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Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens 367

Posted by michael from the jumping-on-the-bandwagon dept.
sg_oneill writes "The Australian Electronic Frontiers foundation report that the Australian Government is looking at introducing changes to the Telecomunications Interception Act giving Government Agencies (NOT just police!) the power to intercept email, voice mail and SMS messages without a warrant. Considering the concurrent proposals to introduce legislation to allow banning of organisations suspected of terrorist links, am I the only one suspecting Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?" I think our most recent Australia spying story was about the Australian government spying to win elections.
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Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens More

Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens

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  • Email is not and never was secure. (Score:3, Informative)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:04PM (#3669125) Journal
    The net is ad hoc. Your email is not and never was secure. You were told that when you signed up for your service or hooked up to your peer. Pretending it's an outrage for anyone to be reading it now is shedding crocodile tears.

    --Blair
    • That's not it at all. Yes, we're all aware that interested parties can intercept our Internet communications. The issue is whether it's ethical for them to do so, particularly when the interested party is the government of a democratic nation which, in theory at least, accepts the traditional Western notion of political liberty.
      • Wait, but isn't the FBI doing the same thing, with its carnivore and some other spyware software?
        • Yeah, and they're bastards for it. I'm not singling out Australia here -- things are going to hell across the Western world in this respect. And given that the excuse most commonly given for taking these sort of measures is terrorism, it almost feels as though we're destroying our liberties in order to save them.
          • but where's the terrorism in Australia? It's most probably, terrorists least targeted country.
            • Yeah, but you can never be too careful. ;-)

              The terrorism excuse is, obviously, mostly used in America. It's sort of puzzling to me that in a nation with no significant external threats, the people are still frightened enough to give up their liberties in exchange for some "temporary safety." But it was going that way in America before 9/11, too. Terrorism is really nothing more than an excuse -- that it simply boosted the case of those who were looking to make a power grab bombings or no. And as an excuse, it works almost as well in Australia as it does in America, insofar as it contributes to the average person's sense that a heightened state of security is a necessary condition for being alive in these days.
              • It's sort of puzzling to me that in a nation with no significant external threats, the people are still frightened enough to give up their liberties in exchange for some "temporary safety."

                There is no risk too small about which Americans will do their Chicken Little routine. It's our nature now. We are a nation of cowards.

                Listen, all you liberty-lovers. The only way to secure your liberty is through force or threat of force. For example, secession was an acknowledged right of any state in the USA, until Lincoln _crushed_ that notion when somebody actually tried it. Unless you can enforce your actions through force, you are at the mercy of those who can.

                We hear a lot about freedoms these days from our government, but it's mostly boilerplate to pacify us while we are transformed into something authoritarian. What central State is not expanding its own scope and power these days at the expense of "the people"?

                • Activisim, running for public office, and voting are the best tools for fighting for civil liberties. Violence - through members of a movement or agent provacateurs - undermine the fight for liberty. The public will galvanize against it.

                  Nonviolent protest and civil disobediance should be the means for struggling against bad law, disenfranchisement, and poor government. Even Malcolm X recognized this and renounced his doctrine of by any means necessary.

                  Of course the powers-that-be shut him up pretty permanently by employing violence.

        • The difference here is that the FBI at least needs a warrant to capture your email. The Au EFF says this is written so a warrant isn't needed. And the power extends to *many* government departments.
    • "Your email is not and never was secure." - saying that on /. is like telling Eskimos how to fish!
    • What about the interception of SMS messages? This is basically a telephone service, which the average person WILL expect to have the same level of privacy as a telephone call. Your main argument misses the point also. Just because any number of people may be able to read your email without you consent doesn't make it ok for the government to do so any time it feels like it (it also doesn't make it right for anyone else to read your mail either). Any joe off the street can walk up to your mailbox and read your snail mail before you get it. Does it then follow that people are "shedding crocodile tears" if they complain when the government decides it wants to read everyone's mail without a good reason?

    • Re:Email is not and never was secure. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:46PM (#3669261) Journal
      What about regular mail? Would you be outraged if government agents were waiting curbside when you came to check your mailbox, sorting through your letters from granny?

      "Hold on a minute sir, we're almost done. Gotta make sure 'Aunt Edna' and 'hip surgery' aren't terrorist codewords. Then you can have your mail. Oh, and we're keeping the detergent samples. My socks are dirty...errr...I mean...it's a dangerous chemical compound, and we don't know what your true motives are."

      Would that outrage you? What makes email special, such that it's okay for the feds to read that?

      • What about regular mail? Would you be outraged if government agents were waiting curbside when you came to check your mailbox, sorting through your letters from granny?

        As long as they informed me beforehand that they would be doing it, and didn't destroy anything, I wouldn't.

        Oh, also they would have to make it legal to send non-priority letters via competing companies.

    • If your significant other walked in front of a window to close it while they were nude or in their underwear and I video taped it? Your significant other had no expectation of privacy because their window was open and I was able to see in.
    • It's not just email that's insecure. Regular mail passes through the hands of many, many people, and all it takes is a human finger to "circumvent its security measures". Phone lines are the same way. Even the most basic technical knowledge of how phone lines work will show you that phone lines are horribly insecure and that virtually anyone can tap into them. Cell phones are pretty much the same way, too.

      But does any of it matter? Front doors to houses in the US, which are required by law to swing inward, are ridiculously easy to kick/bash in. Does that mean that it should be legal for someone to kick down my door and do whatever the Hell they want in my home? Of course it doesn't. It's also ridiculously easy to kill people (a strong hit to the head alone will do the trick sometimes), so should that be legal, too?

      Lots of very bad things are easy to do. That's part of the reason why they're illegal (or, in this case, they're supposed to be). They harm others and almost anyone can do them.

      • Re: House doors (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        As someone in the building trade who likes to move around (carpenters can ALWAYS get jobs) I can safely assure you that residential doors aren't required by buiding code to swing inward in any place I've ever worked. The reason they swing inward is because doors swing to the side the hinge pins are on. If you can take out the hinge pins you can open the door.

        Think you fell prey to false authority syndrome.
        • My mistake. I guess that's just an urban legend.
        • You can get hinges where the pins aren't removable when the doors are closed, allowing the door to fit to swing outward. My parents had this done so that my mother could get her in while in her wheelchair, as it was cheaper to do that than have major rebuilding.
      • There's a difference between phones (and most other forms of communication) and email. Email is broadcast. Every communication send via email on this side of the gateway reaches my NIC. For my old DSL provider, that was the 252 other people using the same DSLAM as I. I haven't checked yet with my new provider simply because I'm not interested. And it's not just email, it's everything going out over your NIC. That's why we need wider usage of encryption.

    • Here's what you don't understand - it's not John Q. Hacker on a joyride down the superhighway that we're talking about - it's the GOVERNMENT. It's a huge bureaucracy that has the ability to collect this information, store it, retrieve it, and use it to profile what kind of person you might be- all without your knowledge or consent. You have no idea who else is using it, when, or for what purpose. As such, the repercussions can be much more severe and long-lasting. Basically, we have government agencies using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to turn themselves into the equivalent of the KGB.
      • The point is, email is and always has been the equivalent of doing your business in a loud shout on a public streetcorner.

        The "GOVERNMENT" has always had legal access to it.

        You either knew that, and were clueful, or did not, and were not. From your paranoid reaction, I'm guessing the latter.

        And if you want to blame anyone for the need to increase the intelligence community's nearness to your stash, blame Al Quaeda, or better yet, join the Army and go kill them.

        Whining on internet message boards from the comfort of your bedroom about losing rights you mistakenly believed you had is effecting no positive result.

        --Blair
        • The point is, email is and always has been the equivalent of doing your business in a loud shout on a public streetcorner.The "GOVERNMENT" has always had legal access to it.

          You still don't get it. The government can seize your property, arrest you, garnish your wages, lock you up in prison, audit your tax returns (where it's guilty until proven innocent), put you under surveillance, etc., etc., provided a legal reason exists to do so. If the government has no legal justification for access to your e-mail, it has no right to be looking at it. The last time I checked, the 4th Amendment was still part of the U.S. Constitution.

          And if you want to blame anyone for the need to increase the intelligence community's nearness to your stash, blame Al Quaeda, or better yet, join the Army and go kill them.

          Al Q43da is only part of the problem. The other part is comprised of a combination of U.S. for31gn p0licy, and what could turn out to be a very real level of incompetence on the part of the government agencies charged with keeping track of t3rr0r1st activities. Heheh..my stash? LOL. I can proudly say that I do not use drugs, drink, or smoke.

          Whining on internet message boards from the comfort of your bedroom about losing rights you mistakenly believed you had is effecting no positive result.

          I see a very real difference between whining and correcting an unfortunate misconception- or at minimum, offering an alternate perspective.

          • There are specific prohibitions on misusing those other means of gathering intelligence.

            Your email, as mentioned before, is publicly broadcast, just as the noise you make at a ballgame. It's not even as secure as a postcard, which remains in the custody of the USPS from posting to delivery.

            Your email goes through several servers that may be secured but only by private entities with no governmental authority, over whom there are no constitutional or legislated restrictions as to the security of your email. If one of those servers happens to be an innocuous node owned and run by the FBI in the basement of UUNET, then all your email are belong to them, and the 4th Amendment don't enter into it, because, as I keep saying, there's no presumption of privacy in email.

            --Blair
            "Unless something's been passed that I don't know about."
            • Ok, but I'm drawing a distinction between information that his public, and the following: - who is collecting it - what information is collected - why it's being collected

              It is my opinion that the mere presence of public information, or the fact that it might pass through a public conduit (several servers, in your example), doesn't convey an automatic right to access. Funny thing is, the internet has often been described as the information superhighway. Yet, on a real highway (which is also a public conduit), it is entirely illegal for a government agent to conduct a search without cause.
      • You meant the NKVD ("Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs" ie. the Russian internal secret police), not the KGB (more like our CIA).

    • There are inherent insecurities associated with sending emails, but intercepting emails and other communications is generally illegal. It is also illegal for the government to do so. This illegality, at the very least, forces them to limit the ammount of spying that they do on us. If we catch them doing so, then various responses are possible, including public censure and court cases.

      If it becomes legal for any government department to spy on us, then we have absolutely no defence whatsoever. They take a look, verify that it was done illegaly and then shut you the F up.

    • You seem to be mixing up what's technically possible and what's legally possible. It's technically possible for them to listen in on your phone conversations or tap you room, but it's not (normally) legal, and the terms of service of my provider mention nothing about reading the contents of my emails (they do have the right to track which web sites I go to, and possibly the addresses of emails, but not the content of them).

      It's not about whether your emails are secure, it's about whether your government has the legal right to read them.
    • Your email is not and never was secure.

      By the same logic that supports this, your phone conversations are not and never will be secure, because they transmit along wires hanging around in public areas, and they are accessible by any number of employees at various different companies.

      But here's a news flash for you, people WANT to be able to communicate securely with others. This is necessary for business, this is necessary for personal comfort (you don't want a security guard to know details of your intimate life, do you?), and most importantly, this is necessary for political freedom. You cannot have a free political society when the government removes the right for its people to communicate without its knowledge.

      So flash around the technical details about the security weaknesses in the design of the smtp protocol all you wish, the fact remains that there is a social need for commonly usable secure email communication, and until that need is filled, governments need to keep their fingers out of email so that free societies can continue to exist.

  • For people concerned about this story... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by VersedM ( 323660 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:15PM (#3669148)
    PGP international [pgpi.com]

    GnuPG [gnupg.org]

  • Right On! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bobzibub ( 20561 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:17PM (#3669157)
    Our governments are finally beginning to listen to us!
    ; )
  • It is funny. I am relating this to the USA... but I am sure the same can hold true for .au..

    We win our freedom.
    We come up with a system of government to protect our freedoms.
    Time passes.
    The government THE PEOPLE put in place to protect these freedoms is slowly but surely taking them away.
    Is it 1984 yet??
    • It is funny ....

      ironic perhaps, certainly not funny though
    • Time passes.
      The government THE PEOPLE put in place to protect these freedoms is slowly but surely taking them away.

      Just to flesh out the "and then a miracle occurs" steps in the process, I'd replace them with...

      Over time, in using the government to address more and more pet issues, the people turn a blind eye to the fact that the government has moved beyond the limits that were placed on it in the system of government.

      The people are shocked (SHOCKED) to discover that the government isn't very interested in protecting our freedoms now that it has been firmly established that it is not really bound by the old system of government anymore.

      Unfortunately, that change makes the process seem less mysterious. The people being shocked is still kind of funny, I guess.

    • The government is taking away the freedoms because a majority of the people who vote (who are the only ones who matter to the government...if don't vote (and no one is stopping you from voting for whatever reason) you have no say, and no right to complain IMNSHO) have voted these people into office. Opinion polls show strong support for the kinds of things that are happening nowadays wrt spying, reduced privacy, etc. If you don't like it, get off your ass and get out there and try to convince other people. If you can't, well it's a democracy, most votes wins. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. The gods know I've considered it on more than one occasion.
  • Can they blame it on terrorism? I don't think so. The question is, if the governments spies on us, why can't we spy on our governments? Afterall, the government is probably more at risk of doing something illegal than me.
    • I think a more effective counter argument than 'spy on your government' is that one that advocates government spying on all snail-mail, telephone conversations, crowds, car locations, and other traditional forms of espionage. There is not much difference in principle, but the issues would be clearer to non-technically minded.

      Most of the workings of government ought to be transparent in any event.

      Cheers,
      -b
  • I just saw this today at the Guardian
    Police to spy on all emails

    Fury over Europe's secret plan to access computer and phone data

    http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903, 73 0091,00.html

  • Well its not that surprising..... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When you consider that Australia was once used as ONE big prison for European criminals ;)

  • Procedural Minimum for Democracy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sam_handelman ( 519767 ) <samuel,handelman&gmail,com> on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:32PM (#3669211) Journal
    many scholars argue that without effective guarantees of civil liberties, elections do not constitute democracy, and that a procedural minimum for defining democracy must include not only elections, but reasonably broad guarantees of basic civil rights-e.g., freedom of speech, assembly, and association.
    -Democracy 'with Adjectives', by D. Collier and S. Levitsky [nd.edu]

    The paper I link to (which is academic but pretty accessible - I'm a biologist, not a political scientist) is about military juntas in south america, not Aussies.

    I raise this point because I think John Howard [pm.gov.au] (the prime minister of Australia) is Australian for Hitler. A modern Democracy can survive all matter of scuminess, but if this proposal goes through, Australia will need an adjective (such as crpyto or pseudo) to qualify their form of government.

    • Re:Procedural Minimum for Democracy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kubrick ( 27291 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @03:05PM (#3669306)
      I raise this point because I think John Howard (the prime minister of Australia) is Australian for Hitler.

      As an Australian, I agree, in a qualified sense. In his mind it's OK to suspend or abolish democratic freedoms in order to ensure that people he doesn't agree with can't be heard or be politically active. (Another example from recent history is Nixon -- government "by any means necessary", legal or illegal).

      For many years Queensland under Joh-Bjelke Petersen had a law, intended to stop street marches, that banned the public assembly of four or more people if such assembly had not been previously cleared by the police. It looks like we're moving back to those days... along with John Howard's racist issues on immigration (lock up the non-white illegal immigrants), we should soon be the new old South Africa, if you know what I mean.

  • The Australian police still need a magistrate's permission to tap someone's telephone. How is SMS different from phone messages? The EFA's commentary clearly states that "Communications made using new technologies would have less privacy protection than a telephone call."

    Access to voice mail should also mean access to the room containing the recordings... so will this also replace the notion of a "search warrant"?

    Sounds ugly when applied solely to the police. But look at the collection of agencies who stand to benefit from this law: Taxation Office, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Immigration Department. So this may be a back-door way of gaining more prosecutions of those most hideous of criminals: tax dodgers!

    If it makes you feel any better, Australia's gov't is not alone [canadianliberty.bc.ca] in this type of thinking. -AD

  • Of course their view of human rights is upside down...

  • Understanding (Score:3, Funny)

    by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:49PM (#3669267)
    It's good to see that Australia is serious about combatting terrorism. The recent terrorist attacks on Australia in which many, many people were killed present a clear need for anti-terrorism legislation in Australia. In the face of such overwhelming horror on their own home soil, can we really blame Australia for jumping to the conclusion that security is more important right now than liberty? Personally, I think the international community should try to be understanding of the situation that Australia has been put in and try to give them some leeway in their knee-jerk reactions to the horrible atrocities that have befallen them.

    But on a serious, more blunt note: Should these people wait for terrorists, and by that I mean ANY TERRORISTS AT ALL, to give a rat's ass about them before enacting broad "anti-terrorism" legislation? Are the Australian people really going to swallow this crap?
  • Ok I could be wrong but what exactly is the big deal? I mean honestly when is the last time some major criminal or terrorist organization used email to contact everyone. Not like they are using a yahoo group or something to say "ok folks lets go blow something up". This psuedo-invasion of privacy that people are so scare of when they hit the send button is rediculous. In the early and mid 90's netbus was around and it could watch, look and listen to what you typed, and this was availible to the general public. The goverment looking at your email is far from the worst thing that could be done and it may look like some "Big Brother" ripe off and that our government is trying to be evil and watch what we are doing but its not. Maybe I am the only one that is a little happier that the government is taking the time to actually try to curb terrorist communications, not like the email eachother anyway but the idea is kinda nice. I just find it funny how people yell kick and scream over monitored internet use cause they feel the government is "WATCHING" them yet they go each year and tell the local DMV watch make model year and type of car they drive, along with VIN number and everything. I personally find that more of an invasion of privacy.
  • Doesn't government have better things to do than threaten the citizens and tell them how to live? This is the sorta crap that revolutions are made up of.

    +sigh+
  • In this digital age, this might also allow the government to intercept voice calls that are transmitted via digital methods.

    Such transmissions are also stored (even if only for microseconds) on routers while in transit. This would possibly make them susceptible to be intercepted without a warrent.

    In other words, only pure analog phone messages would require an intercept request. Phone calls that go through digital switches would not.

    IANAL, I've just dealt with the courts too damn much.

  • Oppoition (Score:2, Informative)

    by Yakk ( 6267 )
    Luckilly for us Australia seems to at least be starting to get a useful opposition. Labor Party, Democrats and Greens look like they're going to block the more nasty, invasive versions of the anti-terrorist legislation in the senate. In fact within the governing Liberal Party many members of parliament are pushing against the draconian legislation proposed by the Prime Minister. Democracy wins again. So how did this sort of thing get through in the US? Its being rejected in Australia and was rejected in Canada.

  • Steve Irwin (Score:5, Funny)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @03:58PM (#3669529) Journal
    OK, it's time to call out the big guns. Who do we know Down Under? We need Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin to do an expose on the Australian government.

    Irwin picks the prime minister up by the neck...

    "Wow! Look at this beauty! What we have here is a rare Australian Brown-Nosed Prime Minister. Very valuable too, large corporations will pay big bucks for a fella like this one here."

    The prime minister starts gagging and choking...

    "You're all right, Mate. You're all right. You have to be careful when dealing with these buggers. I don't want to let go of the neck because then he could call his elite guard and then I'd be in a world of trouble. They'd come running and attack me with their projectile defense mechanisms. They wouldn't understand that I'm not trying to hurt the prime minister, I'm only trying to educate the public."

    The PM is grasping for his computer, but Irwin holds him out of reach...

    "Let's walk over to his computer and take a look at how he survives. Notice the program he uses to search his prey's email and telephone conversations. Very sneaky, but it's that survival instinct that allows him to maintain his dominance in the political jungle. That's why we call him the prime minister. Yeah? OK, I'm gonna let him down slowly, and hopefully he'll be too busy gasping for air to call for help and I can make my retreat."

  • Seems to me that we need some kind of international political voice to speak for our privacy and freedom: globally, the lock down is going on, and I don't see any effective transnational resistance.

    Perhaps Amnesty International [slashdot.org] would be a good place to start?

  • Time for a change to the democratic system (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @04:32PM (#3669645)
    Although we're constantly told that we're living in a democracy, the reality is that we are not.

    Most Western "democratic" countries operate a system that involves the election of representatives who are chosen by the people to speak on their behalf in government.

    The unfortunate reality is that these representatives are almost always looking out for their own interests ahead of those of the people who elected them. "Power corrupts" as they say.

    These representative systems were devised hundreds of years ago when it was simply impractical to run a true democracy and, at the time, they constituted the most democratic solution to the problem of allowing the people to dictate their own future.

    Clearly it would have been absolutely impractical to have every citizen voting on every decision related to the running of the country.

    But it's now the 21st century and things have changed -- a lot!

    Now we have the power to let individuals exercise their own democratic right to have a say in the decisions made by government.

    Several years ago I proposed that we now have the technology to implment a truly democratic system that would effectively impose strong checks and balances on the excesses of our elected representitives.

    I documented this system (as it applies to the New Zealand political system)
    here. [politics.co.nz]

    The idea is to acknowledge that an elected representitive is effectively doing little more than exercising the proxy of the voters in their constituency.

    Until now, the only real democratic right that citizens had was to elect a different representitive at the end of each term. Now that's a very coarse form of democracy and offers little protection for the public.

    My suggestion is that each voter be entitled to withdraw their proxy and exercise it individually if they choose to do so on an issue by issue basis .

    In the event that a government tries to pass legislation which is not supported by a majority of the voters, those voters can recover their proxy and vote against it.

    The technology to allow such a "recoverable proxy" situation can be as simple as a telephone, ATM or Internet connection.

    Unlike other proposed improvements to the democratic process which involve cumbersome methods such as regular referenda, this system allows our elected representitives to carry on as normal, exercising the proxies of their constituents-- but simply reserves the publics right to say "no" when that representitive decides to place his or his party's interests ahead of the majority choice of the people he/she has been elected to serve.

    Of course politicians don't want a bean of this proposal -- because it would significantly curb their ability to rort the system and remove their ability to place self-interest ahead of the public's right to be democratically represented.

    A change like this would likely require a massive outcry by public -- and our politicians would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

    What do you think?

    • Before trying to implement true democracy, I suggest that you first spend some time getting to know people who live in different places from you (especially in poorer neighborhoods). You'll find that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to get acquainted with facts concerning the things that they would be voting about.

      Hell, if this doesn't scare you just think about how much the mass media influences people's opinions on issues. Do you really want the deciding influence on the vote on a given law to be what the "friends" episode that aired the night before was in favor of?

      Believe me, I'm well aware that a democratic republic is a pretty bad form of government, but it seems to be better than all the rest. Direct democracy is actually a very scary thing. As it is it's bad enough when some large group of people decides to ban together and elects some idiot to government (this is rare, thankfully), but can you just imagine how legislation on complicated issues would go? People would hear "nuclear" and it would be banned. There would be a 100% tax on the "rich" where rich is defined as earning more than 51% of the people.

      Basically, life is very imperfect, it's amazing to what a degree we (i.e. the middle class and above in America) currently escape the suffering that is typically associated with life, and the prospect of most people directly telling their neighbors how to live is absolutely frightening. Say what you want about oligarchy (which is basically what every form of current government is), but at least (when it answers to the people) it is reasonably moderate and relatively hard to sway by emotion (the key word here is relatively).

      • You'll find that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to get acquainted with facts concerning the things that they would be voting about

        Precisely -- and that's why the system would work.

        People who are politically disinterested would hardly be likely to exercise their right to exercise their own proxy on regular occasions.

        Over 99% of the time, the ability for the elected representitives to carry out the job they're paid to do would go on unchallenged.

        It's really just giving the power of veto back to the people. It's a safeguard to avoid a government that tries to ride roughshod over the rights of those who elected them.

        Remember -- it's the very people who you claim might be a danger who are the ones that help vote in the government of the day anyway. At least RP protects citizens from putting up with four years of a government that might turn out to be excessively corrupt or self-interested.
    • As long as people are watching TV I'd be afraid of the Tyranny of the Majority.

    • I think your line of thinking is great but as some others have pointed out, those in power will still be able to control public opinion through mass media.

      I think the reason we have the government we have at the moment is because they were the ones that influenced that -i beleive large- sector in the community who are not adequately informed about current issues. Because everyone must vote the election results becomes diluted by those uninformed voters.

      This can be a great thing if the public is informed, intelligent and active. The problem is a large enough number of Australians do not have that combination of qualities.

      The current system would be excellent if people were more educated. What is needed is a more honest mass media that educates rather than sensationalises. Higher Education must be actively encouraged and more places created for people of all economic backgrounds.

  • Good news (Score:2, Informative)

    by KITT_KATT!* ( 322412 )
    There is good news coming out of Australia in terms of your rights on the internet - it's just been mysteriously ignored by Slashdot editors. Slashdot has had a lot of articles about the internet censorship bill passed by the NSW state government. Now it looks like it could be repealed [news.com.au] as an affront to democracy.
  • Email, voice mail and SMS messages are stored on a service provider's equipment pending delivery to the intended recipient and could be read by a government agency before the intended recipient even knew a message had been sent to them.

    Well for email thats easy, use a forign web baised email.
    Voice mail dont use your telcos "Message bank facility", use an answering machine, or if you like those anoying menues set one up with a modem and a computer.
    For sms it's a little harder, if you realy dont want someome looking in on that sort of thing, buy an integrated phone / pda type thingy with GPRS and load up an instant messaging type client that has an SMS portal (ie ICQ) that way you can still recieve sms messages, and you can still send sms messages to phones but your incoming message never get "stored" on an australian server(if your IM is conecting to a forign server). They still pass through aussie servers and telco equipment but they arent stored.

    P.S. I'm an aussie and i realy doubt this bill will actualy pass. I was listning to a story about this on the radio and not only are the other partys rejecting most of the bill but i wouldn't be suprised if some liberal party members cross the floor and vote it down

  • Considering the concurrent proposals to introduce legislation to allow banning of organisations suspected of terrorist links, am I the only one suspecting Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?

    As scary as that possibility is fortunately it looks like is unlikely to happen, at least to the full extent of the initial bill. The anti-terrorism bill issued by Attorney-General Daryl Williams that was going to give him the ability to ban political groups/parties deemed terrorist in their actions so far has been rejected by senators [smh.com.au]. Thus forcing Williams to back down on the anti-terrorism bill [smh.com.au].

    I am not sure how this affects the proposed changes to the Telecomunications Interception Act, because I am not sure if this one big anti-terrorism bill or a series of seperate bills. Eitherway it reflects the fact that most senators in Australia are sane and wont stand for these crazy new laws, at least in their current form.

    Now if only the government would come to their senses about the mistreatment of refugees, though that's whole other issue,
    • Amnesty International, as well as the EFA and some of the other civil liberties groups, has been harassing senators over this one. Consequently, it's not only the opposition narky about this bill, it's a fair number of members of the government as well.

      It's kinda nice to see that some politicians can actually be convinced to act wrt privacy and civil liberties if they're prodded hard enough.

  • Man, what a relief! Its comforting to know that we'll always have someone looking out for us. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Can they tuck me into bed and read me a story too?

  • More debate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MagicKoala ( 581512 ) <cooperdj@NoSPAm.ses.curtin.edu.au> on Monday June 10, 2002 @12:15AM (#3671194)
    The key ingredient missing from Australian politics is a meaningful level of debate. Otherwise, the political system in itself tends to work quite well, all things considered.

    More and more, people seem to be focusing on those issues beloved so much by the media, such as law and order, border protection and the nebulous political hotcake known as "The Bush" (which basically boils down to the higher cost of living in rural areas). As much as I hate to say it, no one has much time for trivial issues such as civil liberties when there are so many other things to be outraged over.

    It doesn't help things that, these days, political parties like to present themselves as being totally committed to a given point of view. The effect of this is generally to silence the lower ranks, and of course to neutralise any dissent within the Government to official policies. A similar effect usually happens within the ranks of the Opposition, but currently it *is* split on several key issues, though it's disheartening to see the Government leap on this and shouting out words to the effect that the Opposition is in disarray.

    Perhaps we also need some way to mitigate the power of the media corporations. Cynics (or realists?) would argue that these are the entities that really control Australia, and that the Parliament is more or less just a formality. Unfortunately, with the Govnerment pushing to abolish the cross-media-ownership laws (which prevent someone owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same city, *I think*) the largest media corporations could yet become even more powerful.

    Talk-back radio hosts are also quite powerful in Australia, and much to my continuing displeasure, they're mostly conservative. People like John Laws and Alan Jones, despite the "cash-for-comment" scandal recently in which both were found to have been receiving money in exchange for favourable comments towards particular organisations, still seem to be doing the thinking for a disconcertingly large proportion of the population.

    I don't think any of this is going to change any time soon. I only hope there are at least *some* sane people at the top. Hopefully they can keep things on track until we work out a way to engage the public interest in issues which affect the democracy we seem to take for granted.
  • Didn't they recently disarm their population? Looks like Big Brother was written about Oz. Be afraid, be very afraid.

    cluge
  • ~Australia is about to have a whole lot less political parties?"
    I suspect there will be fewer Australian political parties, not less.

    From Dictionary.com [dictionary.com] (with my emphasis):

    Usage Note: The traditional rule holds that fewer should be used for things that can be counted (fewer than four players), while less should be used with mass terms for things of measurable extent (less paper; less than a gallon of paint).

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