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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#591

Post by BoxOfRain »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #561
BoxOfRain wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I find cringeworthy is people who revel in “Covid Culture”, making a deliberate spectacle of what a good, compliant, obedient individual they are and what awful crimethinking, irresponsible saboteurs anyone who takes a taste of proper life again is. People who use the “it’s a pandemic stupid” line to sweep perfectly legitimate concerns about civil liberties, generational inequality, and the futures of…

So much to unpack here... Until recently, Victoria has managed to bring all previous outbreaks to zero. COVID zero works until other states started undermining said goal in the name of business. By saving NSW businesses 3 weeks of not locking down, they've geniously bought themselves 2 months and counting of lockdowns along with high highest number COVID ever seen in Australia. > We aren’t just economic fuel to be bu…

This isn't a partisan thing, the liberal/authoritarian axis is independent from the collectivist/individualist axis. I'm against authoritarianism full stop, I don't care about the other policies sold alongside authoritarianism. Trying to tar me as right-wing for being anti-authoritarian is ignorant at best and deliberately misleading at worst.

Zero covid is a fool's errand unless you want to be a North Korea-style hermit kingdom shut off from the rest of the world. It is at best a policy that buys time to get people vaccinated, but attempting to carry it out indefinitely is nothing more than an iron fist of tyranny concealed in a velvet glove of safety. The way out of this is vaccination against covid and society coming to terms with the objective fact humanity will never be rid of this virus. We will be forced to live with the virus one way or another, it's just a matter of how much collateral damage zero covid zealots do to society on the way there.

Put it this way, if some tinpot dictatorship in the developing world was preventing dual nationals from leaving they would be sanctioned to Hell and back in a month.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#592

Post by Nursie »

chitowneats wrote: post #585
Nursie wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Become like what? Do you have an argument against quarantine? Would tens of thousands of deaths been better than asking travellers to check in for a couple of weeks on arrival, during a pandemic? I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. I'm British by the way. The UK also has guarded quarantine centres in hotels for people coming in from what it considers “red zones”

Quarantine for what? That's what you do with sick people. Whatever is going on in Australia has long ago left the realm of sane quarantine procedure. It will be 2022 soon, and the Australians are trying to prevent interstate spread of COVID-19. It's madness. Responding to your edit: still madness

Quarantine for coronavirus, in a pandemic that’s claimed millions of lives.

You quarantine people (and animal) who might be sick, that’s the point of it.

It doesn’t look like madness to me when you look at the comparative death rates.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#593

Post by Nursie »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #583
gambiting wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had to do a 14 day quarantine in the UK at home, and frankly, it was a bit of a joke. Literally no one has ever checked we were actually at home, the amount of trust in the population is insane over here. We actually stayed at home the entire time, but I know people who didn't, they had to go to work to make a living and the fine was like a £100. In contrast, in Poland if you are told to quarantine you will get…

Rather have the country focus on a mass vaccination drive than trying to do a full China style lockdown. In hindsight the unlimited money spent on healthcare and a collective willingness to take the corona pill works better than whatever Australia is trying to do.

Australia is trying to reach 80% vaccination by the end of the year, then open up.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#594

Post by hwers »

Nursie wrote: post #573
sandworm101 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being forced to use the app. Download the app or we send you to a camp? That isn't much of a choice. I'd say it is about as non-choice as possible while still meeting the literal definition.

I'll say what I said on the other thread - If you want to present an argument against quarantine being needed or warranted, please go ahead. Checking in on the app is the least intrusive of the three options - quarantine under guard (usually in a hotel, like the one I'm in right now), quarantine at home with police visits tio ensure compliance, or quarantine at home checking in to the app once or twice a day. In this…

There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#595

Post by AussieWog93 »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #308
roody15 wrote: post #269

I simply cannot wrap my mind around what is happening in Australia. Continuing a lockwdown while the number of positive covid cases remains in the low hundreds and the daily death rate in the lower tens to single digits. Nothing makes sense here. Draconian laws, complete shutdown over something that is and has been statistically under control and managed from months. Am I alone here or do people really think what is…

This talk about "Draconian" lockdown in Australia needs to stop. Our privacy and digital rights laws are awful. But the lockdowns are necessary. NSW had upward of 1000+ cases and that's why they're (still) in a strict lockdown. QLD and i beleive WA as well for example are not in lockdown at all because of their much much lower daily cases. Also, "50 cases in a nation of millions"? I dont know where you're getting you…

>This talk about "Draconian" lockdown in Australia needs to stop.

I haven't been following the lockdown laws interstate, but here in Victoria there have definitely been some restrictions that seemed to be extremely harsh and soul-crushing in comparison to their effectiveness at stopping the virus.

The 5km radius and curfew both spring to mind. I (legally) haven't been able to see a single friend or family member for almost 2 months now, even if socially distanced, wearing a mask, vaccinated and outdoors. They're all outside my 5km.

Yet at the same time a 10 year old kid can go into Woolies with 200 other people and not even need to wear a mask.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#596

Post by BiteCode_dev »

ben_w wrote: post #569
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

Not being a legal expert, I can’t tell where the boundary is between enabling legitimate police work and giving (accidentally or deliberately) the police the power to plant fake evidence, the latter being what some of this sounds like. But, I’m not a legal expert, and “sounds like” is a way to make very large mistakes when looking outside of one’s own domain of expertise like I’m doing here. (Also doesn’t help that I…

They could always do that: once they have a warrant, they can search your house and pretend to find physical evidences in it.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#597

Post by MomoXenosaga »

potatochup wrote: post #463
desertraven wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you add NL and USA to your comparison by any chance? Just curious.

The USA is hard to gauge because its much bigger and more diverse. Housing affordability, access to nature etc all vary heaps by region. Culturally Australia has the most in common with the USA, although the general populace in the USA seem less apathetic about politics. The Netherlands has rubbish weather for 2/3rds of the year and not a single mountain/hill/beach worth mentioning, but is extremely liveable. Income/…

Americans like to say that they are "free" but there are so many religious crazies.

Ultimately I can't live in a country where people are religious so that leaves only North Europe and the Netherlands is the most antichrist of them all.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#598

Post by christophilus »

charbonneau wrote: post #548
tikwidd wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be referring to the South Australia Home Quarantine app [1]. There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about this app recently. I'd just like to clear up some things: The app only applies to people that need to quarantine, not the general population. The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being f…

> quarantine facility > managed quarantine Love it.

It’s quarantine as a service. The Stripe of quarantine, if you will.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#599

Post by soco »

jeremyvisser wrote: post #530
tikwidd wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be referring to the South Australia Home Quarantine app [1]. There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about this app recently. I'd just like to clear up some things: The app only applies to people that need to quarantine, not the general population. The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. Nobody is being f…

> The app allows people who are required to isolate to opt to do their isolation at home, rather than stay at a quarantine facility. > Nobody is being forced to use the app. If there’s a cost difference, I’d say that “forced” is an unfairly neutral word to use. SA is charging upwards of $3000 (for 1 adult, plus $1000 each additional adult, plus $500 per child) for hotel quarantine [1], and though I can’t find a defin…

My guess is you didn't read there are three options. In most countries of the world (including mine) you get only two options, yet in Australia three. Two of them being free of cost: at home with human checks, or at home with app checks. Please take down your costs strawman, it's not helping the debate.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#600

Post by iamthemonster »

hwers wrote: post #594
Nursie wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll say what I said on the other thread - If you want to present an argument against quarantine being needed or warranted, please go ahead. Checking in on the app is the least intrusive of the three options - quarantine under guard (usually in a hotel, like the one I'm in right now), quarantine at home with police visits tio ensure compliance, or quarantine at home checking in to the app once or twice a day. In this…

There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

Indeed, there are countries that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. But I can't think of a country off the top of my head that has applied laissez-faire Covid controls but also recorded very low numbers of deaths.
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