate speech.
If they prefer not to take a vaccine shot and/or critique lockdowns and restrictions; they are called anti-vaxxers and accused of spreading misinformation.
All of this points in the direction of tyranny and totalitarianism. All we can do is vote with our feet.
One intention is for the Australian police to be able to fabricate evidence that can then be used to generate American warrants and prosecutions, very similar to the way the FBI and DNC fabricated the British Steele dossier in order to generate FISA warrants and prosecutions of various Trump staffers.
Good, I hope this will give Australia the power it needs to finally crush disinformation and right wing terrorism. The two go hand-in-hand.
this seems to coincide with some pretty aggressive [arguable very over-reaching] lockdowns in the country as well...
not looking good.