Australia is becoming a surveillance state • Hacker News Board

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#241

Post by alvah » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

jussij wrote: post #171

alvah wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OP's way of life has been made possible by cheap energy. Wishing it away before renewables are able to provide baseload power in an advanced economy (and the storage problem is, at best, decades away from being solved) is unwise.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#242

Post by rjsw » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

partomniscient wrote: post #238

sk0g wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about you mate, but I didn't get an input when my parents named me. Attacking someone for their name is a flimsy stand. If they have done something dodgy, that would go much further to supporting any argument you may be making.

Its not their particular name. It's their inconsistency in using it. I think previous iterations of existence use names to transfer karmic information for individuals, but we're now at the point that the system is understood well enough by the systemised to game the system itself. I often wonder about the importance of naming things. Its also a key problem in Computer Science. Namespacing is useful up to a point. Val…

There is no inconsistency.

William Rees-Mogg, the co-author of the suggested book, was the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#243

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

gonzo41 wrote: post #217

marcusverus wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government needs to make voting for federal elections compulsory in order to get people to take a stance / have an opinion (yes, you will get a fine if you don’t vote!) This seems like such a bad idea. Ideally, the democratic process taps ‘the wisdom of crowds’ and allows a society to make reasonable decisions. But all human beings are not capable of contributing to good decision making. Roughly the 15% of peop…

I'm Australian. Respectfully, you're totally wrong. Government should be for everyone. Parties should have a platform that is for a majority. For the most part, Australia has populist fairly centrist small c conservative governments. It's getting bad at the moment here mostly because the current governing party is past due for it's turn on the opposition benches. And it also seems that everyone's having a go at being…

Re: voting, it's not a "right" if it's compulsory. It's an obligation.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#244

Post by shell0x » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #164

thisone22 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'So you have sun, good food, plenty of money and little immigration.' Australia has one of the highest rates of inbound immigration in the world. Number 2 in the OECD actually, right after Luxembourg. And I, like the overwhelming majority of Australians, consider high immigration intakes to be a good thing. Check your sources. [1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migratio... [2] https://data.oecd.o…

Skilled immigration is neocolonialism. I truly can't believe how many (supposedly enlightened) people I've had try to tell me with a straight face how wonderful it is to have all these doctors/engineers/etc coming to their country, and how great it is for their economy and healthcare system etc. Like, you don't think all the people in India or The Philippines or Chad need doctors or economic advancement?? It's just i…

As an expat, I go there where I get treated best. Why wouldn’t I? Do I owe my country of birth anything?

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#245

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

nextstep wrote: post #177

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…

What's interesting is how many more Europeans emigrate to the USA compared to American's that move to Europe. 3 times as many, in fact.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#246

Post by 1337shadow » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

partomniscient wrote: post #221

tsimionescu wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 C…

The Chinese are doing it as part of 'reformatting' Hong Kong, but it happens in our own backyards as well [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22yqoDs1_TE In our current world societies the university students are the most important visible protestors, because they're the smartest people that have the most to lose from incoming forced change. They're young and they see personal freedom disappearing. However given…

Students are hardly the smartest people, unless you believe that growing up and acquiring decades of practical experience actually makes you dumber.

Canada: A "filmmaker" claims that one of the police officers had a rock in their hand, why would I believe a "documentary filmmaker" without any actual evidence (you'd expect a video evidence from the guy) participating in a protest more than actual police officers? or than the minister of public safety? or than the journalist who obviously could not verify it and as such did no mention it?

There's only one logical reason that comes to my mind: because you want to, like the person who choose the title "Canadian Undercover Police Officers Caught Trying to Start a Riot", that's not an honest title, "Canadian Filmmaker Pretends Police Officers Tried to Start a Riot" would have been actually honest. Who's manipulating who now?

Nice description under the video too, but it's only one side of the story: we also hold tons of evidence that people actually lie and plan to lie just to cause agitation, protests and so on. Is that something that you would be interested in as well? Or are you just interested in "anything against the elected government"?

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#247

Post by peytn » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #196

ghiculescu wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I go to a large gathering every week. It’s called the supermarket. In light of that, it seems silly to suspend civil rights.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#248

Post by gonzo41 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #243

gonzo41 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Australian. Respectfully, you're totally wrong. Government should be for everyone. Parties should have a platform that is for a majority. For the most part, Australia has populist fairly centrist small c conservative governments. It's getting bad at the moment here mostly because the current governing party is past due for it's turn on the opposition benches. And it also seems that everyone's having a go at being…

Re: voting, it's not a "right" if it's compulsory. It's an obligation.

it's a pretty low impost obligation. But I'd refer to it as a minor duty to the community.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#249

Post by sva_ » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

shell0x wrote: post #240

ostenning wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the opposite, moved to Germany from Australia. Now I look at my home country and im shocked about how things are degrading there

As a German living in Australia, I’m shocked what happened to Germany. Politics turned to Left-wing/Green party vs AFD and there is no middle ground anymore. The FDP basically disappeared and there’s a cliff in society over things like the refugee crisis and Merkel’s “everyone is welcome here” politics. If I’d ever come back to Europe, I’d settle in Switzerland. It just is the better Germany(at least to me).

What do you mean the FDP disappeared? They're at >12% in current estimates, which is higher than in the 2017/2013 elections. They've only been ranked higher in 2009 (14.6%, financial crisis), and in 1961 (12.8%).

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#250

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #148

weimerica wrote: post #131

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". 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

> See: Middle East That's always tricky because the most successful examples of a guerilla army winning like that are all a foreign army coming into a local rebelling population. They mostly work by just wearing down the invaders until the cost and time requirements wear heavy enough that the foreign army decides to just go home, that same dynamic doesn't map as well when it's the state fighting for it's own survival…

It's actually probably easier since the government would be asking its own people to kill its own people. If the local government were in broadly thought to be tyrannical, a guerilla civil war would have a high chance of success. Ask Cuba.