11–20 of 170 posts
One option is to hide your internet history, the other is to automate it (including signing up for and logging in to sites you don't necessarily visit) so that your machine is logging 24/7 and your small portion gets lost in the haystack
This is not a good security method in this day and age.
It is cheap to watch and alert on everything.
The scariest line was this: "Terrorists and serious criminals will always seek to avoid detection." The fact that in the public eye they're going to be claiming they are doing this under terrorism, will give a lot of weight with non-technical people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So where is the conversation about that ? If this measure will not catch the very people it is intending to catch, what is its purpose?
I can't work out the purpose. It feels scary and Orwellian but I don't know why they want to collect all this data. Who benefits? In a totalitarian regime it makes sense because you can use it to prevent political opposition. But in this case, it's a democratic government that can easily be voted out. It doesn't help anyone cling to power. Maybe I'm over-thinking, but I can't work out the point.
The group of individuals handling this data are more than likely to be bureaucratically appointed rather than democratically elected.
>It doesn't help anyone cling to power.
On the contrary, it is human nature to do so.
The scariest line was this: "Terrorists and serious criminals will always seek to avoid detection." The fact that in the public eye they're going to be claiming they are doing this under terrorism, will give a lot of weight with non-technical people.
Right. It makes no sense. "Let's bring in a law that logs everyone not seeking to avoid detection." Any serious criminal/terrorist will use a VPN, disposable phones with end to end encrypted messaging, or pen and paper. Any criminal/terrorist that doesn't take these measures shouldn't be a problem to prevent in the firstplace.
I've been nursing a theory for a long time that modern society has an accidental saving grace. And that is, if you're competent, its usually better to just not commit crime. Think about it - any criminal can learn lockpicking today via the internet, but few do. Why? Because if you're capable of investing time and energy into honing a skill, you may as well do something above board. Don't break and enter - become a locksmith instead. Don't manage a team of criminals - become a manager at a company. It pays better. Its less risky. There's more services and social support available. You won't go to jail. You can have friends who aren't criminals.
And because of that the people who are left committing the vast majority of crime do so in part because they're not good at long term planning. Which is something law enforcement takes complete advantage of. So, almost no petty criminals are going to know about VPNs. They aren't going to commit to a monthly subscription to a VPN provider. They won't set up a PP2P tunnel on their phone and laptop. Why? Again because if they knew to do that sort of stuff they could probably hold down a stable job in low level tech support.
Obviously there's exceptions to this, but the bread and butter of law enforcement isn't bank heists. Its someone who's drunk. Its someone who smashed a window and stole some money because they want to get high. Or stole a phone out of someone's hand and ran off with it. Or went out with the boys to beat someone up "who had it coming".
When the (then) Australian minister for communication introduced record keeping laws for ISPs he told people they can bypass it a number of ways. Lots of people were confused by that - but it makes sense. The aim isn't to record data from us, or from our community. They don't care about taxpayers who are gainfully employed. The point is to make it easier to catch that asshole who beat up his girlfriend then bragged about it to his friends on facebook.
And as a result, probably the most annoying thing we can do for law enforcement is introduce apps like Signal and the TOR browser. Stuff that makes it dead simple for anyone to maintain their privacy - you just have to use a different messenger.
(Edit: Re-watched the interview where Turnbull described how to bypass the retention bill and he wasn't as enthusiastic as I remember.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So where is the conversation about that ? If this measure will not catch the very people it is intending to catch, what is its purpose?
I can't work out the purpose. It feels scary and Orwellian but I don't know why they want to collect all this data. Who benefits? In a totalitarian regime it makes sense because you can use it to prevent political opposition. But in this case, it's a democratic government that can easily be voted out. It doesn't help anyone cling to power. Maybe I'm over-thinking, but I can't work out the point.
You also see the same nonsensical policies on other topics like global warming, gun control (in the US), the war on drugs, and weird alternative treatments available on the NHS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So where is the conversation about that ? If this measure will not catch the very people it is intending to catch, what is its purpose?
I can't work out the purpose. It feels scary and Orwellian but I don't know why they want to collect all this data. Who benefits? In a totalitarian regime it makes sense because you can use it to prevent political opposition. But in this case, it's a democratic government that can easily be voted out. It doesn't help anyone cling to power. Maybe I'm over-thinking, but I can't work out the point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. It makes no sense. "Let's bring in a law that logs everyone not seeking to avoid detection." Any serious criminal/terrorist will use a VPN, disposable phones with end to end encrypted messaging, or pen and paper. Any criminal/terrorist that doesn't take these measures shouldn't be a problem to prevent in the firstplace.
So where is the conversation about that ? If this measure will not catch the very people it is intending to catch, what is its purpose?
Taking that point of view, the argument is that there's a subset of criminals that are stupid, or make mistakes. For people who've bought into the "nothing-to-hide" mindset, even a tiny chance to catch a few criminals is enough, because there's precisely zero on the other side.
So the task is: a clearly articulated argument for why privacy is important. I'm not saying someone should leak all the porn-URLs visited from Parliament, but it wouldn't hurt. Although some PG13 reasons may be even more helpful with the conservative crowd: "Prime witness in mafia trial killed after location revealed in log leak"...
The "rounding up dissenters" argument should still be in there – as "we're creating tools that a less benevolent government could exploit." C.f.: Trump/muslims, the Dutch (Danish?) burning their register of Jews
The scariest line was this: "Terrorists and serious criminals will always seek to avoid detection." The fact that in the public eye they're going to be claiming they are doing this under terrorism, will give a lot of weight with non-technical people.
Drugs, child porn (sometimes even adult porn), and terrorism seem to be the most-used arguments for authoritarianism. Unfortunately they are also quite convincing in the "you have nothing to hide" sense.
"sometimes even adult porn"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/23/censor-no...
Why do they keep allowing this? Other countries have always required presenting ID to buy a SIM. It's a surveillance measure that's presumably quite effective, but also far less invasive than this law and others.