Australian Gov't Drops Plan To Snoop On Internet Use — For Now 67
CuteSteveJobs writes "Australian Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has been forced to back down on her government's unpopular plan to force ISPs to store the web history and social networking of all Australians for two years. The plan has been deeply unpopular with the public, with hackers attacking the government's spy agency. Public servants at the spy agency promoting the scheme been scathing of the government, saying: 'These reforms are urgently needed to deal with a rapidly evolving security environment, but there isn't much appetite within the government for anything that attracts controversy,' but a document on the scheme released under the Freedom of Information Act had 90% of it redacted to prevent 'premature unnecessary debate.' Roxon hasn't dropped the unpopular scheme entirely, but only delayed it until after the next election."
Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed (Score:4, Interesting)
I had already moderated on this topic but after reading this post I felt like whoever mod parent down was -1, Disagree.
I understand OP point of view but with something as global as the Internet why should one government or another regulate it?
Either give it to the UN or better, don't regulate it at all. Why should US cops snoop on data that comes from say, Latin America to Canada?
I think that from now on we should be standardizing encryption because the overhead it causes IS worth it.
assume (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Internet Needs to be Policed (Score:4, Interesting)
Those people are paid to monitor blogs and step in with their 'opinion' whenever there is a controversial subject going on on which the one who hires them wants the opinion to be favourable to his own interests.
Saw the same happening lately on projectcensored.org: someone claiming to be totally innocent and proclaimed he totally trusted Google with all his personal data and wouldn't mind if it were used for anything Google and its affiliates wanted, as long as service remained free of charge. (puke) Anyway, clearly nobody with that kind of personality would never ever visit a website like projectcensored.org, so that was clearly one of 'those' 'mercenaries'.
Re:assume (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we can all safely assume that every government regardless of locale will try to restrict it's citizens rights to the point that the citizens have to respond to stop them. This is the default criteria for a government in the first place. We all know that this will creep back in a little while when the issue becomes less volatile. The only real way to stop it is by acceptance or revolution (e.g. american revolution). I don't forsee any polititians being strung up in trees so it is the fault of the public. You get the government you deserve.
No, when the government is elected in open elections, citizens can get what they want without revolution. In the USA, we used to have an assault weapons ban (a measure many Americans found sensible). But it was allowed to expire because the National Rife Association heavily lobbied Congress to make sure it sunsetted. This is not about spying, but it is about removal of a restriction that was removed because many Americans wanted it removed. If you can get enough people interested, you can enact practically anything. Arguably, those in favor of repealing the ban were not even a majority. They were well-organized and well-financed, though.
That's the key thing. Citizens have to care about the issue. Most citizens are ambivalent about security-vs.-surveillance.