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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#741

Post by wutbrodo »

strangeattractr wrote: post #589
Nursie wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's given up "all their civil rights" ? That seems like a massive hyperbole. In WA, there are no lockdowns or any real coronavirus restrictions once you're in. Looks good to me. Might want to compare those death rates too.

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 minimal-Covid-until-vaccinated strategy and its relative success. I wouldn't pick the same spot on the freedom/safety spectrum, but I have no basis for claiming those who do are "wrong".

But how on earth do the restriction apologists justify forbidding _leaving the country_? It has, by definition, zero safety justification. Plus, forbidding people yo leave a country is quite reasonably considered a violation of international human rights law. With respect to this specific policy, what on earth are policymakers thinking?

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#742

Post by lsiebert »

Jedd wrote: post #233
lsiebert wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For US folks, The Liberal Party is Center Right and further to the left than the Republicans, Labor is Center Left and further to the left of the Democrats.

> .. Labor is Center Left and further to the left of the Democrats. Do you think? I'd have pegged things like Green New Deal, fairly strong consensus around fossil fuels and renewables, as strong US Democrat party line -- compared to AU's Labor being still wedded to a fossil fuel future, still keen to satiate Murdoch and co. What broad policies / positions are you suggesting indicate AU Labor is more left than US Dem…

On a lot of things, universal health care, how strongly they are in favor of nuclear disarmament, gun control, etc. Remember President Biden is the head of the Democratic Party, And the US itself has been pushed further to the right by a conservative dominated supreme court.

Here's the 2021 Labor party platform https://alp.org.au/media/2594/2021-alp-national-platform-fin...

Here's the 2020 Democratic Party platform https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/202...

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#743

Post by BoxOfRain »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #694
BoxOfRain wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot accept a policy where people are imprisoned within their borders and not allowed to leave as ethical. Free countries don't have laws to stop people escaping, and there's no threat on earth where a genuine police state is an ethical response.

> and there's no threat on earth where a genuine police state is an ethical response. Pandemics need a centralised, coordinated effort to combat. Sure, being a Libertarian is great, but unfortunately Libertairism is about the individual. You don't fight a common threat by individualism.

There's a huge spectrum of opinion between libertarianism and wilfully endorsing authoritarianism because you happen to agree with a particular policy. You don't fight a common threat individually, but the government isn't always the best organ either. In my country the pandemic response has primarily been an exercise in tearing up civil liberties (there's now permanent legislation against protests for example which I doubt could have happened without the climate of panic that the pandemic precipitated), enriching a self-serving sociopolitical elite with all kinds of unethical behaviour such as dodgy PPE contracts, and arguably failing anyway at preventing widespread loss of life despite the immense collateral damage. That's not even mentioning the devestating effect on generational inequality which was a terrible problem to begin with.

I'm particularly disgusted by the use of military-style behavioural psychology tactics against our own citizens to terrify people, I cannot conceive of the kind of person who'd think that's okay in a free country. The only thing we've actually done with any distinction is the vaccine rollout, which was excellent mostly because the government left the details alone and simply gave the existing infrastructure the resources to do its commendable work (I'm willing to be proven wrong on this, as my information is conflicting).

All the "all in this together" talk is complete crap in the cold light of day, sometimes collectivism is required but parliaments and certainly partisan politicians in a power-drunk executive branch aren't a good organ to do it with. We do not need to build a permanent surveillance state or other organs of tyranny to defeat COVID, nor do we need to build a society of mean-spirited, curtain-twitching moral authoritarians which will takes decades to undo.

EDIT: made some clarifications

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#744

Post by mchusma »

markdown wrote: post #241
c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #210

In the years before covid, as the sole American in a few 'strayan social circles, I'd receive sh*t for Americans protesting about their "rights" and how entitled they are. Now with Covid, Australian citizens can't leave or can't come in (without significant effort). I've seen a shift in thinking amongst my Australian friends and family. The Australians I know now see value in something like a bill of rights. Like in…

There isn't a bill of rights without exceptions, and a pandemic (public health) is always going to be one of those exceptions. It doesn't help at all during a pandemic.

But are we in a "pandemic" still? How do you define pandemic?

If you go by "a disease spreading out there", then surely colds and flus qualify every year, just nobody bothers to think much of it.

I think we need some quantitative benchmark, like:

- if emergency measures are ever taken, any ban on vaccines is lifted

-once vaccines are no longer banned, to qualify for increased measures the disease must be expected to have 5x worse case fatality rate than the flu in vaccinated people.

So in the US we have 3 groups:

- vaccinated people where the disease risk is very low (lower than flu)

- children who are banned from taking the vaccine

- unvaccinated people whose deaths should be labeled suicide. Their deaths are tragic, but it's basically more akin to suicide than anything else. I mean if I just don't eat, I don't really die of starvation, I die by suicide. So it's fine, let them do what they want, but don't make everyone suffer for it.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#745

Post by gorwell »

King-Aaron wrote: post #482
gorwell wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the Australian government rapidly moves toward an authoritarian police state, does part of you wonder if they'd be so cavalier if their citizens had guns? Or if that might be a deterrent to tyranny at some point?

lol you're kidding yourself if you think having armed citizens would make any difference to authoritarian policy anywhere.

You're kidding yourself if you think it wouldn't. Didn't the Taliban just win despite 20 years of military occupation?

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#746

Post by gorwell »

bserge wrote: post #499
gorwell wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the Australian government rapidly moves toward an authoritarian police state, does part of you wonder if they'd be so cavalier if their citizens had guns? Or if that might be a deterrent to tyranny at some point?

You imagine some ragtag groups fighting against the police and military with the guns they bought a decade or two ago? Personal ownership of guns doesn't help that much. You need a lot of people, a lot of organized people. At which point you can acquire or even create the weapons you need.

You don't have to imagine, look at Afghanistan. A ragtag group of people won against the strongest military in the world.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#747

Post by tacocataco »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #226
WalterBright wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compulsory voting This always seemed like madness to me. You can force someone to vote, but you cannot force them to vote responsibly. They may just vote "screw you" just for revenge. The right to vote includes the right to abstain from voting when one does not care. Forced voting sounds like a recipe for bad election results. I would expect the same from paying people to vote.

It can't be any worse than what we have in the USA. I mean for god sakes, Trump actually won the presidency. Something is definitely broken in the US system (primarily voter suppression, legal corporate bribery, and gerrymandering is my theory)

It would, IMO, help to make third parties viable by getting rid of First Past the Post voting.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#748

Post by docmars »

chitowneats wrote: post #678
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quarantine has never been strictly for sick people. It is for people who might possibly be infected . You can see this in the etymolgy of the word "quarantine": it refers to the forty days ( quarantena in Venetian) that people arriving by ship were required to wait on board before disembarking in Venice during the time of the plague. The whole idea is to wait for the full incubation period of a pathogen, to make sure…

I'm familiar with the etymology. This makes a lot of sense for the bubonic plague . Frankly the Venetians would scoff at what we've done to our societies over a disease so tame (measured by overall rate of survival, individual circumstances can be tragic). It was also an era when people had few rights, no vaccines, no access to treatment. Surely, we should aspire to be better than 14th-century Venice. To not treat pe…

Spot on, and once the endless waves of variants no longer convince the submissive within our populations that all of these massive changes to life are necessary, the same measures will be used during a questionably endless "climate crisis" to justify the retention of this newfound power they've gained.

1. https://ktrh.iheart.com/content/2021-06-01-after-covid-lockd...

2. https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/07/out-covid-lockdowns-...

3. https://www.guardiangazette.com/2021/08/30/climate-lockdowns...

And for those who aren't convinced, I'll be available to accept apologies at my nearest concentration camp.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#749

Post by chitowneats »

logicchains wrote: post #735
iamthemonster wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Western Australia. I'm delighted with prevention of interstate Covid. The freedom to do whatever you want is pretty enjoyable to be honest, and not worrying that family members will die of Covid is even better.

Do you worry about family members in lockdowned states drinking themselves to death? In Canada lockdowns killed more under-65s than covid: https://tnc.news/2021/07/18/lockdowns-killed-more-canadians-...

New South Wales has a solution for this. Limit the alcohol allowance of individuals under lockdown:

https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/nsw-health-lim...

I wish this was a joke, or fake news. But no, once they control where you can go, when you can go there, etc, it's not a big jump for them to demand control over what you put in your body. It's for your own safety, after all.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#750

Post by partomniscient »

JimTheMan wrote: post #498
yesenadam wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm always kind of surprised by people who move to Australia. It's a country that has had an active policy of censorship on entertainment for a very long time - books, video games, movies. The fact that the populace is okay with such a policy would make me reconsider moving there. That seems very bizarre to me. I'm not sure what you're talking about here exactly, what you've heard/read. Compared to which countries?…

For the day to day, actual lived life of an Australian, I can't think of any media I want that I cannot get.

There's a lot of media we can get that we don't want though...
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