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Australia Communications Government Privacy The Internet

Aussie Gov't Says Wiretap Laws Fine, Telcos 'Wrong' 127

Posted by timothy from the honestly-what-are-you-worried-about dept.
mask.of.sanity writes "A top bureaucrat from the Australian Attorney-General's department has said telcos are wrong to complain about changes to the country's wiretapping laws, which will force them to report every product and network system change to law enforcement for approval, lest they affect the ability to intercept communications. The telcos argue there are simply too many products and network architecture changes to report and that it would become overbearing. It's the latest in a string of changes to communications law in the country, and comes as the government mulls data retention and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement."
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Aussie Gov't Says Wiretap Laws Fine, Telcos 'Wrong' More

Aussie Gov't Says Wiretap Laws Fine, Telcos 'Wrong'

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  • Soft Tyranny (Score:5, Insightful)

    by causality ( 777677 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:07AM (#34204114)
    Soft tyranny -- it's for your protection!

    • Asked to respond to the claims by the three telcos that the amendments would be imposing, McDonald (Geoff McDonald, Attorney Generals department's national law and policy first assistant secretary) said: "They're wrong, wrong, wrong."

      "They must think we want them to provide a whole prospectus or something like that. It's the most general description about what they are doing — it's there to help them."

      He's from the government and he's here to help you! [/me shudders]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        I'm pointing a gun to your head and asking you for your money, but it's not like I want it all in small bills or something like that. Large bills are fine too; I'm here to help you!

  • Fight Back! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Afforess ( 1310263 ) <afforess@gmail.com> on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:10AM (#34204130) Journal
    If forced to store conversations, transcribe them into a paper format, print them out, delete the digital copies, and keep a large paper archival system, for the government's perusal. Then use the cost of that as a tax writeoff.

    • Re:Fight Back! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:35AM (#34204236)
      Costing yourself many times the amount to get a fraction of it back as a tax writeoff is hardly fighting back. That's like shooting yourself in the leg to protest the poor medical health system in order to put more pressure on the system.
      • So print to microfiche and don't have any readers on site. Or have one thin client have access to the data required in the fourth sub-basement accessible only by stairs and three security checkpoints.
        • your still increasing your own costs just to spite the government. Nothing wrong with spiting them, but doing it out of your own pocket with a method that is not in the slightest way going to bother the government is hardly a success.
          • If data retention is required, the last option actually provides more security for client conversations and a cheaper management system while still spiting the gov't.

            • Re:Fight Back! (Score:4, Informative)

              by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @03:11AM (#34204694)
              not sure what your expectations are. Are you aware of how the government will request the data? I have dealt with a few requests, hint it won't be there problem to retrieve it from your storage. They will present you with a subpoena for specific data, you can't just hand over the lot and say, "here ya go you find it", besides which you could then find yourself in breach of all sorts of other laws for providing more information than was requested.

              • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

                by cbiltcliffe ( 186293 )

                It doesn't sound like the gov't is required to request the information. It sounds like the telcos are required to report their all changes to the government for approval.

                Very much a "papers please" kind of environment.

                So my suggestion would be to overwhelm the government with data.
                Give them a stream of every time a user connects and gets an IP address, every time a user changes password, every time a device with a new MAC address shows up on the network, every time it moves, every time it disconnects, ever

        • Something tells me that for lack of perfect voice recognition software the transcription part is going to be the costly one. Foreign languages and poor phone connections only make it worse.

          The storage is the cheap part; even on paper.

        • And in a disused toilet with a sign on it saying "Beware of the Leopard"

        • G'day...I'm from the Guvmint.....come to read your microfishes. But first...how dare you tell us to send a thin bloke to read them...we only have fat bastards in our offices...and a nother thing.....bring those bloody fishes up here...I'm not walking down four flights of stairs!

      • paper format, print them out, delete the digital

        Costing yourself many times the amount to get a fraction of it back as a tax writeoff is hardly fighting back. That's like shooting yourself in the leg to protest the poor medical health system in order to put more pressure on the system.

        It's what the french ISPs are doing to protest adopi and it pissed off the government: It works.

    • better yet, just print out the waveforms.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kaaona ( 252061 )

      Does that much paper pulp exist in Australia?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Gordonjcp ( 186804 )

      They're not being forced to store conversations, they're being forced to report changes in their network infrastructure. Any change in the networking, must be reported to law enforcement officials. Personally I don't see a problem with this, just email it across any time anything changes. Anything. Anything at all. How big do you think Telstra's DHCP logs get in a day? Quite big?

      Strong medicine often only needs a couple of doses...

      • Include network outages, repair work, SnR ratio on every copper line.

        So ashamed of the apathy in my country.

      • And while you're at it, write a little script that converts your logs from ASCII to some obscure encoding format that hasn't been used for a couple of decades, but was at one point some sort of standard. EBCDIC isn't really obscure enough, but that's the idea.

        Then they try to open a text log file in notepad, or try to run "find_terrorist_link_information.exe" on the file, it returns garbage.

        • Encoding format? No. Just encrypt it.

          For the first two or three months (6 if you want to be sure), send it over in plain text. After that, start encrypting everything. If challenged immediately, you can say it's for security purposes. If you aren't challenged for a year or more, ask them why they're just bringing it up now after having received so many (daily) reports this way? Obviously they aren't using them, so the whole request is obviously fraudulent.

          Of course, it's even better if you can't find

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dare nMc ( 468959 )

        to report every product and network system change to law enforcement for approval the problem with the statement is the "for approval"
        (although that's from the slashdot summary, probably not accurate.) But if they have to get approval, then when a technician needs to do a field replacement, say a part with a new mac address, sounds like he should call up his boss, who will call his boss, who will call his government contact, who will call someone else, when approval comes back a change eventually occurs. A

    • Make all documentation as detailed as possible. Record every single change ... if an Ethernet cable is switched out in the staff room, record as change.
      If a laptop moves from one office to another, record as deletion, document, record as addition, document.
      Include a full specification sheet, owner's manual, service manual, errata and updates to documentation, for each item, including the Ethernet cable.
      List the individual IP addresses affected by every change, do not use ranges.
      Print out the individual IP a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TeraCo ( 410407 )

        If you've ever worked in a company with change management, you'd know that Telstra does the first half of that anyway.

        In the second half, the government would just legislate around that by insisting "All data must be provided in XYZ format, no later than XYZ days after the change has been made."

        Hell, they wouldn't even need a law to do that.. They just legislate that has the authority to generate a specification that must be legally adhered to. If any telecos tried any of your hilarious suggestions, they'd

      • You're exposing our trade secrets! When did you work at our company and didn't we make you sign a NDA? Oh wait, you said "government" where we do that with other branches of our company.

  • You go Australian government, keep up the top notch work! Because this is totally doable and nothing is wrong with it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Well to be the fair the Australian 'National Broadband Network' will be paid for by the Australian government to ensure by far the majority of Australians gain access to fibre network http://www.nbn.gov.au/ [nbn.gov.au] to private corporations where resistant to providing.

      I dare say this will have caused some annoyance to the US government and it's stance on protecting the profits of the current incumbents (and that whole woolly population density can't afford fibre thing) and basically making the look primitive and

      • I prefer profiteers to tyrants, but either way the NBN is absolutely stupid and is no excuse to impose a load of bureaucratic totalitarian bullshit on Australia. We finally are rid of our old telecoms monopoly and what does the government do? Start a new one! They project demand at 80% of households when nowhere near that level of demand is present in the trials, and the only growth in the sector is in wireless not fixed lines. They expect 15 years at 80% will pay off half the costs. Do you really think thi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          What was the demand for cars and bitumen roads when they first came out. What was the demand for planes and airports when they first came out. What was the demand for houses when the cavemen first moved out of their caves. Demand for fibre optic high speed broadband can not exist until it is accessible and, yes the incumbents will be screwed as well as mass media with them.

          Here's a fact if the government had never sold Telstra their original plan had been to get fibre optic to the majority of homes by 20

          • If the government had never sold Telecom we would be up shit creek without a paddle. Telecom were complete bastards, until competition appeared we had one of the most expensive and least useful telecoms networks in the world. We still have problems with price, but usability is slowly getting better (no thanks to Telstra though). Optic to the hub or home is an unrealistic dream for a country this fucking big. Demand for high speed optic fibre cable is 20 years old and was met in small island countries like J

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              Yeah yeah, I know evil government owned corporations, gas, electricity, telecoms, water. Any profits went straight back into the public purse and fact, they were cheaper and fact they provide better service and fact the public had far greater control over them via the government. Suck it up the National Broadband Network will force competitive no caps broadband and privatised Telstra is screwed and mass media in Australia is also screwed, rant all you want, that is the way it is and will be. Also riht wing

  • Misleading Summary (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:22AM (#34204180)
    Just so you know, the data retention and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement don't have anything to do with this particular bit of madness despite the misleading summary.

    • Just so you know, the data retention and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement don't have anything to do with this particular bit of madness despite the misleading summary.

      If those two forces haven't yet figured out that they have a lot of common interests, give it time.

      • Considering Jack Valenti (former head of the MPAA) called filesharers terrorists it seems like some people are already halfway there.

    • Just so you know, the data retention and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement don't have anything to do with this particular bit of madness despite the misleading summary.

      I'm often complaining about misleading summaries, but this it ain't:
      It's the latest in a string of changes to communications law in the country, and comes as the government mulls data retention and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement."

      That seems factually correct. I have seen a string of stupid internet law news from down under, and ACTA is being considered right now.

      The summary I see does not imply a causal link, but you claim that it does. Maybe you should, you know, work on your reading comprehension

  • Simple (Score:4, Funny)

    by davegravy ( 1019182 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:24AM (#34204186)

    Yeah you change a tube here, a valve there - not much to report at all!

  • Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:27AM (#34204198) Homepage Journal

    Dear government, we will now use purple wirenuts rather than buttsplices to join wires.

    1 minute later: Dear government, we will not use off white butt splices rather than purple wirenuts to join wires

    next minute: Dear government, we changed our minds again, back to the wirenuts.

    30 seconds later: Dear government, in reference to the letter sent today 30 seconds ago, we should clarify that we DO mean the purple butt splices.

    15 seconds later, Hi again! Sorry, we meant wirenuts, not butt splices!

    Another minute passes: Dear government, to update and clarify, the use of a moose to crimp butt splices is now absolutely forbidden! While the moose is quite majestic, their import would violate several laws and besides, moose bites can be serious.

    10 seconds later: Dear government, my sister was bitten by a moose once!

    another minute: Dear government, telephone communication shall now be based on dixie cups and kite string!

    30 seconds later: Dear government, the previous announce was obviously in error as it would violate our policy of maintaining a second source for all key components. Any brand of paper cup might be used. The person responsible for the last memo has been sacked.

    Oh Hai again! Sorry, that last message regarding the previous unauthorized message was not, in fact, authorized. Those responsable for the sacking have been sacked!

    Dear government: I just don't know what was up with the memo guy, it's nonsense! We could never use kite string and paper cups (of any brand) for key telecommunications infrastructure. Everyone knows you can't join kite string with purple butt splices!

    • Make a product whose official name is the latest comment on youtube. Automate it so every time someone submits a youtube comment, that youtube comment, which is the name of your product, gets forwarded to the government e-mail address/ website. It might be kind of fast, so you might want to set up a bunch of machines to each send the new name change in.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sco08y ( 615665 )

      Dear government, we will now use purple wirenuts rather than buttsplices to join wires.

      1 minute later: Dear government, we will not use off white butt splices rather than purple wirenuts to join wires

      ...

      You've never worked around government much, I take it.

      Most agencies are perpetually behind on their paperwork to begin with, so it's doubtful they'd even notice. If they did, the increased volume would justify hiring more staff, building their little empire.

      And if you were obvious enough to where they realized you were screwing with them, they can punish you by conducting audits and investigations, or simply by dragging their feet on paperwork that you need.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BeanThere ( 28381 )

      Unfortunately governments actually love extra pointless bureaucracy and paperwork, it's exactly what keeps them employed, "justifies" their payrolls, and keeps their departments and budgets "growing". That's one of the reasons they pass these economy-harming laws in the first place. Nothing would terrify a government department more than finding itself with little in the way of work to do ... come budget allocation time, that means cuts, and who wants to run a shrinking department?

    • The government is welcome to join our conference bridge for change meetings every Tuesday. It's a1 hour meeting where all changes are discussed.

      Everyone dreads attending.

    • So what you're saying is that the telcos should keep the government informed of changes through Twitter?

      • (That's referring to the short, pointless messages, rather than the Holy Grail reference...)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )
        They'll have to use twitter, fixing the phones to the government offices (especially the fax line) will be mired in backlogged change requests.

  • Maybe they should comply very well... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @12:32AM (#34204222)

    Maybe report every single change in the network, apply for approval for every person moving their connection, for every new connection, for every cable repaired, for every minute change in their network. And make it very clear to the customer that to comply with the law they have to wait for the government to approve of the changes, as the government wants to make sure they can still listen in to your calls.

    This should have a few effects: first of all completely overburdening the government approval system. Secondly causing delays all over even for simple routine operations, causing numerous complaints. Thirdly it makes the people very aware that their government wants to listen in to their phone calls - and that again should also give a serious outcry.

    The last assuming people actually still care about their privacy. Not sure about that one.

    But the overburdening and causing delays part should work well - especially when the members of the government themselves get stuck up in their own approval process and have a problem getting telephone lines moved or fixed.

    This law sounds totally bullshit to me. I bet there are regulations in place already to require wiretapping facilities, that should be enough.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Great thinking, but one of the cheaper telco's would use the protest period to play nice and try and gain market share.

      The protest wouldn't last long enough.

      • How long is it likely to take to overtax a government agency so that they are decades behind in their paperwork? All that needs to be done is for one telco to take a loss for a quarter and hire an extra warehouse full of people to overburden the system and no one will have to file any paperwork again for several years (consider the American immigration issue--as of last April, the CI folks were up to 1995 on green card requests for people without ridiculous sums of money--my interpretation based on the frie

      • Is there really more than one telco maintaining a fixed line network? In most parts of the world there is just one company maintaining a network. Maybe more than one per country, but usually no overlapping networks. Australia may be different there.

        As long as it's done by who-ever owns the wires and does the maintenance, fixed line customers do not have much of a choice.

        • All the physical lines here in Australia are owned and maintained by Telstra. Other telcos just rent lines off them for their customers.
    • Consumers most certainly do care about their privacy. The problem is what they may define as private or personal doesn't necessarily mesh with traditional viewpoints of what would be. The problem seems to be one of perception, but a campaign like this would really address that. Consumers are willing to act on privacy issues when they perceive some harm to them, and there's some big obvious ones in this case.
    • I have a better idea, how about simply ignoring the assholes? A lot of people does it everyday, speeding and walking against red, downloading copyrighted content, etc. The government relies on the citizen to be docile followers. The government just like any other group is simply made out of people, they do not have infinite resources.

      • Jaywalking like the other offenses you mention is easy to get away with as you're one of the millions that do it on a daily basis. The risk of getting caught is low; even if the police would hand out 1,000 fines a day that would mean only a chance of one in thousands to get a fine. If you don't look out for police on patrol that is.

        Not complying to such a regulation as a company is harder as there are just a few companies. Easier to prosecute them all.

        • Not complying to such a regulation as a company is harder as there are just a few companies.

          Companies do it differently. Rather than not complying at all, they "half comply". Just be sure to still occasionally file a report. It doesn't have to be the most significant or relevant network change. Just the one that is easiest to document. As long as the government hears from you from time to time, you should be fine.

          This is really not that much different from the numerous other corporate processes. Have to fill in a weekly timesheet? How many people do you know who report their websurfing, coffee br

          • Companies do it differently. Rather than not complying at all, they "half comply". Just be sure to still occasionally file a report. It doesn't have to be the most significant or relevant network change. Just the one that is easiest to document. As long as the government hears from you from time to time, you should be fine.

            That works right up until the time the feds want to wiretap someone and it doesn't work due to the tiny undocumented change. Then your gonna have feds turning over every stone to make it hard for your company. .

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by meerling ( 1487879 )
      Had a situation in the military where the motorpool wanted to burn us for every problem with the vehicles. So we wrote up every tiny scratch, ding, and other issue, sent them all in for repairs, and rejected all attempts by the motorpool to waive off rather than fix the issues. After a little more than a week they called us up metaphorically waving the white flag.

      So yes, all the Australian telcos should use that annoying process for absolutely everything can isn't excluded by the rules/laws/rulings to floo

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ArsenneLupin ( 766289 )
        Problem with this approach is that the telcos would be punishing themselves more than they'd punish the lazy government employee who is supposed to read the reports.

        Indeed, telcos need to dedicate manpower (or slow down their service to paying customers) to play that little game, whereas government can just throw 99% of these bogus reports into the trash where they belong, and only randomly spot check the remaining 1% to make sure that they are not just "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" repeated

    • This should have a few effects: first of all completely overburdening the government approval system.

      Unfortunately this would be counterproductive; you can't "overburden" a government department, on the contrary, they will just tax the populace even higher and hire a whole extra building full of paper-pushers to handle the additional red tape. AND, they will actually love it too, since the department heads would then be able to brag that they run an even bigger department.

  • I imagine the telcos DO have to track this information for their own purposes - so it shouldn't be too difficult for them to let Big Brother have a gander at the info. But to require APPROVAL for each? Getting government approval for the most trivial things takes way too long, let alone an entire network's equipment complement.

      You'd basically slow network development to a halt and end up in a technological stone age relative to other countries. Good luck Australia

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      "(Gubermint) Upgrade a router to a T1600? You want to do WHAT?"

      Sorry, that's not on our list of approved $routers_whose_manufacturer_donated_the_most_to_our_campaign. You're going to have to use a Cisco 2600s for your core routing, just like all your competitors. In 5 or 6 years, we might let you upgrade to the ASR 1000, but the approval process is still in the early stages.

      • Re:Face meet palm (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EdIII ( 1114411 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @04:18AM (#34204874)

        I think it is worse than that.

        Your post implies that corruption would be the greatest interference in network operations at the ISP.

        My experience in my own country shows that those that work for the government do so because they lacked the skills (on many levels) to work in the private sector.

        In order for the government to approve the changes, they would need to first understand them. Increasing the operational costs of the both the ISPs and the government at the same time.

        Who decides who is right in the event of a disagreement? The idiot in the government who could not cut it in the private sector, or the well paid network engineer in the ISP?

        This makes all the ISPs only as smart as the IT personnel the government hires to evaluate the approval requests...... yeah...... that will work out great.

        Australia should just quit the fucking foreplay and eliminate all private sector technology companies and go with state run everything. At least approval would go faster since it all in house anyways.

        • Australia should just quit the fucking foreplay and eliminate all private sector technology companies and go with state run everything. At least approval would go faster since it all in house anyways.

          Back in the U.A.S.R!

      • australia doesn't really do the campaign contribution thing.

        voting is compulsory, meaning that not much advertising is needed - i gather half the job in the US is getting people to vote at all.

        also, donations and whatnot must be disclosed. something like your hypothetical would not happen without a big serve in the local rag the next day, several TV interviews and ultimately a retraction, or a voting out of the incumbents.

        of course, there's still corruption, but it's more underhanded.

        this proposal is stupi

    • Australia should simply send stormtroopers at the Telco and burn the evil interweb to the ground. It surelly looks like it's their goal ultimately.

  • From TFA:

    Australian Federal Police, ... noted that "there is nothing worse than to see criminals escape conviction because of technology"

    Nothing worse? How about treating the populous like criminals even though they are innocent? If this doesn't qualify as worse to you, then you shouldn't be in law-enforcement or politics.

    I just loathe the line of thinking exhibited by the police.

    Cars are technology that help the vast majority of escaping criminals escape. Perhaps they all need tracking devices installed so that we know where everyone is going at all times.

    Books convey technical information that may help a criminal escape. We should pass a law requiring all books read to be reported to the police as well.

    Some rapists use condom technology to escape without leaving their DNA! Citizens should be required to keep a condom log detailing the time and date of each condom purchase and use.

  • The worst kind of thug there is.

  • Political party against it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Joakal ( 1317443 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @01:18AM (#34204380)

    Complimentary pirate party against ACTA. http://pirateparty.org.au/ [pirateparty.org.au]

    There's some discussion [pirateparty.org.au] to protest the next ACTA meeting in Sydney. It would be great to emphasise how shocking it is for ACTA discussion to be held behind doors when it affects everyone in Australia.

    Please do post other options or suggestions against ACTA. I don't want this gross violation of democracy to occur.

    • You know I would be a lot more supportive of that party if they at least went to the effort of naming themselves politically.

      As it is, it sounds like a bunch of teenagers who don't like paying for music. Hardly a good vehicle for a political awareness campaign.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LingNoi ( 1066278 )

        Well then here you go.. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ [openrightsgroup.org]

      • The name derives from the Swedish "Piratpartiet", and was chosen as much to express solidarity with them and the other international Pirate Parties in our shared platform than anything else. I'll agree though it's not the best for PR purposes, given the connotations of the word Pirate in the English language.

  • My country is going down the drain. I haven't been back in 2 and a half years, and the way things are going don't really want to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Is it just selective information available to me, or is Australia really starting to turn the corner towards a neofascist government, similar to say, South Africa of the 1970s or Korea of the early 1980s?

      • just selective information.

        it's really a bit sadder than that - the government is quickly losing relevance and is trying to flex it's idealogical muscle.

        this happened years ago with the office of film and literature classification. they changed all their graphics and included "consumer advice" on DVDs and movie posters.

        they did this retrospectively. you had to re-classify your entire back-catalogue, and if you didn't comply they threatened to shut you down.

        sry, i work for a DVD distributor. those were fu

  • Why they are REALLY complaining (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Friday November 12, 2010 @02:35AM (#34204604)
    Because Telstra isn't competant enough to be able to keep track of the changes themselves and now they'll have to audit their own network.
    It really comes down to staff levels, firing everyone with a clue and bringing some (nowhere near enough) of them back as contractors on restricted hours.
    Telstra is the unholy thing you get when a government monopoly is told to go out there and make money any way it can. Maintainance costs money and keeping track of it even more so.
    The only other real competition is from the Singapore government owned Optus (another weird abomination) but their landline network is very small.
    Civil liberties are important but not to Telstra, and most definately not to Optus.
    • "Because Telstra isn't competant enough to be able to keep track of the changes themselves"

      I worked on telstra systems for 7yrs in the 90's and will corroberate that statement.

  • Have they tried tapping into the Bush Telegraph to find out what people really think?

  • In law, conveyancing is the transfer of legal title of property from one person to another, or the granting of an encumbrance such as a mortgage or a lien. The term conveyancing may also be used in the context of the movement of bulk commodities or other products such as water, sewerage, electricity, or gas.[url="http://www.solicitorservice.co.uk/category/find-a-solicitor"]Conveyancing[/url]

  • ...obviously, the concept the Aussie gvt is pushing is beyond bat-shit crazy.

    That being said, any ISP which does not have a VCS with _all_ configs of all network devices at any time is equally crazy. Unless they are generating their config from templates in which case they should have those sources in a VCS.

  • ... then it will be easy to prevent criminal using the internet to escape. And it seems that, intentionally or no, that is the direction they're headed. These requirements sound like a recipe for drastically increasing expenses while simultaneously making the internet less useful to end-users. If they intend to pass those expenses on to their customers, I think it will be no surprise if an awful lot of Australians suddenly start remembering how well they got along in the pre-internet days.
  • They WANT info on telco system changes? I say the telcos should teach them a lesson on being careful what you wish for... and bury them in a flood of technical documents as detailed as possible!!!

  • Scratch a socialist and you'll find an autocrat. Oz got what it voted for.

    It only takes one election to contract the disease; it takes a revolution to cure it.

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