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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

#171

Post by jussij »

alvah wrote: post #150
trissylegs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia's economy is pretty dependent on Coal, Aluminum and Gas. Two of these a hopefully going away soon but the Government is so In bed with mining and they throw more money at elections than every other sector put together that nothing will done about it until it collapses.

Do you understand what you're actually wishing for when you cheer on the destruction of a large percentage of the economy? What comes after will not be so comfortable.

I suspect the OP is wishing for Coal and Gas to go away soon in the hope it can spare the world from the upcoming catastrophe that is climate change.

What is stupid, with Europe and the USA both planning a tax on carbon, in just a few decades the OP's wish will most likely come true, yet Australia keeps wishing for a different future.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#172

Post by ghiculescu »

hestefisk wrote: post #149
logicchains wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

You mean the illegal protest where people turned up without masks, defying public health orders? I doubt that captures the majority of us concerned about mass surveillance.

The fact that you describe protesting as illegal kinda says it all.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#173

Post by partomniscient »

monkeycantype wrote: post #115
noxer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget they disarmed the people. If some people ever start to care they wont have the boomstick power. They maybe be upside down but authoritarian regimes work the same, secure the monopoly on force by removing arms is a key step for any authoritarian gov.

You’re missing an essential detail, how Australians view the government, Australians don’t believe that the the government is sufficiently competent to be tyrannical, except in small local cases against the powerless edit: we don't believe those in government with the inclination towards tyranny are sufficiently competent. There are individuals, in government in Australia, in the same house even if they're are not qu…

Democracy as implemented is stupid.

I want to vote on policy I care about and understand, not a person I've never met who I can't necessarily trust that's meant to represent me.

The system has failed. I was horrified to see how far we'd fallen. When COVID hit, I thought they'd at least have some basic model on the shelf to extrapolate a response from.

Nope. All that kind of forward thinking seems to have gone along with the brain drain of the CSIRO and everything that followed. All the smart people have already left.

We're now governed by passive-reactive puppets.

At least you can understand tyranny. Possibly intentional incompetence not so much. Welcome to the misinformation age. Who knew it would start so soon after the information age.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#174

Post by noduerme »

h2odragon wrote: post #165
noduerme wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of Hannah Arendt's criticism of the Boers - which was sometimes taken out of context. She was just pointing out they had become a tribe of bush-wandering savages living off, but not improving the land, themselves. They had no incentive to improve the land; labor was cheap and their own lives were cheap, and they still have made nothing of the country. When I lived in Australia I was really surprised,…

> Never been to the white side of a segregation window before, but that was something to see in a first world country. More coming: https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/08/10/it-was-just-disbelie...

I sometimes wonder if the white people proposing all these racial identity theories aren't complete racists themselves. I keep assuming they have good intentions, but racial identity is a debunked and shitty idea that really shouldn't be promoted in a multicultural society. Even though I do have one black friend who really wants reparations. I'm like, dude, just... yeah. Okay. I'll buy this round but you're buying the next one.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#175

Post by brokenmachine »

lethologica wrote: post #71
scoopertrooper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love Australia, but the way we're headed is not the Australia that I love.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#176

Post by L_226 »

thisone22 wrote: post #84
retsibsi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's just bog standard Australian cultural cringe. I've spent a good chunk of my adulthood living in various countries in Europe, and Australia. Europhilic nonsense such as in the GP betray their almost total lack of understanding as to the actual state of affairs in European countries. Corruption is everywhere. Corporate interests influence policy.. everywhere. Moronic government decisions abound.. literally everywh…

I live in Germany, work at a German company, Ich kann auch Deutsche sprechen und Ich bin auch einer Deutscheburger. Aber ja, danke für deine falsche Meinung.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#177

Post by nextstep »

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…

Having done the same move from the US (to Western Europe) I have come to the same conclusion. The United States is by and for the corporations; there’s a large enough bourgeois that think the system is meritocratic or in any way lives up to the country’s states ideals that a social consciousness shift is unlikely. It also helps that most Americans have so little time off work that they’ll never see another developed nation up close, let alone read about much of the world.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#178

Post by 1337shadow »

partomniscient wrote: post #146
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…

>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. I haven't thought of it exactly like that, but I appreciate (whilst shuddering) your take on things. I basically see it in a similar way, that its a sinking stepping stone the UK was using to ge…

> I think it'll end up more like V for Vendetta.

I also love to read this kind of parallel between fiction and reality. However, when you have some experience working in defense you find out reality is more like: there's real criminal to catch, real victims to protect and to save, it's not like we have any time for non critical stuff such as going after pacific dissidents, and controlling all the medias like in V would be so much work and pointless it's not even considered.

About Exxon, well international finance is particularly hard indeed which you'll find out quite fast you start working in the AML sector, but guess what we* are making progress. But let's face it as scientists: there will be no silver bullet. All we have left is to compare cost/benefit ratios of different compromises. As such, you will always find a single case of something to complain about on some tech forum if that's what you get your kicks from.

*we: people who are actively working on it rather than complaining anonymously about single cases and making generalities about it in order to propagate some agitation on some obscure tech forum to predict a future like in a teenager comic book

It's funny here, users complain about Exxon and others having unethical behaviors or even breaking the law, I relate to that, but at the same time they are against using tech they create to increase security. How do you live in such a contradiction? Not to mention mass surveillance will create tech jobs you are probably part of the small number of people who can apply and get hired and actually work on it with their own ethic.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#179

Post by II2II »

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.

Most rights end at a nation's border and most rights are a balance of conflicting interests. The former may be wrong, but it is the way of the world. The latter means that one person's rights may have to be restricted to protect the rights of another. Failing to recognize this by painting everything as contrasts is your choice, but it most certainly does not mean you are right.

Police investigative powers are an example of this balancing of rights. They need investigative powers to enforce the laws which protect our freedoms. The flip side is that investigative powers can easily be twisted to become surveillance, then be used to take away our freedoms. I don't know what the solution to this conflict is. I don't think anyone knows, which is why the state automatically seeks overreaching powers and the opposition seeks prohibition rather than offering solutions.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#180

Post by partomniscient »

febeling wrote: post #65
elevenoh wrote: post #7

>“[These laws] represent, in my view, significant expansions of the existing powers of law enforcement agencies away from a traditional focus on investigation and the collection of admissible evidence of specific offenses to disruption, to attack, to take-over, to take-down,” Dr Mann said. Yikes. This is like government being infested by cancel culture (attack w/ no evidence needed, pile on & take down). What phenome…

> What phenomenon is driving this? Read Davidson/Rees-Mogg: Sovereign Individual (1999) Basic thesis: violence's utility declines in the information age. The institutions that are built on it, like nation states, go through a phase of decline and decay, during which they make rather more arbitrary use of force in a desperate attempt to resist obsolescence.

Co-written by the guy who fell asleep in parliament.

Is he named Jacob or William. What is this bullshit?

It's just like Boris. I mean Alexander.

Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson. Jacob William Rees-Mogg.

How are we governed by people who can't even consistently name themselves? Or are they going for plausible deniability?

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