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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#171

Post by glenngillen »

cottsak wrote: post #114
glenngillen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't vote on every bill, we vote on preferred parties every 3 years. It's still a predominantly 2-party dominated system though, and there's basically zero difference between the two on issues like this.

This is an important point. How do we vote for and elect representatives in sufficient quantities that will throw out privacy and security overreaches like this? Very few of the representatives in both houses will understand the technical means, underpinnings, and exploit and overreach potential of these bills because they simply don't understand the technology in the middle. All a party/member needs to do is draft t…

Recent bias/availability heuristic being what it is this might not be a fair assessment: but my recollection is there has been 1 person ever who’s been able to engage on these topics. I thought it was an independent, but I also thought their name was Scott Ludlum. But a quick Google tells me he was the deputy leader of the Greens so my recollection is wrong on at least one of those fronts.

Which is exactly the problem: A single example that is but a distant memory. No contemporaries that can challenge the status quo.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#172

Post by adventured »

mrkstu wrote: post #97
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southern conservative as Democrats or Republicans like Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were very much in favor of not letting African Americans vote. Who they caucused with later is unrelated. But yes, to say it was Democrats or Republicans would be very technically inaccurate. It isn’t a coincidence that the states that were practicing Jim Crow before are the same states trying to discourage voting today.

What is the reality on the ground though? For instance: "Texas ranks number 10 overall when it comes to engagement among African American voters, including being first overall in proportional representation of blacks in state legislature and national party conventions." https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/african-americans-in-texas-...

> What is the reality on the ground though?

The reality on the ground is that all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does and almost nobody on HN will dare to talk about that fact because it's inconvenient to the propaganda game.

It's the sick joke of eg Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game from Georgia to protest new voting laws, shifting it to Colorado which already had similar voting laws to those that Georgia wanted to implement. It's all bullshit propaganda.

The same is true of immigration restrictions. You're not supposed to talk about how strict most other affluent nations are when it comes to who they let into their countries to become citizens.

Can you imagine the global uproar if the US began a cultural genocide program against Muslims like Denmark is aggressively doing? Forcibly taking children away from their parents to be re-educated via nationalist propaganda and forced value systems.

How about something less sinister - a national ban on full face veils like France, with punishment by forced re-education. The US would be called draconian, Islamophobic and racist for such treatment. Meanwhile over there's Macron one step away from calling for a cultural crusade.

When the US does it, it's bad. When everybody else does it, it's logical and good and progressive.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#173

Post by School-Cotton »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #125
cheesetable wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent example: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-aclu-prior-to-covid-den...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts > Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state. > "[r]eal liberty for all could not exist under the ope…

What is your point?

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#174

Post by smcleod »

siquick wrote: post #37

I've lived in Australia for 10 years and really considering my familys future in this country. We are sleep-walking towards a very average future. An undiversified export economy, out of control house prices, a job-market primarily focused on two cities, a government intent on selling all public assets, very limited political interest in positive climate policies. The latter is simply addressed with "technology will…

Almost 11 years in Melbourne (from NZ) and I couldn't agree more.

The 220~ days (and counting) that Melbourne has been in lockdown has certainly worn me down, but even before C19 the political climate, attitude towards technology, cost of housing and the impact of increasing bushfires has taken an enormous toll on the country over the past decade that I've been here.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#175

Post by Mountain_Skies »

aurizon wrote: post #134

What happens in Australia in housing also is happening more or less globally when unlimited "rent seeking" is allowed. People and companies can buy residential properties and then rent them out. With current low interest rates they can run amok and make a lot more than the interest. The Netherlands has a way to deal with this. A landlord tax on rented houses. https://borgenproject.org/dutch-housing-crisis/ If you buy…

Many parts of the US have something effectively the same called a Homestead Exemption. You get a discount on your property tax for the house you live in. Any other houses you own pay the full rate. It varies greatly by location and not everywhere has it but it's pretty common.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#176

Post by robbedpeter »

Tronno wrote: post #132
gorwell wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

> Strong men create good times. Or sometimes they just kill each other in cycles of violence spanning generations. > Good times create weak men. Or they enable amazing things like the internet, modern medicine, and empires that last 1000 years. Sorry, but I've seen this pithy quote before and I wish it would go away - it's simply not true.

The internet came about because of the cold war and the attendant arms race. Empires that last were all born in blood and fire and terror, and universally spend more blood to maintain cohesion against the outside.

What type of la la fantasy histories have you been reading? Fat happy people maintain the status quo. Hungry desperate people innovate.

Anyway. The world wide web is probably what you meant. And yes, universities and science and medicine makes progress during peaceful times, and ultimately the quote is facile and glib. There is a nugget of truth there, however.

Establishing a frontier in human well being has historically required limiting the power of the state in ways that support the relative liberalizing of its culture. States historically require blood sacrifice before any power is ceded. It takes strong people to achieve and hold progress., and the quote encapsulates the notion that there is a place in the natural order of things for strong individuals to shake things up. For principles to be held to at great cost, however inconvenient or even fatal it may be for others who just want to perpetuate "good enough".

The fallacy is that good times can't produce good and strong people, which is wrong. It's just a simple matter of conviction being stronger when provoked by trauma than abstract rationalization.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#177

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mrkstu wrote: post #97
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southern conservative as Democrats or Republicans like Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were very much in favor of not letting African Americans vote. Who they caucused with later is unrelated. But yes, to say it was Democrats or Republicans would be very technically inaccurate. It isn’t a coincidence that the states that were practicing Jim Crow before are the same states trying to discourage voting today.

What is the reality on the ground though? For instance: "Texas ranks number 10 overall when it comes to engagement among African American voters, including being first overall in proportional representation of blacks in state legislature and national party conventions." https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/african-americans-in-texas-...

Just because they've been trying doesn't mean they've been successful yet. But just pile up more voting restrictions and let's see what happens...its not like Texas has very high voter engagement over all (which is on par with other poor southern states and...Hawaii).

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#178

Post by kylebyproxy »

8note wrote: post #154
kylebyproxy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compulsory voting in an unengaged populace can only serve to lower signal-to-noise ratio. How many times do we need to relearn "garbage in, garbage out"? The responsible ballot choice when uninformed is "abstain". AFAIA, Australia doesn't provide that option. Also, the intransigent moderates you mentioned create inertia biased toward status quo and inhibits appropriate policy action and change (see e.g. the slow-movi…

Voting at all in an unegaged populace is bad. Might as well just have a dictator

Sic aside, I don't follow your line of reasoning. Care to elaborate?

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#179

Post by lurquer »

kernoble wrote: post #133

One thing no one is mentioning is how China is the no.1 beneficiary of a pacified and monitored Australian populace. They are already completely dependent on the Aussie natural resource exports, and are deeply interested in Australia continuing to be friendly towards them, and could easily overwhelm them in a fight.

Shh...

You’re not supposed to say that.

It would be as uncouth as reminding people that China borders Afghanistan and is [censored].

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#180

Post by School-Cotton »

dtn wrote: post #46
systemvoltage wrote: post #15

Democrats and republicans alike, let's make sure we don't do this in USA. Please donate to EFF, FIRE, ACLU, etc. I feel like both parties are becoming more authoritarian. COVID-19 is here to stay for many years if not decades. We're not going to be able to wipe off the virus from the planet. Governments will continue to use this as an excuse to erode privacy. This whole clampdown feels completely anti-Australian to m…

You're making the mistake of conflating Australia's COVID-19 restrictions with this legislation, when they're entirely unrelated. These digital powers were something Australia has sought for many years- under the good ol' reasons of terrorism and child safety. The recent hubbub surrounding Australia's restrictive COVID-19 measures were possibly the best thing that could happen for our government- when our vaccination…

> You're making the mistake of conflating Australia's COVID-19 restrictions with this legislation, when they're entirely unrelated.

They’re related in that both are examples of a level of authoritarianism that seems extreme by the standards of other Western countries.

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