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Australia is becoming a surveillance state

ia.acs.org.au

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Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#71

Post by lethologica »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #58
unixhero wrote: post #15

It already has been for a long time. Freedom and liberty are practiced differently in Australia.

I think we just have a lot of faith in our institutions. We just can't believe the state would ever be used as a weapon against us because we've never experienced large scale civil upheaval or suffered under periods of dictatorship. People rattling on about slippery slopes and abstract notions of liberty just seem a bit batty to most Australians. We have a free media, our elections are free and fair, we have routine…

I’m seeing so many negative comments about Australia and yet this is the Australia that I know and love deeply. I wonder what’s causing the stark differences in view.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#72

Post by retsibsi »

L_226 wrote: post #66

Since leaving Australia (and started living in Europe) I have come to the conclusion that Australia is not a "real" country - it is just a continent owned by corporate interests that happens to also have people living on it. Corporate interests own the media, politicians, food production, education etc. and no one cares, because Life Is Good. Why expect anything to change, or people to care about strong democratic in…

Can you flesh this out more? I'm not asking for academic rigour, but at the moment it's hard to engage because your critique is so sweeping and unspecific.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#73

Post by privacyking »

rbut wrote: post #20

One theory I read once is that Australia leads the way with these laws for the other members of the five eyes to eventually follow. Is there any truth in this?

Australia is often used as a testing ground since it's part of five eyes and a) people there don't have many legally enshrined rights (no bill of rights) besides stuff like right to political expression and religion, and b) the population is complacent and won't kick up a fuss about the immoral crap the government enacts.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#74

Post by Barrin92 »

djbebs wrote: post #25
_abox wrote: post #18

Unfortunately we're all becoming surveillance states :( So many European countries are now requiring people to ID themselves and get a QR code scanned at every shop, every restaurant, every public transport journey. All combining to a detailed digital record of who has been where. Under the guise of protecting against COVID but who says this will disappear once the pandemic is over? I think we're going too far to acc…

You identified the problem, but confused the solution. Simply don't have police state totalitarian mandates.

no OP is actually not wrong. One of the reasons why you have these sideways mission creep of surveillance in a lot of countries is because the government simply does not have the strength to effectively take care of problems right then and there. It's a sign of governments being too weak, not too strong.

"Simply don't have xy" doesn't work when the problem is actually real. The population will always choose safety or public health over some sort of libertarian daydream.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#75

Post by charbonneau »

lethologica wrote: post #67
L_226 wrote: post #66

Since leaving Australia (and started living in Europe) I have come to the conclusion that Australia is not a "real" country - it is just a continent owned by corporate interests that happens to also have people living on it. Corporate interests own the media, politicians, food production, education etc. and no one cares, because Life Is Good. Why expect anything to change, or people to care about strong democratic in…

So what are we Aussies missing out on then?

I don't expect you to understand, but in Europe, people actually care about their rights [1]. There are weekly protests with lots of impact [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139889

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/protest-stop-c...

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#76

Post by seizethegdgap »

vermilingua wrote: post #34
rbut wrote: post #20

One theory I read once is that Australia leads the way with these laws for the other members of the five eyes to eventually follow. Is there any truth in this?

The scarier but more likely version of that theory is that the Australian Govt leads the way so the other 4Eyes don't have to follow. Similar to the recent AN0N bust, as our citizen protections are more lax, the FBI etc can route data through Australia where the Govt can intercept it; once intercepted it can be shared with FVEY without consequence.

That would introduce incredible lag for gamers of every kind, and network engineers on every AS would immediately notice the BGP hijack.

Your scenario is far more unlikely, if not impossible.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#78

Post by BiteCode_dev »

lethologica wrote: post #67
L_226 wrote: post #66

Since leaving Australia (and started living in Europe) I have come to the conclusion that Australia is not a "real" country - it is just a continent owned by corporate interests that happens to also have people living on it. Corporate interests own the media, politicians, food production, education etc. and no one cares, because Life Is Good. Why expect anything to change, or people to care about strong democratic in…

So what are we Aussies missing out on then?

You don't because you are living in a period where everything is wonderul for Australia.

You know what they say: everybody is a genius in a bull market.

So you have sun, good food, plenty of money and little immigration.

Life is good (if you are not living in the desert naked).

Unfortunatly, there is nowhere in the world where things stay nice and easy. The run ended in europe after 1970, it ended in the US after 1990 and it will end in Autralia.

Now, when things are getting hard, having weak democratic institutions, no political awareness and corporate medling is going to hit hard.

But I wouldn't be too cocky because it's not like we didn't mess up loads of things in our own countries, even if we have strong political commitment.

Besides, if I could enjoy your life style, I would probably be way less sensitive to privacy issues.

So don't take what I said as the words of someone who has the ethical upper hand, because I certainly don't.

And Australia is damn comfy.

Also my partner will probably convince me to go back live there with her at one point, so I'll enjoy it as much as I can.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#79

Post by BLKNSLVR »

hexa22 wrote: post #10
RileyJames wrote: post #8

Since 2015 and the meta data laws it’s no wonder things have continued to get worse. There was practically no opposition to the meta data laws. No popular resistance. No protests. It’s a non-issue for the public or political class. The extent to which non-tech people in my social circles care is to switch to signal. Not that they’ve stopped using the other tools. There seems to be a “what else can we do” attitude. Un…

There are far bigger issues in Australia right now to care about meta data logging. Climate change and now the vaccine delay consume all of the publics attention. Metadata logging is a theoretical issue while the lack of vaccine supplies is a very real and immediate issue.

Not for the government, it seems. And you can't really include either Climate Change or the Vaccine rollout as issues the government may care about because they've fucked up both of them pretty royally.

Possibly, for the political class, metadata logging is THE issue of the moment.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#80

Post by wormseed »

L_226 wrote: post #66

Since leaving Australia (and started living in Europe) I have come to the conclusion that Australia is not a "real" country - it is just a continent owned by corporate interests that happens to also have people living on it. Corporate interests own the media, politicians, food production, education etc. and no one cares, because Life Is Good. Why expect anything to change, or people to care about strong democratic in…

Australia's covid policy of indefinitely banning citizens from leaving was the last straw for me. I won't be back.
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