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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#531

Post by _9rq6 »

numair wrote: post #151

I’ve spent a bit of time in Australia. When I compared the caliber of people who worked in tech and venture to those in mining and law enforcement, it was night and day. There’s a TON of smart people at companies like Woodside, and lots of smart people at the Australian Federal Police (to the extent where the US and other countries rely on them for help in tricky technical situations). The tech and VC crowd seemed to…

Atlassian founders are the wrong place to look for tech and VC mentorship.

Every company here has a values round copying them and doing things that atlassian does.

I believe tech and VC ecosystem will improve once they become bigger. There are companies like okzellar, shippit which do not have that atlassian bias.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#532

Post by ikr678 »

iotku wrote: post #523
Nursie wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about taking a nap, taking a bath, cooking, etc.? If you fail to check in, they try again a bit later on, if you fail again it falls back to the non app-enabled method of a police check at your home. The app is voluntary and allows you to be at home rather than in a facility, and to not have random police checks. It's a convenience, not an imposition. > Many other countries trust their citizens enough that suc…

>The app is voluntary and allows you to be at home rather than in a facility, and to not have random police checks If the alternative is being harassed by the police it's not voluntary.

This is in one of the few jurisdictions worldwide with zero covid trasmission, and the government wishes to keep it that way.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#533

Post by zarzavat »

Nursie wrote: post #505
Palmik wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's "just" for 2 weeks of quarantine, being able to check-in within 15 minutes seems unreasonable. What about taking a nap, taking a bath, cooking, etc.? Many other countries trust their citizens enough that such draconian measures weren't required even at the height of the pandemic. Not to mention now. I'd be curious how violations to check-in are handled in practice.

> What about taking a nap, taking a bath, cooking, etc.? If you fail to check in, they try again a bit later on, if you fail again it falls back to the non app-enabled method of a police check at your home. The app is voluntary and allows you to be at home rather than in a facility, and to not have random police checks. It's a convenience, not an imposition. > Many other countries trust their citizens enough that suc…

> In some like the UK, that trust was misplaced, and compliance with isolation rules was under 50%.

More like, people in the UK more correctly assessed the risk of COVID. While is a dangerous disease, it's not so dangerous that it is worth giving up all of your civil rights to avoid it. In Australia the cure seems to be worse than the disease.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#534

Post by melbourne_mat »

numair wrote: post #151

I’ve spent a bit of time in Australia. When I compared the caliber of people who worked in tech and venture to those in mining and law enforcement, it was night and day. There’s a TON of smart people at companies like Woodside, and lots of smart people at the Australian Federal Police (to the extent where the US and other countries rely on them for help in tricky technical situations). The tech and VC crowd seemed to…

I'm Australian. Your argument seems to be "If only the tech sector in Australia had some smart people". That's nice but I don't think that's what is going on.

Most of the general public is apathetic to this kind of thing. They just don't get worked up like Americans do about freedom. Especially in the middle of an epidemic (covid19 is now out of control in the two biggest cities).

We have a conservative government at the moment. They're interested in power for the sake of it and very much against transparency. They're certainly not going to listen to anyone's opinions about it - they'll just do it and wear what they know will be a negligible hit they take in the polls.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#535

Post by __d »

spangry wrote: post #374
WalterBright wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compulsory voting This always seemed like madness to me. You can force someone to vote, but you cannot force them to vote responsibly. They may just vote "screw you" just for revenge. The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care. Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results. I would expect the same from paying people to vote.

There are pros and cons to either approach. I've been wondering recently if voluntary voting in the US is partially responsible for the tribal political atmosphere? As I understand it, one of the big challenges both major parties face in the US is how to motivate their voting bases to actually turn up to vote at all. And as social media has shown us, there's nothing more engaging and motivating than outrage. So both…

Tribalism in Australian politics might not be quite at the levels it is in the US, but it's certainly a factor.

Politicians and parties still attempt to create outrage as a way of attracting or sustaining attention, and diminishing their opponents.

I agree that a lot of effort goes into getting out the vote in the US, and that's much less a factor here, but the same tactics still tend to be used.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#536

Post by Nursie »

zarzavat wrote: post #533
Nursie wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about taking a nap, taking a bath, cooking, etc.? If you fail to check in, they try again a bit later on, if you fail again it falls back to the non app-enabled method of a police check at your home. The app is voluntary and allows you to be at home rather than in a facility, and to not have random police checks. It's a convenience, not an imposition. > Many other countries trust their citizens enough that suc…

> In some like the UK, that trust was misplaced, and compliance with isolation rules was under 50%. More like, people in the UK more correctly assessed the risk of COVID. While is a dangerous disease, it's not so dangerous that it is worth giving up all of your civil rights to avoid it. In Australia the cure seems to be worse than the disease.

Who's given up "all their civil rights" ?

That seems like a massive hyperbole.

In WA, there are no lockdowns or any real coronavirus restrictions once you're in. Looks good to me.

Might want to compare those death rates too.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#537

Post by TeMPOraL »

kevingadd wrote: post #486
jcims wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No it doesn't. A law does not become racist when one race disproportionately breaks it, otherwise every law everywhere would be racist. I think you'll find there are quite a few folks that disagree with you on this point, some feel that laws can be considered racist exclusively because of disproportionate impact on specific communities. Personally I think it just boils down to how people define the term 'racist'. Wh…

Intent is an increasingly imaginary concept when decisionmaking is partially or completely performed by neural nets and checklists. As such, outcomes end up being the important thing to examine.

Agreed, but this cuts both ways. Intent has a lot of moral judgement attached to it - if we're redefining a word to be primarily about outcomes instead of intent, we should also drop the implied moral assertions around it.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#538

Post by BiteCode_dev »

melbourne_mat wrote: post #534
numair wrote: post #151

I’ve spent a bit of time in Australia. When I compared the caliber of people who worked in tech and venture to those in mining and law enforcement, it was night and day. There’s a TON of smart people at companies like Woodside, and lots of smart people at the Australian Federal Police (to the extent where the US and other countries rely on them for help in tricky technical situations). The tech and VC crowd seemed to…

I'm Australian. Your argument seems to be "If only the tech sector in Australia had some smart people". That's nice but I don't think that's what is going on. Most of the general public is apathetic to this kind of thing. They just don't get worked up like Americans do about freedom. Especially in the middle of an epidemic (covid19 is now out of control in the two biggest cities). We have a conservative government at…

Well, you are living a period of incredible prosperity: plenty of money, jobs, fantastic weather and a quiet social status quo.

Comfort makes it hard to rebel.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#539

Post by _9rq6 »

cletus wrote: post #298
girvo wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another senior SE in Brisbane I can 100% back up what BrissyCoder here is saying. Its even more so right now, if you're up for contracting. $1000+ a day is common. Kind of nuts, but hey its been good for my wallet.

While that's an improvement and a welcome one, Sydney (and even Melbourne) seem to still be lagging in cost-of-living terms. But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+.

levels.fyi does not agree with you. I feel we are making more software engineers than jobs that are available. Many are offshoring product development to India.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#540

Post by BiteCode_dev »

nickysielicki wrote: post #79

These "data disruption warrants" are the most interesting to me: > Data disruption means adding, copying, deleting or altering data held in a computer. This can only be done in order to frustrate the commission of offences or determine relevance of data. To assist disruption, a warrant can also authorise other facilitative activities, such as entering specified premises, using electronic equipment to obtain access to…

> So they can get a warrant to come into your house while you're not home and put a keylogger in your keyboard USB cable, or put a bug on the UART of your router, etc. Or just hacking your cheap Netgear router with one of the hundreds of vulnerabilities that exist.

That's actually not that weird.

If you are a suspected criminal and a judge give a warrant targeting you specifically, it's quite natural the police can now gather information on you by any mean possible.

It's not warrant-less, it's not mass surveillance, it sounds like regular police work. Or am I missing something?

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