AU Government Censors Document On Planned Web Snooping 169
MrPPS writes "The Australian Government plans to force ISPs to record and retain all citizens' communications traffic. The Sydney Morning Herald requested that the proposed policy documents be released under Freedom of Information laws. What they received was a document that was 90% censored, in order to prevent 'premature unnecessary debate.' More discussion on the Greyhat Security site. Here is the redacted document (PDF, 3.6 MB)."
Keep it classy, Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
'premature unnecessary debate. (Score:5, Insightful)
aka democracy.
The ASP (Score:5, Insightful)
The only realistic vote in Australia seems to be a vote for the Australian Sex Party.
The other parties seem totally infested by moralism and corruption.
Well, at least it's not for national security, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
To prevent "premature unnecessary debate" --- gotta give them credit that at least they're not lying about their motivations, unlike using "national security" to keep ACTA negotiations secret.
"premature unnecessary debate" (Score:2, Insightful)
Pesky democracy. Let us pass the bill, then you can debate it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Redacted (Score:1, Insightful)
printed, blacked out, and scanned. Hopefully someone sends the full doc to wikileaks.
And as always with censorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can anyone please tell me why... (Score:1, Insightful)
What possible reason is it in anyone's best interest to spend mountains of treasure to create a massive archive of every single internet transaction apart from the people who sell hard drives.
How much electricity will be needed to run this server farm? .... well, what exactly. More prosecutions? Public officials whacking off to citizens' cyber sex chat transcripts?
Exactly what evidence is there that this archive will result in
What will the start up and long term fiscal costs be?
What safeguards are there to prevent this archive by being used only in the prevention of serious crimes.
What is the audit system to be to ensure that it won't be abused?
I thought "V for Vendetta" took place in England? (Score:2, Insightful)
Vote Tweedledum or Tweeledee (Score:5, Insightful)
We've got an election three weeks away where voters will have the opportunity to throw out Julia Gillard. Gillard is Rudd's deputy who knifed him in the back to take his job, yet was party to all his unpopular decisions. She is continuing to support the web filter (though deferred implementing it until after the election).
In the other corner is Tony Abbott, a conservative catholic who is also pro-web filter (see earlier comments in Slashdot).
These are the two major parties in Australia. Their policies are so similar it's hard to tell them apart. One of them will win. What sort of a choice is this?
Re:Did you read the document? (What was left of it (Score:5, Insightful)
At which point do you feel that the Australian public should be consulted for the real facts and opinions?
Re:Aust Government showing worrying trend (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that the child pornography hysteria that fuelled these actions was noble, I don't see what you consider so ugly about these inevitable conclusions. Rotten causes leads to rotten effects.
Re: 'premature unnecessary debate. (Score:1, Insightful)
11% approval rating assholes. Start packing your bags!
95% reelection rate, fellas. Any rumors of being voted out are greatly exaggerated. Leave your suitcases in the closet for a couple more years at least...
Ignorance is Strength (Score:1, Insightful)
The only realistic vote in Australia seems to be a vote for the Australian Sex Party.
The other parties seem totally infested by moralism and corruption.
You can't vote for a party [wikipedia.org] that has already been banned [slashdot.org] (by the Internet filters).
Electronic Frontiers Australia, which the Australian government has labeled an extremist organization, says;
We have to turn the age-old question back on the government: if you don't have anything to hide, then you shouldn't be worried about people having insight into the consultation.
Of course the government has excuses for its hypocrisy; if it makes more laws then there will be more criminals, and an educated criminal is a threat to society; so the goal of the government is to try to keep people ignorant. Ignorance is Strength [wikipedia.org].
Re:Vote Tweedledum or Tweeledee (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Black Jesus (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't be the "Obongo" bit, or the off-topic, incendiary nature of the post that got him that, could it? Nah, it's gotta be the raging hard-on everyone has for Obama, and not the fact that someone correctly noted that the post was not designed to spark intelligent discourse, but instead to inflame and derail.
Re:The ASP (Score:1, Insightful)
Could any Australian slashdotter provide the wider subtext which is altogether absent in these stories?
I have no idea, aside from the basic "because they have power and want to keep it", which is probably at best a small, subconscious part of it, but even at worst is probably a bit simplistic and not taking everything into account.
This has obviously been going on for years though, under the guise of the Mandatory Internet Filter, the stated purpose of which is to protect children, but really is so technically flawed that its only practical use would be monitoring citizens. That's being pushed by Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Communications, who is openly catholic - another element of the puzzle perhaps, but still not enough to convince me it's the whole picture.
Our foreign policy and defense force is mainly focussed on southeast Asia, and one of our biggest trade partners is China (who we've had to succumb to unfair deals with before), so I think that's an element as well, and there may be honest but incorrect feelings about censorship being an easy way to provide better national security.
We have a large, difficult to police coastline and always seem to have issues with people traffickers ("boat people"). There's been outrage at our refugee detention centres being inhumane towards victims of people trafficking, and there's a strong racist component among voters everywhere (not just Australia), so that's something that politicians have to deal with. I think shutting the citizens up here is probably an element of all the censorship, but I just see it as a sign of an incompetent government.
Posting as AC because "help, help, I'm being repressed!"
Re:The ASP (Score:5, Insightful)
Not many of the other parties have had such a clear policy.
Re:The ASP (Score:3, Insightful)
Australian here- It's pretty simple really. (Disclaimer: I've posted this before, but it bears repeating)
We have a political system where, instead of directly voting for a prime minister, we instead vote for our local representative; the party with the most seats gets to elect the prime minister. Essentially.
The problem comes when the two main political parties own almost equal seats, but many seats are "safe" seats. Think Texas. Is a Democrat ever going to be elected in a landslide in Texas? Nah. Is a Republican going to take San Fransisco in a landslide? Nah.
So, politicians focus on the marginal seats. Think Florida, which could go either way.
It just so happens a number of those seats are, currently, in and around areas which have a higher than average population of religious constituents. So, politicians on all sides of the political spectrum are metaphorically sucking our version of the Bible Belt's dick in order to get those precious one or two seats, which means they can keep/gain government respectively.
Which means our current administration is pushing through knee-jerk think-of-the-children legislation while the opposition is basically screaming "US TOO BUT BIGGER, BETTER, MORE KNEE-JERKY."
It's pure horseshit and doesn't represent the will of the Australian people at all.
Re:To stop 'premature unnecessary debate' (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the labour party is doing this because of the rise of the christian right in Australia. Labour will never will votes from family first, and pandering to moral authoritarianism (a conservative platform) will alienate the labour base.
I'm just going to consume pop-corn and laugh.
Moving Australia Forward (Score:3, Insightful)
I just saw this website which takes on these issues using a labour catchphrase - http://www.movingaustraliaforward.com/ [movingaust...orward.com]
Re:Keep it classy, Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
Having to work for you bastards, it really shouldn't be any surprise to me that you'd want to pull a dick move like this on your own citizens. I hope they vote all of your skanky asses right out of office.
The problem is both Australian major parties are up themselves and won't know rights (only obligations) even if it bit them on the arse or hit them in the pocket! Only solution is to back the Greens in Senate in the hope of hindering such crap laws and loss of rights. We all can thank the up-themselves government types in the USA that push same agendas across treaties and the like.
Re:Keep it classy, Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
So what. Both major parties will rarely agree on any issue and with that the balance of power get's given to the 'currently' minor parties. Want to disrupt the two party duopoly carefully nurtured and coerced by corporate interests, than vote for the other parties.
I was concerned about the near exact nature of both parties with regard to censoring and clamping down on the free exchange of information between adults. So I actually joined the Green Party, paid my membership dues (first time ever for any party) and that is how you shake things up. Reality is, if you want a safe internet for children, than you need to create a completely separate one for them, just like any other activity, in fact all other activities where child and adult stranger participation is completely separated.
Rather than the fringe view the right put on the Australian Greens, I take the viewpoint that they are by far the most conservative party in Australia, careful and cautious about any decision they make, their focus is about conserving Australian families and the environment they live in. It is pretty obvious some care and caution needs to be implemented when it comes to exploiting the environment and the resources it contains, failure really can turn around and not only bite this generation on the arse but future generations as well.
Re:Vote Greens = de- reg'd + "Preferential" voting (Score:2, Insightful)
So in actual fact, passing preferences empowers the voter, and empowers the minor parties because in the case of a party, they can make deals to trade for power. For example, the Geens are really aiming to get as much control over the senate as they can. They know that they won't get the balance of power in the lower house, so they deal away their preferences with the Labour party in order to gain concessions, and to boost their profile so that in following elections, they have more publicly allocated campaign funding and a greater appeal to the public because their visibility is greater.
Where our system does fail us, is in that we have a perception that we are voting for a person to lead our country, but as recent events have shown, we are only voting in members to represent ourselves locally, and it is up to the parliament to determine who should represent it, usually decided entirely by the party in power at the time. So while many thought they had elected Kevin Rudd to lead us, they had forgotten they had only voted for their party member and by default granted that party member the right to vote on the constituents' behalf who the Prime Minister would be. For mine, I'd prefer a third form where you could list your preferences for preferred head of state. PM/President/whatever, to avoid the sort of political shenanigans that occurred so recently.
The two-party majority system that we seem to have is really the fault of the people. If you REALLY want the system to change, you need to use your vote to signal that change, not simply vote for the person you think would win anyway, or vote for the opposition simply to get the incumbents out of power. Your individual vote might not seem like much, but if everyone votes sensibly then the combination turns out to be truly powerful thing, and a responsibility that shouldn't be treated so lightly, especially when you know that there are so many places in the world without our freedoms. So you can moan as much as you like about the alleged unfairness of your system, but count yourself lucky that you actually have the right to do so, and if you want to protect that right, you need to vote to do so.
Oh, and if you think our system is so undemocratic, compare this to the system used in the USA, where only a handful of states actually wield the power to change the government because they get more "votes" than the other states, and where the individual cannot allocate a preference vote if their preferred candidate doesn't win. Yes, our last few governments have a lot to answer for, and yes, we seem to be losing our rights all the time... and yes, that is the collective fault of the public who voted the bastards in! And yet, in spite of all of that I still feel like we are the lucky country (yes, I've lived in MUCH worse), and if you really want to change things, you have the right and the individual responsibility to do so.