Wow, what a unique phenomenon.
Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
231–240 of 294 posts
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#232Well, we know that mass surveillance has been installed in the USA, we have detailed proof of it, and this hasn't change a thing. They are still under mass surveillance. And people are still carrying trackers in their pocker. They put cameras in the front door bell, always online microphones with speech analysis in their living room, give all their life records, textual or in images, to giants companies that have dem…
This literally is the divide between HN types and everyday individuals. The latter pays little attention because they generally do not care whilst HN will debate and suggest endless fixes to the problem - which are always technically more difficult or cumbersome. This is why people buy Apple products on each iteration, religiously for some, because they want it to work, be pretty and the desire of everyone. The UK ha…
I wouldn't say ordinary people "do not care". To some extent, even ordinary people know that the mega tech empires concentrate too much power and data. Popular media hasn't completely failed to report on stuff like FB fiascos, privacy leaks and so on. Many more people are aware than HNers might imagine. But viable solutions are not there. As you point out, alternatives are workable only to the technically inclined, which means they might as well not exist. To be sure there are alternatives which swap one silo for another, but truly private options are too cumbersome to make inroads into mainstream, and they never will, if they continue to remain so fiddly. Of course the other side of this is legislation and regulations but even here the transnational nature of these corps allow them to work around even progressive national laws, and the latter are rare enough, with most politicians bought off one way or another.
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#233Bought to you by the country where this tweet https://twitter.com/9newssyd/status/1430707532134236163?lang... is absolutely not satire or an Onion newspiece.
OMG
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police only the most hardened/radical protesters will turn up. Of course there will end up being a little bit of violence. And to address the wider point of violence in protests is it not sometimes necessary? If you believe your government has become tyrannical and they are willing to use force against you then what other option do you have?
> The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police You've got that arse-about. They were met with regular uniformed police, like in the BLM protests that happened multiple times in the last 12-18 months. The BLM protesters managed to remain peaceful, didn't assault reporters, bystanders, or police, and didn't damage property. They protested, and then dispersed on their own. All while…
>The BLM protesters managed to remain peaceful, didn't assault reporters, bystanders, or police, and didn't damage property. They protested, and then dispersed on their own.
Ummm no that's just false. You can easily search the amount of damage caused by those "protests". There were billions of dollars in property damage.
https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a4...
https://nypost.com/2020/09/05/black-lives-matter-protesters-...
https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/riots-following-george-floyds-...
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#235I live in NZ and feel that commentors of our govts approach overstate the level of authoritarianism we're experiencing. Its not universal but it feels more like the majority of people recognize that lockdowns and other restrictions are for the greater good. If you are arrested you are not going to be "disapeared", you will be processed like anyone else breaking a law. While we might collectively trust the current ele…
At least in Australia and for myself personally, I am not worried about how we are being treated _now_, I am worried about the powers that have the capacity to be abused in the future without a legal standing for opposition.
Some of the laws we have in Australia are quite crazy. They are getting abused now or have been implemented with such little judicial oversight that there is no need to abuse them.
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#236Cries of "Tyranny!" and "Give me liberty or give me death" are imported concepts that don't resonate quite as well here in Australia. The pearl clutching "Save Australia" protests were good for a chuckle[1], but are also accompanied by people advocating we rise up and murder our police[2]? When Florida has 50x the per capita death rate than that of Australia, it's pretty clear that the US chose liberty AND death[3].…
No thread on surveillance and privacy is complete without this clichéd quote, might as well be me: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin
Great quote.
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cries of "Tyranny!" and "Give me liberty or give me death" are imported concepts that don't resonate quite as well here in Australia. Maybe literally with those sayings, but up until sometime in the 80s, "its a free country" was a common refrain, which was rooted in the culture and expectations of the people. Something changed though.
Huh! Amazing! That’s something we used to say as children to each other at school. I’m now 40 amd don’t recall the last time I heard anyone say that.
Same and same - although I recall hearing it in 2019 and it felt like an outlier.
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Australians are the richest in the world, mostly living a good and dare I say peaceful life. I wouldn't think of even 100k people cares about this issue.
That depends on what year you were born and whether you got into the property market or not (again, depending on what year). There is a very large gap between the haves and have not's in terms of property wealth. It's a strange situation here. A 25 year old on 150k p/a will have major difficulty getting into the property market because owner investors, who bought in a couple of decades ago (or even a decade ago!) are…
> A 25 year old on 150k p/a will have major difficulty getting into the property market
errrrr... Australia is a big place so this isn't as concrete as you've made it sound. There's quite a lot of affordable property, but sure, the handful of places (cities) where a 25 year old can manage to get 150k p/a pre-tax income might also be inaccessible for buying property for a few reasons, one of which are the situation involving investors. However, this kind of person I wouldn't really exclude from being able to live the 'good life' available to Australians, but I get that this is moreso an example of a benchmark esp. related to the demographic of this forum.
Seriously though, many young devs in Australia can live a pretty great life beyond "home ownership" haha. And the average Australia can find decently priced property, just maybe not exactly in the neighbourhood they like most. But I don't think that's the point of property ownership.
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#239To anyone not from Australia or not across this, currently federal law enforcement can hack online accounts, remove, add, or modify data. They still need a warrant but can hack accounts in advance of a warrant, provided they have "reasonable suspicion" that the person they are hacking is committing a crime. There is also no recourse if the warrant is denied and they have already hacked the accounts of the person in s…
> Having read The Gulag Archipelago, I am worried what will become of Australia in coming decades.
You might be interested in reading "Psychopathology of totalitarianism" by Ariane Bilheran. While she's French I think it applies to most of the western countries.
It's 3 articles, so shorter than a book, maybe 30 min read in total :
https://www.arianebilheran.com/post/psychopathology-of-total...
https://www.arianebilheran.com/post/psychopathology-of-total...
https://www.arianebilheran.com/post/psychopathology-of-total...
Re: Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
#240I've just returned to Australia after 15 years living all around the world, and I find it all fascinating and I have a bit of perspective on this. The Australian media have a very strong influence on people's lives - they daily create some uproar or other that people get addicted to, wound up about, and then forget. Two weeks ago it was the nuclear sub deal with USA (and dropping France), then it was some state leade…
> My Dad immediately jumped to the conclusion that encrypted communications the police can't read is obviously a bad thing. Then I think the problem here is your dad, not the media. Your dad's lack of clear thinking or otherwise is his responsibility. You can't run around in square circles claiming that it's all the media's fault for your dad's supposed wrongthink. There are two possibilities: 1. Your dad is a dumb,…
There is a third possibility. Sometimes people make mistakes due to a limited perspective. One might argue this is merely a variant of your second option, but in that case the media would be very much at fault.