ASIC Seeks Power To Read Your Emails 114
nemesisrocks writes "ASIC, Australia's version of the SEC, has called for phone call and internet data to be stored by Australian ISPs, in a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into mandatory data retention. Not only does the authority want the powers to intercept the times, dates and details of telecommunications information, it also wants access to the contents of emails, social media chats and text messages."
Re:Inquity ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Psychostory (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Harry Seldon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon), if a people begins as a prison colony it must necessarily end up as a police state. It's inevitable.
Re:Datacenter Super sized. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they even comprehend the amount of data this will be?
This is just one step away from recording all telephone calls as well.
1984, we didn't learn anything.
Oh I think "we" did... "we" being our overlords - they read 1984 as a howto guide.
Cheaper to... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be cheaper to close down the Australian stock exchange? Or just monitor the people who actively trade?
Not that this will prevent people from encrypting messages, or passing insider messages face-to-face.
Mandatory surveillance of innocent people (Score:4, Insightful)
So in effect:
1. You're only innocent because you haven't committed a crime yet
2. Thus they capture your data and store it
3. After you've committed your crime, the data is there to prosecute you
4. They've justified with reverse time causality.
5. Ergo time travel is real.
And if you don't commit a crime? Well obviously you haven't YET committed the crime that justified us putting you under surveillance in the past. So you must be a super cunning criminal. We'd better keep your data longer than 2 years, otherwise it might break the time-space continuum.
That's what it amounts to, calling everyone a criminal and using that to take away their right to privacy.
Re:It's Psychostory (Score:2, Insightful)
That explains the USA then !!
It must have been onerous for the British to have to send convicts to Australia when they found out they couldn't send them to America anymore due to the squabbles there with the French...oh, and a few ex convict colonists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia
You're welcome.
This is how it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's already begun, but it's another interesting example of how the police state develops. In an established democracy it's kind of difficult to simply introduce something akin to the Stasi - that worries people.
The trick is to grant unreasonable powers to a group that doesn't appear to have much to do with the average citizen (such as ASIC), or instead give it to a group with what people see as a very specific remit to act only in certain areas (TSA). In the case of ASIC, why should the average guy in the street worry about those stock exchange guys having this power - it's not as if they'll be using to snoop on regular guys. With the TSA, turning airports in to constitution free zones, people are fine with that because they think it's only happening in airports, when in fact they're spilling out in to other aspects of transport. Get people used to presenting documents at airports, train stations and state borders, and before long you'll be able to stop them anywhere and do it. Same with intrusive physical searches. When stopped on a random road, the patriotic dad will proudly hum "God Bless the USA" as his daughter allows a former Wall*Mart shelf stacker with a badge to get his hands down her pants in the name of security and freedom.
Asking for such a broad and patently unjustified ability to snoop has no place in a modern democracy. Ship them out to an embassy near to a country such as North Korea or Iran - in the hope that they'll defect to a place where their Orwellian urges can be sated.
Re:TFS title (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, at least they said "the Aussie equivalent of the SEC" which wil still leave anyone not in the US or Australia clueless.
Damn it, people EXPAND ACRONYMS! Especially obscure acronyms that are the same as tech or science acronyms. If you're talking about cops, don't say "LEO" because to us, an LEO isn't a law enforcement officer, it's low earth orbit. To the one or two of us who don't live in Australia, an ASIC is a chip.
Gees...