Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Australia is becoming a surveillance state

ia.acs.org.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 437 posts

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#121

Post by tazjin »

api wrote: post #106
wormseed wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have mocked the anti-maskers and especially anti-vaxxers, but this crosses a line on the other end of the spectrum. I would only support an actual ban on mobility if it were to quarantine the virus in one place, like if the Chinese had locked down Wuhan before it managed to get out. That ship has sailed of course. It’s all over the damn place, so there is not much to be gained by travel bans.

Travel bans are one of the most visible actions politicians can take and this is all about politicians doing visible things for populist reasons.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#122

Post by sumedh »

wormseed wrote: post #80
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.

What was the justification in banning citizens from leaving?

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#123

Post by elzbardico »

eightails wrote: post #117
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…

Many of these criticisms can -- and indeed already have -- been extended to plenty of western democracies including the US. Chomsky and many others have been warning that corporate and political interests are infringing on the (increasingly centralised) media and other institutions for several decades. Questions around the strength of democratic institutions are raised regularly, with the various Trump sagas being a…

Funnily enough I’ve been trying for years to make my right wing friends to read Chomsky. The real enemy is a vastly far different entity than our childish concepts of right or left.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#124

Post by onethought »

charbonneau wrote: post #75
lethologica wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Which rights would those be? The ones that were given up in order to join the EU?

Most EU countries are not sovereign states, given by the fact they don’t control their borders nor their economy (See Greece, or the other affectionately named PIGS countries). There is an insane amount of influence from Germany and Belgium.

This is a glasshouses and stones situation.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#125

Post by bradrn »

sumedh wrote: post #122
wormseed wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What was the justification in banning citizens from leaving?

At the most basic level: if people don’t leave, they can’t come back with the virus.

Also, we’ve instituted mandatory hotel quarantine for anyone coming to Australia. But hotel quarantine only has a certain number of places; if less people leave Australia, then less people will come back and fill up hotel quarantine spaces.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#126

Post by eightails »

stavros wrote: post #104
logicchains wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it hilarious? The whole point of human rights is they they don't just disappear whenever there's an emergency, otherwise the next dictator who comes along will just declare an emergency and violate everyone's rights, as has happened countless times in history. It's sad not funny that people protesting their rights being violated just leads to their rights being violated even more.

So, in your view, human rights cannot be suspended, even if there is an emergency? So things like banning indoor meetings should be allowed to continue, even when there is a pandemic? I didn't protest the lockdowns because it seems reasonable to me that you'd want to ban proximity to curtail the spread of a disease that spreads by proximity. That doesn't mean I won't protest a dictator just declaring an emergency and…

> So, in your view, human rights cannot be suspended, even if there is an emergency?

This does seem a pretty common misconception. People seem to forget that even the most liberal countries still regularly and systematically infringe on people's rights, e.g. by imprisoning criminals. But you don't see many of the anti-lockdown types protesting the existence of prisons.

In both cases, it's a matter of proportionally balancing the loss of individual rights with the interests (and indeed, other conflicting rights) of the community as a whole.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#127

Post by brokenmachine »

Cyril_HN wrote: post #110
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns in the hands of the Australians who want guns in their hands is an outcome that's about a thousand times worse than a "disarmed people". Also, anyone think that a US civilian militia has more than a snowball's chance in hell against any committed government-deployed force? Tell 'im 'e's dreamin'

That's not the point. The point is that it means a government must resort to violence and it may be unwilling to do so. Whereas if people don't have guns, then the government can be incredibly overpowering without having to step over the threshold of violence, which makes it more likely.

Governments have no problem "stepping over the threshold" and using violence. If you think that the US government wouldn't use violence against its own people for breaking laws, even hastily-written or unfair laws, you're sorely mistaken.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#128

Post by shric »

logicchains wrote: post #88
charbonneau wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>I don't expect you to understand, but in Europe, people actually care about their rights [1] That's a bit condescending. In recent weeks there were tens of thousands of people marching on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne to protest covid lockdowns and defend their right to free assembly.

Do you have a source for "tens of thousands"? I think it was fewer than 10k.

Thankfully only 3,500 in Sydney out of a population of 5 million. Fortunately the vast majority of Australians aren't completely selfish and thoughtless. Nobody likes lockdowns. The government doesn't benefit from them, it's not lining some evil overlord's pockets.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#129

Post by sumedh »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #3

What real/perceived security risk is AU dealing with to justify all these legal changes? They seem relatively isolated from many of the threats facing the US/EU west regarding terrorism/extremism. Borders in AU are pretty naturally secured by oceans.

> Borders in AU are pretty naturally secured by oceans.

There have been few cases of people getting indoctrinated with ISIS videos and then doing terrorist attacks.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#130

Post by [deleted] »

thr0w72594 wrote: post #31
_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…

The scanning already isn't necessary . What makes you think everyone getting vaccinated would cut back on government surveillance? You would just have to check in with your vaccine passport to prove that you can enter rather than check in for contact tracing; exact same problem either way. The "threat of terrorism" has long been used by media and governments in a cynical way to demonize specific groups. The most comm…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN