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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#861

Post by dalmo3 »

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…

Quarantine in a hotel isn't scalable. You can't suddenly quarantine the whole population. Phone tracking is just a pen and paper away from that. The leap from 'tracking the infected' to 'tracking everyone because ~reasons~' is tiny, especially given the pace Australia is running towards stuff like that.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#862

Post by chitowneats »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #833
kongin wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that a bad flu season has had about 10% the impact of covid. That's extremely serious. Should we have locked down in 2017? What number of deaths is the magic one where we decide that it's too much and we need to close everything for years on end?

There's no magic number, but CoVID-19 is the most serious public health emergency in probably a century. > we need to close everything for years on end? Countries that properly managed the pandemic locked down hard for a few weeks, eliminated the virus, and then reopened. They've been back to normal (or something close to it) for most of the time since.

Such an unbelievable lie.

See the recent case explosions in so called "zero covid" utopias like Mongolia: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

You can delay. You cannot run forever.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#863

Post by Vecr »

wutbrodo wrote: post #741
strangeattractr wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Victoria. We have certainly given up all of our freedom. Our Premier has suspended parliament and now rules by decree. Citing fabled 'health advice', which is never made public nor provided when queried, to justify anything he does. That's why we have a 9PM curfew that has done nothing to stem the spread, punitive 'alchohol must be drunk through a mask' rules and playground closures. Those were not legitima…

> I have friends who have been unable to leave the country to see dying parents. Im somewhat neutral on most of Australia's restrictions: my opinion is that theyre unnecessarily draconian, and that some of them are not in accordance with pretty well-established science (1 hour of outdoor time is ludicrous). But this is a relatively low-confidence belief, as I don't have a strong rebuttal to those championing the mini…

If you can't leave, you can't bring the virus back. I guess.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#864

Post by pathseeker »

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…

>My guess is that they would reset your isolation duration

You do know that quarantine isn't supposed to be a punishment, right? Resetting your isolation duration is punitive and has zero relationship to your ability to spread covid.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#865

Post by kongin »

jezzzabell wrote: post #847
kongin wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the alternative is thousands and thousands of deaths, most of us are willing to temporarily give up a bit of civil liberty. Don't worry, you'll be doing both and it won't be temporary.

Please explain.

The death rate for Covid in even a fully vaccinated population is somewhere between 2 to 8 per million per day given Israel's current figures. Which means from 700 to 3000 deaths per million per year.

And you won't be getting the freedoms you gave up back, since the police are already using your location data to arrest you: https://theconversation.com/police-access-to-covid-check-in-...

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#866

Post by chitowneats »

logicchains wrote: post #461
stubish wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to protest during a pandemic is dubious, in direct conflict with other peoples rights. It is also self defeating, when the majority consider the protesters arseholes for willfully endangering the general community and don't get around to considering the actual issue being protested.

People make you are the reason I look forward to the day I have a second citizenship and can renounce my Australian one.

You're welcome here in the U.S. It's not perfect but there are places you can escape this madness.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#867

Post by bjowen »

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…

Thirty thousand cases today, with about 1700 added overnight - and that is with the lockdowns.

You may still personally consider this an overreaction, but please do not invite other people to that conclusion with incorrect data.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#868

Post by bamboozled »

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.

Why doesn't the Government take some responsibility though?

They screwed up on some many levels, now it's up to the individual to be tracked like a criminal? That's why this is such a joke.

I remember reading the Prime Minister of Australia scoffed at corona virus, said it was a Chinese problem and said he will attend the Rugby League.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#869

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

chitowneats wrote: post #862
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no magic number, but CoVID-19 is the most serious public health emergency in probably a century. > we need to close everything for years on end? Countries that properly managed the pandemic locked down hard for a few weeks, eliminated the virus, and then reopened. They've been back to normal (or something close to it) for most of the time since.

Such an unbelievable lie. See the recent case explosions in so called "zero covid" utopias like Mongolia: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m... You can delay. You cannot run forever.

China, the most populous country on Earth, has no community transmission.

I don't know what went wrong in Mongolia, because I haven't been following that country, but China and New Zealand have demonstrated that with a good public health system, elimination is possible and sustainable.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#870

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

chitowneats wrote: post #860
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As New Zealand and China have shown, it is within our power to avert almost all deaths from CoVID-19. They have gotten through the pandemic with orders of magnitude fewer deaths per capita and far greater everyday freedoms than most of the world. Quarantine for international travelers is one of the tools they have used. "People die" as an excuse for letting millions of people die of preventable causes is a terrible a…

China is lying and New Zealand is one of the most remote places in the entire world. I hate to be this blunt but you're kidding yourself if you think this was ever an option for the United States. With respect to "preventable causes", I already responded to that point. Most death is preventable. Or at least delay-able. That does not mean everyone agrees with your scorched earth campaigns to prevent it.

China has zero community transmission.

Here on HN, there are plenty of people who live in China, or who have family/friends/colleagues in China. They can tell you what the situation in the country is.

For more than a year, bars, restaurants and most other things have been open, mass gatherings have been allowed, etc. In densely packed cities with Guangzhou and Shanghai, what do you think R0 would be under those circumstances? Any community transmission would quickly grow into a major outbreak, just like in Wuhan in December 2019.

Yet there's no such outbreak. And no, there's no conceivable way the government could hide such an outbreak.

That's why it's simply not credible to claim that there is any substantial community transmission in China.

The other thing is that you can look at how rigorous the reaction is to every new case of community transmission. There have been small outbreaks in China over the last year, but they've been contained using contact tracing, mass testing, and lockdowns (usually only of individual neighborhoods, but sometimes of cities).

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