QANTAS Wants To Monitor Frequent Flyers' Home Internet

An anonymous reader writes "Australian Airline QANTAS wants to monitor recording frequent flyers' home internet searching and surfing. QANTAS will pass the data to US marketing partner FreeCause who are not subject to Australian privacy laws. Meanwhile the Australian Attorney-General's Department has been secretly drafting new data retention laws to log Australians' web surfing. The government claims it needs these to fight crime, yet is ignoring corruption by its own public service."

Drooling Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

The madness must stop.

Just another...

[Darkness404]

Just another way the West has fallen into tyranny. But yet, there is comparatively little outrage. The violations of liberty that King George III imposed on the American colonists were minor compared to the crimes that modern presidents have committed. But yet although there will be a posting on websites like /. and will be discussed by liberty-minded bloggers there will be no revolution, there will be no outrage. Isn't it odd how times have changed, when a minor (by today's standard) tax increase sparked a revolution but today's routine violation of individual sovereignty, violation of basic civil liberties and violation of basic economic liberties have created.... a couple of blog posts.

I wouldn't count on the NRA

[L. J. Beauregard]

When tyranny comes to America, the NRA members will not be fighting the government. They will be at the rallies, waving flags and chanting slogans between the Sousa marches.

Re:It won't

[dbIII]

we'd be like Canada or Australia.

You missed the bit where this imported prick running QANTAS is sending the data to the US to get around the stricter privacy laws in Australia.

This is NOT NEW.

[upuv]

Qantas has had a form of spyware for years. Over 7 years ago I saw it's first version. It was a horrible crash prone mess. It was a flight search bar with other value add addons. And yes it reported to the mother ship.

A lot of airlines did the same. So did package delivery companies.

I work rather closely with large companies that are deploying or have deployed improved analytics tools to track your every click. Big brother exists. An issue is it's not just one big brother.

Face book for example. Almost every single app is mining your account for information. Very use any of the facebook apps if you must use facebook. Only ever give the minimal amount of information. Remember you are the product.

If you are dumb enough to ever install a "toolbar" then you get what you asked for. There is no such thing as a free value addon. They will all cost you dearly.

Re:It won't

[Concerned Onlooker]

Stop voting for Republicans or Democrats. For the rest of your life if you have to. When enough people abandon ship either a new party will come into power or--more likely--one of the major two will change their tune to gather up more votes.

If it doesn't matter who you vote for then why are the Republicans falling all over themselves trying to get the Latino vote back?

Re:It won't

[YukariHirai]

If it weren't for the French, we'd be like Canada or Australia.

It seems to me like you'd be better off if you were more like Canada or Australia. Australia certainly has better protections for its citizens in many areas than the US does, and by all accounts the same is true for Canada.

And sure, this is an Australian company doing a shitty thing, but the truth is that companies everywhere try anything and everything they think they can get away with. And remember, they're sending the data to the US to be processed because the fuckery they want to do is legal in the US but not Australia.