
The Australian Government now wants ISPs to record browsing history - xelfer
http://www.zdnet.com.au/govt-wants-isps-to-record-browsing-history-339303785.htm
======
nl
Perhaps too political for HN, but anyawy...

I can't understand Labor's plan. They seem to be going out of their way to
alienate everyone who is attracted to voting for them.

They have lost the green vote by dropping the emissions trading scheme. They
have lost the "doctors wives" (see last election) with their refugee policy.
They have lost most political progressives with the internet filter and now
this plan. Even the unions aren't 100% behind them because of the impact of
the Super Profit Tax policy.

I can understand that they think that they might lose primary votes to the
Greens, say, and then regain them via preferences. But it seems to me that
many people are getting to the point where they think that _even Tony Abbot_
couldn't be as bad as this.

(Disclaimer: I'm Australian)

~~~
Andys
More importantly, Tony Abbot is what he says he is, which makes him more
charismatic than Ruddbot.

~~~
philk
Using the phrase "is what he says he is" to describe a politician who
_admitted to lying_ during an interview on a major nightly news program
strikes me as a rather creative interpretation of reality.

Luckily for him actually being honest and consistent is an absolute
irrelevance, all he needs to do is give the appearance of being a straight up
guy.

~~~
tomhoward
Admitted to lying! Yep, the ones who don't admit it are far preferable :)

He admitted explicitly to doing what every politician does, what everyone
knows they do, and what Lindsay Tanner did only hours later on the ABC.

It was an unfortunate, clumsy thing to say, but the "gotcha" triumphalism
should be reserved for people who _don't_ admit to their failings, not the
ones who do.

------
philk
I'm getting sick of the words "paedophilia" and "terrorism" being trotted out
to justify every invasive new policy.

~~~
bennysaurus
Especially since it's such a poor excuse - these sorts of people do not use
standard http to communicate or distribute this sort of content (the dumb ones
do but they would just as easy to catch without filters or logs like this).

Good example, hop on TOR and try to access almost any image site such as 4chan
as a test. 99% of endpoints are banned for uploading child-pornography or
other material while these sorts of users simply look for another exit point.

The government is either ignorant about how these sorts of people actually
operate, and how the internet facilitates them, or it really is a Big Brother
style solution to put a full blanket audit-at-will on the general population.

~~~
pyre
The 'government' is a blanket term. I'm sure there are parts of the government
that know perfectly well how these people operate. On the other hand,
initiatives like these seem to be instituted by politicians who probably don't
know their ass from a hole in the ground.

[Insert nefarious reason that the people that know don't bother to inform the
people that don't]

~~~
bennysaurus
That's true - the policy makers is probably a better term here.

------
pmccool
If this law ever comes into existence, I predict its number-one use will be
pursuing illegal downloaders or something. I bet it won't be explicitly
limited to terrorism or whatever its ostensible purpose is.

Hope I'm wrong, on both points.

~~~
loewenskind
It doesn't matter what its number one use _today_ is. If such a law exists at
all, sooner or later it's _going_ to be abused.

------
coderdude
The thing I find so surprising about all of this is that I would never expect
a "normal" country like Australia to have censorship issues. China, North
Korea, Iran... Australia? Is the Australian government simply too powerful for
its people's own good?

~~~
JacobAldridge
Not too powerful, just overly conservative. This has its advantages - our
financial crisis experience was mild because regulations in the banking sector
(plus our small size plus our mining industry, but let's avoid that discussion
here) helped us through.

But sometimes that conservative need to protect is combined with ignorance of
reality, technical reality in these instances. That's a bad thing.

(Some side notes on conservatism - we're a country who didn't have it's own
national flag in practice for 50 years post Federation; one of our first
national Acts of Parliament was the 'White Australia' policy which lasted
until 1975; the Prime Minister we had when Hitler invaded Poland was the same
guy we had when Kennedy was shot 25 years later; and we call Football
'Soccer'.)

~~~
mos1b1
_our financial crisis experience was mild because reglations in the banking
sector_

Those were _liberal_ financial regulations. Seriously.

~~~
nl
Um.. what do you mean by _liberal_? It is true that the Liberal government
supported them (as did Labor).

But they were conservative in that they restricted financial institutions in a
number of ways (high capital requirements, strong(er) regulation of loans, etc
etc)

~~~
mos1b3
I used the terminology in the same way you did.

It's disappointing that you feel the need to pretend this is confusing to you.

------
frio
They're such two-faced shits. On the one hand, they pan Google for collecting
the locations of wireless networks and logging some packets off them,
criticising them for _invading privacy_. On the other, they're attempting to
legislate a way to record _all_ of what people _actually do online_.

~~~
jstevens85
>On the other, they're attempting to legislate a way to record all of what
people actually do online.

It's unfair to say they're attempting to introduce any sort of legislation. At
this stage they're exploring whether or not EU regulations would be
appropriate for Australia.

------
i386
And Senator Conroy calls Google creepy.

~~~
pmccool
To be fair, this creepiness is coming from the Attorney-General's department,
so Conroy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

~~~
zmmmmm
> Conroy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it

That is being a little bit too fair. They are members of the same party, the
same government. Conroy is the Minister responsible for broadband and the
internet. It would be insane to think he is not intimately involved in this.

Perhaps they've decided the best way to take some heat off Conroy is to
suggest something even more horrific from another department.

~~~
jstevens85
I think perhaps you're underestimating just how much autonomy Australian
political ministers are given in managing their portfolios, particularly in
areas that the public don't give a shit about.

I believe that's why the Internet filter is still being proposed. Stephen
Conroy is the leader of the right-wing faction within the ALP, and therefore
Rudd can't tell him to shut up and do something else. He's been given the
autonomy to do whatever he wants (except on "important" issues like the NBN).
The same situation existed with Michael Atkinson in SA. He pretty much
determined himself without any outside consultation that he wouldn't support
R18+ video games, and it appears the new AG has been given the same level of
freedom and autonomy to determine his own policies.

------
JacobAldridge
Moving to the UK in September. Wish I could say this was a motivating factor
(experience is the real reason), but I'm scared about what I might return home
to at some future point.

Maybe I should list every book I own or have read as part of my packing, and
send it to Senator Conroy et al, as a preemptive move against those needing to
be recorded as well.

~~~
neurotech1
Perhaps, someone should start a "technology" party.

I can't believe how crazy the Australian federal government has gotten. I
could never vote for this ass-backwards internet and technology policy.

~~~
alexkay
> Perhaps, someone should start a "technology" party.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_Australia>

~~~
dejb
I don't think the name 'Pirate Party' will work in Australia. They won't get
any support (financial or otherwise) from any credible organisations. From
what I've seen people are turning to the Greens as anti-filtering party.

~~~
hugh3
We're still waiting to see what the Liberals are going to do. At the moment
they're maintaining strategic ambiguity on the issue, which means somebody
needs to get out there and start convincing them there's more votes in
opposing it than supporting it.

------
megablast
In Australia, they also make you provide ID for any sim card for your mobile
that you buy.

Looks like it might be time to head to the UK, since they decided to scrap the
ID card.

~~~
mahmud
BS. Arab-American here, bought a SIM with no questions asked at an Optus
booth.

~~~
Devilboy
Did you pay cash? Did you have to register by phoning Optus before using the
SIM?

~~~
mahmud
I paid cash and didn't have to do anything.

------
studioprisoner
I work within an ISP in Australia and have dealt with providing information to
the Federal Police for investigations. I was under the impression that we
already recorded that information. Looks like I was wrong.

~~~
loewenskind
Do your customers know they are being recorded like this?

~~~
studioprisoner
We cannot view that information, only by an intersection order is that
information is available.

In our TOS and Privacy Statements on our website, it does state that we keep
connection logs.

~~~
Devilboy
Connection logs are not the same as logging every URL your customers request,
am I correct?

------
pmccool
Consider the two recent creepy proposals together. They point to everything
being censored and everything being monitored.

Consider Wikileaks. Consider how these laws work together against
whistleblowers. How convenient for a government to be able to \- block such a
site from the majority of citizens; and \- have a red-hot go at tracking down
anyone rash enough to upload anything.

Throw in a law or two to make it illegal for paedophiles and terrorists to
circumvent these arrangement and you have a truly nasty arrangement.

------
Terry_B
Purely tactics to get their filtering bill passed? In the end we'll all be
thanking them for being such nice people that they are only filtering our
internet...

------
prawn
There's another story on this from Renai LeMay (ex-ZDNet) who is an IT writer
who started his own IT news site, Delimiter. An underdog worth supporting I
think:

[http://delimiter.com.au/2010/06/11/govt-may-record-users-
web...](http://delimiter.com.au/2010/06/11/govt-may-record-users-web-history-
email-data/)

------
AlexBlom
Boo. Glad I moved to Canada.

~~~
Devilboy
Can you confirm or deny that Canada is the sanest English-speaking country in
the world?

~~~
jbarham
As a Canadian I will admit we are generally sane (aka "dull"), but there are
enough crazies around to keep things interesting, especially in BC (e.g., Bill
Vander Zalm, Svend Robinson). So, although it is generally overlooked, my vote
is for New Zealand.

------
robryan
Does this really help? If I just browsed everything sensitive through SSL sure
they will have the domain viewed but nothing to prosecute on?

~~~
CWuestefeld
Except that we have good reason to believe that governments are getting
backdoors into SSL certificates. If they can also control DNS, they can set up
man-in-the-middle spying. Of course, if they did that, there'd be no reason
for ISPs to be doing the recording.

------
ww8520
It's a form of populace control by the government; otherwise how would they
rule over you?

------
Naga
Time to encrypt everything!

~~~
biafra
Until encryption is outlawed, or key escrowed. Then we are doomed!

~~~
reginaldo
Yes, but for now I bet a startup that finds a way to do to anonymous access
what dropbox has done to backups/synchronization will earn a lot of money. Now
that the cost per GB is so low, you can route the traffic trough 3 or 4
countries, and any scheme to tap connections will be prohibitively expensive.

------
ams6110
Opportunity for an off-shore VPN service?

~~~
c00p3r
It will not work. Today's average internet user is technically incompetent to
set up something complicated as non-standard VPN connection, leave alone
third-party one, like OpenVPN.

The second problem - is monetization. Most people wouldn't pay.

And the last one - you cannot alter an iPhone/iPad and other closed systems.
Seems like it is possible to port (recompile) openvpn to android. (IPsec and
GRE probably would be discarded on ISPs)

btw, openssh's built in socks proxy is a great deal, for linux laptops or
netbooks, but you still need a DNS server.

~~~
hexley
iOS can already use a VPN

~~~
c00p3r
Proprietary protocols only, which could be easily banned on ISP.

~~~
nl
Not true. See the chart at the bottom of
<http://www.witopia.net/index.php/products/> for example

------
c00p3r
China is lagging a lot. =)

------
sdurkin
Dear Aussies and Limies,

Regarding your internet and privacy policies:

Get it together.

Most Sincerely, the Yanks.

~~~
jodrellblank
Dear Yanks,

    
    
        Remember this? http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619
    

Regards,

~~~
sdurkin
Excellent point.

Perhaps it should have been obvious that I was joking.

By referencing the somewhat deragatory nicknames used by soldiers in WWII, I
was calling to mind our nations' shared heritage of the British Common Law.

When I see Common Law countries misbehave in this fashion, it is always
especially irksome. It is the ultimate "could it happen here" test.

I expect more from the Common Law nations, and I wholly agree that us Yanks
have had some embarassing episodes in this regard as well. We should all
resolve to hold ourselves to the high standards of human and civil rights
guaranteed under our shared legal tradition. And we should hold each other to
it.

