Australian Government Seeks To Boost Spy Agencies' Powers 54
angry tapir writes The Australian government has indicated it intends to seek a boost to the powers of Australia's spy agencies, particularly ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organization). The attorney-general told the Senate today that the government would introduce legislation based on recommendations of a parliamentary committee that last year canvassed "reforms" including boosting ASIO's power to penetrate third party computer systems to intercept communications to and from a target. That report also covered other issues such as the possibility of introducing a mandatory data retention scheme for ISPs and telcos.
Fermi paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
And another explanation for the Fermi paradox.. If technology itself will not kill us (or we wit our technology), governments around the world will get such control freaks that they in effect sabotage the civilization itself.
We seen examples of that in the past, when governments get too power hungry - take the ancient Romans as example - society will collapse.
One of the real issues is the broken justification - war against terror is a sophism. If you verify the amount of casualties in western countries, you will see that per saved life, the effort done and money wasted is totally disproportional. If we are after saving lives, we would make roads safer, obliged car checkups free, public healthcare for free, and a few more other things a civilized society would or could do, wasting less money and with higher efforts.
The truth is that we allow a elite to grab more and more power, powers where even medieval rulers only could have dreamed of. And we all know that it we continue this path, the system will collapse. Just power hungry people don't care that - they are not after saving civilians or society - they are after saving themselves.
Soon, we will live in a society that's resembling the society as seen in the (cult) movie Brazil. Any technological progress will cease. Either some revolution happens - with all risks, either we are heading towards new dark ages.
I apologize for using the Fermi paradox to get your attention, but a bit of nerd will hopefully see the bigger view. Our question as society is not: where are we now. But more, where do we want to be in 50 or 100 years. And since politicians don't come up with the (right) answers, others must, if we want to survive on this nice planet.