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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

#191

Post by mustardo »

weimerica wrote: post #131
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'

> 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". It is, until it isn't. > Also, anyone think that a US civilian militia has more than a snowball's chance in hell against any committed government-deployed force? See: Middle East

Also see: Vietnam

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#192

Post by CTDOCodebases »

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.

Yeah maybe the coronavirus economic recovery committee should have been stacked with business leaders from the medical sector instead of the fossil fuel industry. The future looks bright for those manufacturing and developing covid vaccines.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#193

Post by partomniscient »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #43
a0-prw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oz is part of the 5 eyes. The West in general, but especially the 5 eyes (anglosphere) have been waging an economic and propaganda war on China since Obama "pivoted east". Anti Chinese rhetoric in Oz media and from their politicians has been strident . It is quite possible that the 5 eyes are ramping up methods of internal control in expectation of a war with China.

Also don't forget the racism. Aussies in general can be pretty racist, and the Chinese cop it especially. Politicians being "tough" on the Chinese (and then quietly selling off major chunks of Australia to them) seems to be a winning move.

The situation is ludicrous isn't it. One of the major agri-businesses sucking the life-system out of Australia (i.e. water out of the Murray-Darling river) is a chinese owned business at the top of the river system.

It all depends on your perspective. Some people are more Australian than our politicians, yet they look Chinese. It's a massive melting pot of variations.

My opinion now is that the Crown (not the casino) is extracting all the value it can from Australia and then run it into the ground, and the other powers that be are doing it too.

If Australia ends up against China in conflict, a lot of people will be tearing themselves apart inside.

At the other extreme, a lot of Han Chinese see every other non Han Chinese human as inferior (in varying shades of inferiority). There are a lot of Han Chinese. This is a scary situation. The racism runs in both directions.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#194

Post by whckt »

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…

This is one of the things that's been worrying me for a while. I worry that Australia's experiencing its last bubble. Germany is somewhere I want to settle down, but it's so hard to up and lift your whole life somewhere with so much uncertainty.

To the point of the post, though — I'm not so worried about surveillance in Australia. The bigger worry for me is the lack of our population's interest in real issues. When the level of surveillance does become a real issue, will our population even care?

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#195

Post by xyzzy123 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #184
xyzzy123 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it neocolonialism, or is it more like letting people vote with their feet? In a perfect world, we'd all be able to choose where we live. Most of the people I talk to in Australia are more concerned about all the people that DON'T get let in. Another lens is that countries are in the business of providing defence, governance, economic opportunity and lifestyle services. Immigrants are customers.

Yes, yes it is neocolonialism. And it's easy to justify by saying "in a perfect world", but we don't live in a perfect world do we so that logic is just completely flawed. "In a perfect world we would do X" does not mean that doing X in the imperfect world we live in results in a better world. It is neocolonialism because it is extracting the most valuable and profitable resources of less well off countries for your…

Let's take doctors as a specific example.

Suppose we take the Phillipines and Malaysia, they (together) have about 6x the population of Australia. They have the capacity to train a lot of doctors - and a doctor can have a great life in either of those countries.

They can both also produce doctors more efficiently than Australia, partly due to living costs / ppp and population size, and partly due to Baumol's disease hitting education costs harder in AU.

But let's be honest, no country is talent-limited on doctor production. What's limited are training slots, and that is partly a practical concern... but also licensing restrictions - which tend to be regulated by doctors who have a strong interest in avoiding the oversupply of doctors.

What I am trying to say with all this is that there are many reasons someone might not be getting good medical care in say, the Phillipines but those reasons are not primarily due to doctors emigrating.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#196

Post by justinclift »

ghiculescu wrote: post #172
hestefisk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Err... we're literally in a pandemic, where people getting together in large numbers makes things worse.

When we're not in pandemic conditions, people are quite welcome to gather and protest whatever the heck they want.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#197

Post by mc32 »

noduerme wrote: post #158
api wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a weird slacker version of the resource curse.

Yes - but also Arendt's concept of the colonist as the superfluous man, unnecessary and having no accommodation in European society, basically getting offloaded for resource extraction to remote parts of the world and falling into tribalism and illiterate degradation. Happy thought there.

How do you expect people react to something like that?

There have been lots of people offloaded to far away places for resource extraction as you call it. People adapt to the demands.

I think this is a borders on odd expectations of people.

Going by this Irish and Chinese sent over for railroad building were superfluous people.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#198

Post by tsimionescu »

1337shadow wrote: post #178
partomniscient wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wou…

> 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

This is wildly self-serving. Security services all over the world absolutely go after dissidents and whistle-blower and many other undesirables. Just look at the COINTELPRO papers in the USA to see this, for a well documented historic example from a free country - not only were security services investigating peaceful protesters, they were actively infiltrating, trying to coerce them to commit crimes, blackmailing MLK into committing suicide, they payed for the assassination of the Black Panthers leader and many others.

Or look at the recent 'governor kidnapping plot', bravely foiled by intelligence services, who were actually 10 of the 12 people in on the 'plot'...

> 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.

A solution to a problem can be worse than the problem. I am all for solutions to the huge number of car fatalities, but that doesn't mean I support banning cars, even though that would fix the problem. Surveillance states create way more problems than they solve, and are invariably used against political minorities. The ethics of individual operators are irrelevant - if the institutional drive is there, workers will be selected until they match the institutional drive.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#199

Post by jaywalk »

shric wrote: post #83
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...

Link 2 is a 404 for me. Hilariously, Australians protest about their rights by trying their best to extend lockdowns further [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/24/anti-...

"Just do what you're told and you'll get your rights back when the dear leaders decide you've done enough. But they'll still reserve the right to take them away whenever they feel like it."

How's that boot polish tasting?

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#200

Post by shell0x »

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…

I lived in Singapore before and it's more run like a company and.

It has no personal freedoms, but on the other side they have HDBs(government housing) which is affordable for their residents.

Australia has no affordable housing alternatives at all and the government doesn't even seem to care.

Australia has more freedoms than Singapore, but far less than Europe.

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