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Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

tutanota.com

311–320 of 397 posts

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#311

I'm most curious about what they mean by "ADDING" data... Does this mean the police can create a social media account in your name? Imagine for instance that they suspect one of your family members of tax evasion. Can they create a fake social media account or email account registered to you, and impersonate you for the sake of entrapping someone else? Like hey uncle, love your new car, got any hot accounting tips? I…

The law generally allows the state to abuse its people in all kinds of ways. That’s the social contact: that abuse is seldom, and when it occurs the abuser gets punished. If it occurs enough then usually something big socially occurs, like a revolution.

A contract is consent in both ways. Most people have not consented neither explicitly nor tacitly to any of this. I understand what the term means, but most people seem to stick with the enlightenment-age definition while in reality what we currently have in most states (eastern or western) is not a social contract, but a hostage situation.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#312
post #34

I guess my days as a paying customer of FastMail are coming to an end. I don’t expect to ever become a legitimate target of Australian law enforcement, but there is always abuse.

I recommend reading the actual law before panicking. The article is pretty exaggerated. There is still judicial oversight to protect you from abuse, making this the same as most other laws in most western democracies. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

> There is still ...

You're probably right. Although seeing it in context, those news coming from Australia suggest a very slippery slope where "There is still ..." might not be true sometime soon. On the one hand it could be negativity bias, on the other hand there's also the fear Australia is being used as an experiment and the rest of the Five Eyes will follow suit.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#313
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've limited themselves because people wanted it (often violently). Now the majority of people are complacent and that's when the "leaders" accumulate power. In Europe for example, complacent with the police taking away the homeless, complacent with the laws slowly eroding everyone's freedoms, complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people. It's the same old tired trope of "first the…

>complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people. Odd choice of topics to be outraged about.

I wake up every day hating I'm alive and can only sleep with alcohol. Apparently, I'm far from the only one being denied proper mental healthcare. I'm not talking therapy, just medicaiton. So close, yet out of reach. So yeah.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#314
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend reading the actual law before panicking. The article is pretty exaggerated. There is still judicial oversight to protect you from abuse, making this the same as most other laws in most western democracies. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

> There is still ... You're probably right. Although seeing it in context, those news coming from Australia suggest a very slippery slope where "There is still ..." might not be true sometime soon. On the one hand it could be negativity bias, on the other hand there's also the fear Australia is being used as an experiment and the rest of the Five Eyes will follow suit.

That is quite possibly the case, and we should never cease to be vigilant. But that said, we were worried about the same slippery slope 20 years ago, and at least in my country it is less worrisome now than then.

It seems to me that Australia is lagging behind more than being an experiment, considering they're still talking about encryption laws etc. But perhaps the US is as well?

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#315

My girlfriend is Australian, stranded abroad here in Germany like many other Aussies. I’ve bern following the news from down under for quite a while. I have the nagging feeling that Australia is currently the Western country with the highest chance of turning into Gilead.

Nah, we lack the political motivation for really any major change. Australian politics is about not losing vs winning.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#316

It took me just a couple of minutes to find the bill in question, read up on it and find that most of the claims made in this article are incorrect. It's not "rushed through parliament in 24 hours", it's been in a process since at least December 2020. The 'without a judge' part is strongly misleading: (5) If subsection (4) applies, the applicant must: (a) provide as much information as the eligible Judge or nominated…

5.b ...or what? In practice these kinds of rules are unenforced because governments tolerance for their own busy schedules, giving exceptions for unavoidable delay, is infinite. And then it happens so much it's standard practice and attorneys lose social credit for even bringing it up.

I would say it depends. If it takes 80 hours to get approval and it turns out that the warrant was, well, warranted, then I don't consider it to be a big problem.

If it takes 80 hours and it turns out to be abuse, then heads would probably roll.

However, in most cases these things are legitimate. I've worked in government and most people have good intentions. We don't have to protect ourselves, as a society, against the legitimate cases, we have to protect ourselves against the abuse.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#317
post #207

Recent and related: Australian Police get online account takeover, data disruption powers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364140 - Aug 2021 (77 comments) ‘Extraordinary’ hacking powers pass Australian Parliament - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28311722 - Aug 2021 (212 comments) Australia is becoming a surveillance state - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048 - Aug 2021 (423 comments)

418 votes submitted 3 hours ago and the story can't be found on the front page

The top commenter is throwaway created an hour ago

Curious how ranking works on HN. If that hasn't been answered already.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably what they are referring to. Some areas are limiting outdoor time and fining people who are "outside without a reasonable excuse". "From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be given new freedoms. Residents of hotspots can leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour , while people in other areas can meet five others outdoors." https://twitt…

It's called a lockdown...

The question is not how it's called but whether it's happening or not.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#319
post #178

Australia is turning itself into a prison state. Citizens are allowed to go outside for maximum one or two hours, total surveillance, unconstrained searches of the property... About the same set of rights as a supermax prison inmate has, it looks like.

Minor nitpick: Australia is turning itself back into a prison state.

Back then they didn't really have a choice. Now it's all on them - they elected those people.

Re: Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours

#320
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've limited themselves because people wanted it (often violently). Now the majority of people are complacent and that's when the "leaders" accumulate power. In Europe for example, complacent with the police taking away the homeless, complacent with the laws slowly eroding everyone's freedoms, complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people. It's the same old tired trope of "first the…

>complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people. Odd choice of topics to be outraged about.

i will add anecdata that I know many healthcare professionals in Canada and they are down right burnt out and angry (even before Covid19) about how the system is giving terrible care to people. They want to do a better job but cannot with quotas and rules dictated by the rule makers.

Canada may have better outcomes on average, because it picks up the very bottom (imagine how easy it is to help the bottom quartile of health). But I think it also drops the ball on people who are proactively trying to optimize their health because then the answer becomes "Not indicated, you're not sick enough for us to care", and then it's outright illegal to say "fine I'll pay out of pocket for the care!" (save for going international)

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