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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

#271

Post by boffinAudio »

fao_ wrote: post #269
boffinAudio wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The US is a military junta masquerading as a republic. Presumably Australia's republic movement will address the issue of the corruption of the republic, eventually.

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

#272

Post by t6jvcereio »

tomc1985 wrote: post #151
chrisdirkis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic damage is real damage. If you break windows, and the govt has to repair those windows, it has less money to spend on welfare and charity and doing other stuff that a govt wants to do.

To nitpick- not necessarily, the extra expense just gets added to the deficit

So you've added to the debt burden then. Or did you think that "the deficit" was a magical wealth fountain?

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

#273

Post by hestefisk »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #233
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. No matter which crazies are elected, they face an extreme uphill battle to remove basic rights. Me too. In my country we've got politicians proposing amendments to the constitution every other day like it was nothing, it happens frequently enough for there to be jargon and acronyms for it: Constitutional Amendment Proposals. USA at least has a solid ideological…

Roe v Wade much? I’m Australian and, whilst the we have huge issues with lack of a “bill of rights”, at least we don’t have conservative judges running the country.

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

#274

Post by t6jvcereio »

mellavora wrote: post #191
chrisdirkis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic damage is real damage. If you break windows, and the govt has to repair those windows, it has less money to spend on welfare and charity and doing other stuff that a govt wants to do.

nitpick: government has to pay people to fix the windows, creating jobs. Maybe you get more window repairmen and less police, but which is better for society is still an open question.

You realize there's a famous essay on economy that uses precisely the allegory of windows being broken and repaired to argue that not all GDP is good. That's right, "it's creates jobs" is a terrible argument.

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

#275

Post by wccrawford »

Gasp0de wrote: post #227
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…

How is "blocking a road" a crime that inflicts severe economic damage?

There was recently a canal blockage that caused severe economic damage to the entire world.

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

#276

Post by t6jvcereio »

NullPrefix wrote: post #162
chrisdirkis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic damage is real damage. If you break windows, and the govt has to repair those windows, it has less money to spend on welfare and charity and doing other stuff that a govt wants to do.

Breaking windows sounds more like physical damage

Damage to any thing of value is also economic damage. Someone's resources, natural or labor, will be consumed for replacement.

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

#277

Post by raxxorraxor »

Nitramp wrote: post #270
raxxorraxor wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

This is an extremely narrow perspective on contemporary issues. I think laws in harmony with the constitution would need to answer these questions.

As I said, I don't believe it to be perfect, but I have severe doubts current powers could come up with something better.

The question of the number of representatives by state is a political one. Look at the EU. Pretty much the same. Otherwise a union would not be possible. This is a form of minority protection. There is valid criticism for that but said criticism should first understand why it is the way it is. There is also valid criticism of "the winner takes it all" approaches of course. These issues aren't even disconnected here.

Still, the US constitution is pretty great. I don't know of one that is better. I don't believe the current political climate could improve it significantly and I cannot blame it for not having a direct answer to any legal question. A constitution that might have that would be extremely long and probably extremely bad.

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

#278

Post by alexwlchan »

OJFord wrote: post #268
implements wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apparently so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_rejected_by_the_...

I’m surprised by how long the list is; I thought it was much rarer and more exceptional. The only time I’d heard of them rejecting a film was when it showed unsimulated animal cruelty, but I guess there must be other reasons.

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

#279

Post by mgoetzke »

Aerroon wrote: post #206
josephg wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need to get the government's permission to be able to publish your game in Australia. That sounds weird. I'm Australian and I've never heard of that. Can you share some links so I can learn more about that?

Sure! https://www.classification.gov.au/classification-ratings/wha... > Every film and computer game has to be classified before it can be legally made available to the Australian public, unless it is exempt or is being shown at a registered event. If they refuse classification then it is banned.

Same seems true here in Germany. I had to import Gears of War (1) from Austria because I wasn't allowed to buy it irrespective of Age.

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

#280

Post by baazaa »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #253
baazaa wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I originally had written premiers and PM's offices, not sure why I edited it. It wasn't a statement about federalism but about where power was located within each level of government. Obviously the judiciary is much less powerful here than the US, but my point was how power has been stripped away from party members, legislatures, the civil service, and most of the political executive. Even senior ministers have effec…

> Obviously the judiciary is much less powerful here than the US How do you define "power" exactly? Like the Supreme Court just flipping constitutional law precedent? Or that the government isn't being held to account in front of an independent judiciary? Because we see that reasonably often in NZ, government gets taken to the High Court, loses, formally apologises, tries to get it right. If that's missing in Austral…

Judicial review is much stronger in the US than NZ as well, due to parliamentary sovereignty you find in the Westminster system. Historically judicial review could only be used to review executive actions, not legislative bills. Now you have a weird bill of rights which is merely statutory, which I believe is a bit like Canada's in that the legislature can still pass whatever it wants with an intentional override?

Of course we don't have any federal bill of rights in Australia, and the implied rights in the constitution to thing like political speech can be violated so long as the court thinks the government had a legitimate reason for doing so.

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