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Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

abc.net.au

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Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#261

Post by krapp »

golergka wrote: post #258
YPPH wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Constitution is not much to be jealous about. In Australia, if people are unhappy with laws, they can change the government, who in turn can change the laws. Meanwhile, in the US, the validity of laws is decided based upon the views of unelected bureaucrats appointed by past Presidents. The US has the highly undesirable situation of (1) the possibility of a deadlocked President (because Congress does not suppo…

> the validity of laws is decided based upon the views of unelected bureaucrats appointed by past Presidents Which means that these people are actually indirectly selected by voters, but are changed in a much slower way and will not be a series of populists who rewrite everything every time a political climate changes a bit. This sounds like a very good thing.

That's a very good thing until a populist President, who didn't even win the popular vote, comes into office and stacks the court with loyalists who repeal basic rights supported by the majority of voters.

Then voters are reminded of how little their votes actually matter, directly or indirectly.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#262

Post by SiempreViernes »

mellosouls wrote: post #18

Note these are bail conditions (so presumably an alternative to a much more constrained existence in prison) for a charge that indicates potential for inflicting severe economic damage after organization via communication devices. When compared to bail conditions for other charged crimes which may also be strict and context-related (eg. trackers or keeping distance from a victim of violence) it sounds tough (and righ…

All this was done in an effort to suppress non-violent protest of Australian climate policies, and in particular it's extreme coal exports, which are among the largest in the world.

So yes, this is a draconian bail condition that is meant to do harm against the few Australian that seek to prevent harm to come to you.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#263

Post by SiempreViernes »

calsy wrote: post #93
pnw wrote: post #60

Australia has always been somewhat of a prison colony with extensive censorship of media and the Internet and almost no constitutional rights as Americans understand them.

What extensive censorship of media? Australian's have plenty of 'constitutional rights', the right to vote, the right to property, the right to trial by jury, freedom of religion.

The literal raids to prevent the media from reporting on Ozzie Special Forces committing gruesome murders in Afghanistan come to mind.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51526607

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#264

Post by logicchains »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #221
Gareth321 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand had some of the toughest lockdowns in the entire world. It only just lifted the last of the travel restrictions ( https://covid19.govt.nz/international-travel/when-new-zealan... ). It mandated vaccinations in all kinds of ways, including firing hundreds of nurses at the height of a pandemic for what appears to be the worst kind of virtue signalling I have ever seen. The latest democratic crisis involved h…

1) How do lockdowns to minimise deaths violate natural justice? 2) Refusing a reasonable request from an employer is grounds for termination in NZ employment law. Asking people working with vulnerable people to be vaccinated against the disease causing that pandemic is a reasonable request. The only virtue signalling was from the nurses who martyred themselves on the altar of misinformation. 3) No, the Three Waters r…

> 1) How do lockdowns to minimise deaths violate natural justice?

To minimise _one form_ of death. If you locked everybody in their houses forever, nobody would die of car accidents, but more people would die of other things. All the studies now show that lockdowns achieved no reduction in overall mortality, they just delayed things a bit, and led to a bunch of other issues like increase in alcoholism/depression and significantly impaired childhood development.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#265

Post by logicchains »

julianz wrote: post #219
Gareth321 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand had some of the toughest lockdowns in the entire world. It only just lifted the last of the travel restrictions ( https://covid19.govt.nz/international-travel/when-new-zealan... ). It mandated vaccinations in all kinds of ways, including firing hundreds of nurses at the height of a pandemic for what appears to be the worst kind of virtue signalling I have ever seen. The latest democratic crisis involved h…

Horseshit. A few nurses were stood down because they wouldn't get a vaccination in a pandemic. Good. Your take on the Three Waters reforms is just completely wronghewded, there is so much misinformation about those changes it's ridiculous. Water systems need fixing up in NZ and it makes no sense to let small local councils do it when larger bodies can borrow at better rates to get the infrastructure work done.

> Horseshit. A few nurses were stood down because they wouldn't get a vaccination in a pandemic. Good.

A pandemic in which they were at the frontlines, observing both the effects of covid on patients and the effects of the vaccines, yet they were more afraid of the vaccines than covid. That should tell you something about how safe the vaccines are.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#266

Post by MonkeyClub »

boffinAudio wrote: post #255
shapefrog wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bad PM can be ousted in a day 1 person, appointed by the Queen. In this case it isnt a "slippery slope" where technically it could happen etc it happened. "The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as the Dismissal, culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Governor-General Sir John Kerr." https://e…

>There is actually a lot to one day come out about that interesting period of time. This was when Australians lost their sovereignty and became a puppet state of US corporations and intelligence agencies. Just like Germany.

Also just like the UK, one could say.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#267

Post by MonkeyClub »

martin8412 wrote: post #212
Aerroon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bad PM can be ousted in a day. By whom? The parliament that confirmed him as PM? The parliament where the PM's party almost always holds the most seats? A parliamentary system essentially combines the executive and legislative powers to one party.

Technically speaking, by Queen Elizabeth.

I.e. by an unelected foreigner who asserts dominance through custom and tradition.

I don’t know how long such arrangements can persevere, but it’d be delightful if they didn’t survive past Lizzie and Charlie.

I mean, it’s the 21st century. If we have no gods, then why do we still have masters?

Ontologically speaking, sovereignty in a secular nation can have no metaphysical assertions (“divine right to rule”), so there can be no legitimate claims of primacy over other humans.

But this is well known. Perhaps it’s the invisible and inactive nature of British monarchy that permits it to survive: they do next no nothing publicly, so they don’t step on toes.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#268

Post by OJFord »

implements wrote: post #257
OJFord wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the outcome ever a refusal to classify them at all though? I think even when some films (e.g. Clockwork Orange at first I believe?) were banned they were still rated by the BBFC, it was councils that banned cinemas from showing them locally?

The BBFC is a non-government organisation nevertheless required by the government to view and rate all films. Councils licence cinemas (originally for fire safety) and require cinemas to only show rated material to the public, but they also have a discretionary power to rate and therefore ban films themselves. As an example, Life of Brian (1979) was only an “AA” (14 years+) but a moral panic made 28 councils raise to…

Yes, but what I'm saying is do they ever refuse to rate a film?

Life of Brian was another example I was thinking of, and as you say, same as I described there - rated, then banned.

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#269

Post by fao_ »

boffinAudio wrote: post #251
vosper wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that, in practice, they are miles apart in what actually gets censored.

Not really. You can't discuss Australian war crimes openly in the media - this will get you shut down quite rapidly. Something most people don't understand is that Australias' sovereign, the Queen, is used to keep embarassing state secrets well and truly out of the public eye. This is an intolerable state of affairs that will hopefully get addressed when she dies, and the Australian Republic movement gets fresh air u…

> Australia has secret prisons, and a star court for the things it doesn't want the world to know. Witness J, K, L, M, &etc.

So does america. I'm not sure how a republic movement could save australia from having these things when one of the largest republics in the world also has, e.g. hundreds of thousands of censored warcrimes on wikileaks and guantanamo bay

Re: Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone

#270

Post by Nitramp »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #245
Gareth321 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, the thought of a "Constitution" requiring a supermajority to modify seemed arcane. "If it's the will of the people, let it be done." Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. Sadly I do not see the UK/AU/NZ/CAN creating their own Constitutions. Those in power understand it would limit their p…

> Today, I am forever jealous of America's Constitution. It isn't perfect at all and maybe fallen out of time a bit, but it is better than that of any other country I know (I am not for the US). But even today you have idiots trying to undermine it (for example in regards to the right to bear arms). I can live without arms and think it has many advantages, but the sleazy lawyer militia arguments brought forward are s…

> It isn't perfect at all and maybe fallen out of time a bit, but it is better than that of any other country I know (I am not for the US).

That's a very surprising take to me.

Some more obvious problems with the US constitution are highly ambiguous clauses (right to bear arms vs militias), unclear powers assigned to parts of the government (could Pence have legally decided on the electors to make Trump win? what's the exact succession of powers?), an election system causing imbalanced voting power (how many senators per state vs population, first-past-the-post vote), important rights left undefined (right to privacy vs the abortion issue), and many many more issues. These really are just the recent things that come to mind. These problems also don't seem scholarly, they appear to have substantial impact on political reality.

The US constitution was certainly a huge achievement for the 18th century. There's - unsurprisingly - been a lot of progress in constitutional theory in the 235 years after though, and it seems like it is a massive liability for the US by now.

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