Australian Spy Agency Offered To Share Data About Ordinary Citizens 78
An anonymous reader writes "Australian spy agencies offered to share personal information about law-abiding Australian citizens with overseas governments. This includes legal, religious and medical information, which was shared about this Canadian women. Departments in the Australian Public service has also been caught spying on citizens. Even low-ranking public servants can look up information such as phone calls and email metadata without needing a warrant. The target is not notified."
This is an outrage (Score:5, Insightful)
Government officials behaving like Internet businessmen!
Privacy != Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
All the way back in 1995, when I first started using the World Wide Web, some users were advocating for strong privacy protections. We were ignored, then laughed at, then insulted with the "tinfoil hat" labrel.
Are you ready to reconsider our point, that society is better off if governments are corporations do NOT have free reign to collect, store, and mine as much data about us as they want?
Mad as hell and I aint gonna take it anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
I've never been much of a fan of democracy (well democracy as we call it in Australia). As such we need someone to play watchdog to the corrupt government officials who bleed our wallets and souls dry. I would have thought that this was the Governor General's responsibility; if not then who or what can we do to expose the government when they don't act in our interests or good faith?
Re:Privacy != Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
They will know more than that. They can determine if you have an affair, a medical condition that could potentially harm your ability in other areas like how AIDS patients were originslly treated as outcasts with leprosy or something.
Of course stuff like that may not matter to people who think the government should be in charge of their medical and all those aspects of life. But when your neighbor gets killed in a drug deal gone bad, disapeArs, and the government decides because you purchased lime for you garden, kives for your kitchen, large garbage bags, a shovel, new mattress and area rug for your bedroom, all within thE last 2 months- one of which your neighbor was missing, and decides you killed her because you also looked at a page about scott peterson, you will think differently about those dangers.
There have been people convicted for crimes primarily on circumstantial evidence. Traditionally, something connected them to the crime outside of that but what happens when there are no leads and they search your metadata and decide you are the most likely match for the criminal behind it? I know, you have nothing to hide.
Where is this leading? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one seems to think we are on a slippery slope here.
Yes, I know it's BEYOND trite and redundant to quote or reference Orwells' 1984, but hey, a guy having to stand in the corner of his apartment to stay out of view of telescreens and microphones is essentially where we are headed.
We are almost there now.
Re:Privacy != Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's worse than that. What will undoubtedly affect most people is not the power imbalance between the individual and the government as a whole, but the tremendous power imbalance between an individual and the lowest tier public worker that has access to that information. When your local policeman will be browsing your daughter's naked photos (that she took in the shower with her cell phone) while contemplating which would be better to coerce her into sex, her confession about cheating in French class, smoking a joint once a year ago, or going on a date with two different people without them knowing it; and when you find out, and the same person will threaten you with being arrested for anything he could make up he saw in the surveillance, put you on a watch list, destroy your life.... that's when you will realize how far the power separation has gone.
Take it from someone who was brought up in the Soviet Union - even the lowliest civil servant had power, and exercised it. There was no action without bribery, and there was not even a concept of freedom... not because of power coming from the top down, but because the system was so skewed at a traffic cop could pull you over, rob you, rape your wife, then kill you both, and if anyone witnessed it, they'd keep their mouth shut.
Power corrupts.
If you give someone absolute access to your information (even forgetting the concept that the latter will likely mean absolute access to making stuff up), you given them absolute power over you.
Re:Where is this leading? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one seems to think we are on a slippery slope here.
Not anymore. I think we're long past it. We're like Wile E Coyote... we've run off the cliff, just haven't fully realized it yet.
Credit where credit is due (Score:4, Insightful)
Why doesn't the summary mention Snowden?