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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#671

Post by beepbooptheory »

thinkingemote wrote: post #653
femto wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it all started in February 2020 that's exactly what Australia was doing, but a minority could not be trusted and broke quarantine and consequently COVID started spreading. At that point the model changed to mandatory quarantine in a government facility. There was broad community support for that change. In an ideal world people would have liked to have stuck with the voluntary approach, but most were realistic e…

This comment is revealing and truthful. It's almost been 2 years and most people have suffered. They blame and identify a minority for their suffering. It's one way that if you look at history minorities have also been identified. Scapegoat behaviour from the crowd is a response to senseless suffering and pain. It actually makes those who scapegoat others feel better and people want to feel better. Why would anyone v…

These are probably good/important points in a totally different context, but in this discussion, talking about how the virus has been transmitted, and the effect of infected individuals to quarantine or not, it feels a little strange. problematic moral impulses notwithstanding, the virus does indeed transmit person to person

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#672

Post by samsin »

bamboozled wrote: post #660
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…

I still don't agree this should be the way people are treated for having a virus. It's over the top. No where else in the world is cracking down like this (AFAIK, maybe China?) This is totally abusing a crisis to gain handover people and using "safety" as justification.

It's not people quarantining because they have the virus, it's related to the mandatory quarantine for international arrivals. Previously you needed to complete 2-weeks of hotel quarantine when you arrived in Australia. This new compromise allows people an option to complete that quarantine period from their own home instead. It's part of a move to increase overseas arrivals while minimising transmission.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#673

Post by sandworm101 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #656
sandworm101 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> present an argument against I don't. My comment was to the nature of the "choice" not whether or not the mandate was warranted. Let's not pretend that people have options when they really don't. There is no need to dress it up. In times of disease, governments do sometimes order people to do things. Let's not kid ourselves. Personal choice, personal freedom, is set aside.

If you already understood that the quarantine is what is limiting people’s choice and not the app then why did you bring it up as an issue with the app?

I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app and being sent to a facility, about how that isn't much of a choice. I would make the same comment if the "choice" was between a facility and a vaccine, or a drug, or counseling sessions, or paying a fine. Nearly anything is better than being sent to a camp and so any such binary alternative isn't much of a real choice.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#674

Post by chrisseaton »

sandworm101 wrote: post #673
chrisseaton wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you already understood that the quarantine is what is limiting people’s choice and not the app then why did you bring it up as an issue with the app?

I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app and being sent to a facility, about how that isn't much of a choice. I would make the same comment if the "choice" was between a facility and a vaccine, or a drug, or counseling sessions, or paying a fine. Nearly anything is better than being sent to a camp and so any such binary alternative isn't much of a real choice.

> I didn't say anything about the app. My comment was about the choice between app...

Seems self-contradictory.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#675

Post by [deleted] »

fallous wrote: post #401

I've lived to see this kind of thing enacted in a good portion of the Anglosphere and my visceral reaction is to engage in a combination of civil disobedience and a determination to undermine every overstep made. With regards to things like the Aussie requirement for phone check-ins every 15 minutes or they will deploy police to follow up and confirm your location, turn off the phone and make them eat the cost of hav…

[deleted]

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#676

Post by luxuryballs »

tikwidd wrote: post #431
fallous wrote: post #401

I've lived to see this kind of thing enacted in a good portion of the Anglosphere and my visceral reaction is to engage in a combination of civil disobedience and a determination to undermine every overstep made. With regards to things like the Aussie requirement for phone check-ins every 15 minutes or they will deploy police to follow up and confirm your location, turn off the phone and make them eat the cost of hav…

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…

“people that need to quarantine” also happens to be based on something only a tiny fraction of people have the means to verify, I can’t think of anything in modern times more prone to tyranny than invisible requirements only the chosen state mages can bless

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#677

Post by grecy »

joshuahughes wrote: post #650
Nursie wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the UK, where compliance has been estimated at around 40%?

When the alternative is invasive, Orwellian monitoring and inhumane enforcement by an authoritarian state, I'll take 40% compliance every time. Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.

> 'll take 40% compliance every time

Which has lead to tens of thousands of deaths that have not occurred in Australia.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#678

Post by chitowneats »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #637
chitowneats wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 has never been strictly for sick people. It is for people who might possibly be infected . You can see this in the etymolgy of the word "quarantine": it refers to the forty days ( quarantena in Venetian) that people arriving by ship were required to wait on board before disembarking in Venice during the time of the plague. The whole idea is to wait for the full incubation period of a pathogen, to make sure…

I'm familiar with the etymology. This makes a lot of sense for the bubonic plague. Frankly the Venetians would scoff at what we've done to our societies over a disease so tame (measured by overall rate of survival, individual circumstances can be tragic). It was also an era when people had few rights, no vaccines, no access to treatment.

Surely, we should aspire to be better than 14th-century Venice. To not treat people as if they are nothing more than viral vectors. Instead many would trade away what little control over our own lives we still have in exchange for imagined safety from a virus we will all contract eventually. That the vast majority of people have no issues recovering from.

It's not the plague. It's not Ebola. It's not the worst case scenario we were rightfully concerned about in early 2020. How this hasn't sunk in yet for most people is just baffling to me. Then I look around and see lots of motivated reasoning and state-sponsored propaganda about a permanent transition to remote work, increased government surveillance, curtailing the movement of citizens, and other social initiatives various coalitions were already working towards, that are of course suddenly "absolutely necessary" because of a "once in a lifetime pandemic", and it becomes a little clearer.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#679

Post by oblio »

kongin wrote: post #642
oblio wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying super hard to decipher your message. Post WW1 didn't erode rights, it actually increased them. Post WW2, the same. Korea and Vietnam didn't leave behind any long term repression that I remember. War on drugs and terror, ok. Covid is a disease. We have vaccines, we'll have treatment. Just get vaccinated. We've had pandemics before, they always end and I can't remember any rights still taken away abusively a…

You are mistaking extending special rights to minority groups with citizens rights. We have been increasing minority rights as fast as possible with removing all the protections from dictatorships in the name of, I don't even know what. >Post WW1 didn't erode rights, it actually increased them. Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 >Post WW2, the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act And on…

Do you even read your own links?

> As part of a sweeping repeal of wartime laws, Congress repealed the Sedition Act on December 13, 1920

The second wasn't a wartime act and even that was repealed. Talk about cherry picking.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#680

Post by luxuryballs »

samsin wrote: post #672
bamboozled wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't agree this should be the way people are treated for having a virus. It's over the top. No where else in the world is cracking down like this (AFAIK, maybe China?) This is totally abusing a crisis to gain handover people and using "safety" as justification.

It's not people quarantining because they have the virus, it's related to the mandatory quarantine for international arrivals. Previously you needed to complete 2-weeks of hotel quarantine when you arrived in Australia. This new compromise allows people an option to complete that quarantine period from their own home instead. It's part of a move to increase overseas arrivals while minimising transmission.

funny, if it’s not even for having a virus then what’s the point? I can’t help but think this is just the next step in evolution of the surveillance state using the existence of cold viruses as an excuse, it is not going to go well for the quality of care if the state becomes this embedded in the healthcare system, this is one of those times when a slippery slope is a very valid argument, if they start pushing unvaccinated people out of society bit by bit all based on data and science that is blessed by the state then this becomes a way of eliminating people who mistrust the government from society by force, it’s all well and good until the system is in place and the even more wrong people become in charge and suddenly at the helm of it
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