
Data retention and the end of Australians' digital privacy - contingencies
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/data-retention-and-the-end-of-australians-digital-privacy-20150827-gj96kq.html
======
zmmmmm
There were three really shocking things about this. Firstly, how little any of
the politicians who voted for it understood what it was. Virtually none of
them could even define what "meta data" meant, yet were casting judgement on
the privacy implications of retaining it.

Secondly, how poorly drafted the actual legislation ended up being. Since
nobody involved understood it, the law itself is a series of self
contradictory statements that make very little sense. At some point they
decided to exclude "web browsing history" but nobody obviously knew how on
earth to write that in, so it became its own section that overrode the other
sections to say that "nothing else in this bill requires retention of anything
that could be interpreted to be web browsing history" \- despite the fact that
the rest of the bill very explicitly details retention of web browsing
history. As it stands, the law is unimplementable, and thus what is now
happening is that ISPs are going through a process of getting "guidance" which
is a euphemism for "since we can't legally operate any more given this law is
unimplementable, just tell us what you want and we will do it".

Finally, the fact that there was a sudden and inexplicable spike in terrorism
raids in the weeks when the bills were debated. There have been almost no
raids since, and there were almost no raids before. Yet in those critical
weeks, law enforcement just happened to decide that it was timely to execute a
bunch of "raids", which have had no material outcome. In other words, law
enforcement appears to be transparently corrupt and willing to abuse its
powers for political ends. Which means we are very much well on the way to
being a police state.

~~~
sillygeese
Politicians "not understanding" something is an age-old excuse. They don't
even _give a fuck_ about anything besides themselves, because they're
psychopaths.

They're smart too, because otherwise they wouldn't have managed to climb up
the hierarchy of political power to their current positions, what with all the
other smart psychopaths jockeying for position along with them.

So if it's in a politician's personal interest to vote X on whatever, then he
will do so. If it's not, then he won't. It's as simple as that.

Understanding has nothing to do with it. It's not like they couldn't get
someone to _help_ them understand, if they wanted to.

Also, the Australian government (along with any others that _can_ ) has been
doing the things listed in the article already. They don't need permission
_from themselves_.

~~~
chii
> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
> depends upon his not understanding it!" \--
> [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)

~~~
sillygeese
Yeah, but more accurately, his _bribes_ might depend on "not understanding"
something.

------
boyter
As a voter in Australia I actually wrote and called my representative. The
response I received was borderline insulting. At this point I have no choice
but civil disobedience or to leave the country. Both of the main parties
pushed this through and both are unlikely to ever repeal this law.

I'm angry. I feel betrayed by representative democracy. The system is
absolutely insane.

~~~
contingencies
Yep. OP here. I left the country 15 years ago but care deeply about its
downward spiral in to US-style totalitarian anti-democratic corporate
hegemony. New Zealand seems to be doing a lot better, though still on the same
path.

The sad fact is, I feel more free here in China than the US/UK, and it seems
to me that Australia's only a little behind those jurisdictions in its rapid
descent.

~~~
narrowrail
>I feel more free here in China than the US/UK

It seems a bit hyperbolic to write something like this right when the Chinese
economy has been in a tail spin, and the Chinese government has been censoring
the press coverage of declining value of public companies (many of which have
significant government ownership stakes).

~~~
contingencies
Well, perhaps I should clarify that it's felt that way for a good while.
Likewise, it seems telling that you conflate economy and freedoms.

~~~
narrowrail
>it seems telling that you conflate economy and freedoms.

What? I didn't conflate the two, and I don't know what that is telling _of_
exactly. The freedom to report (i.e. press freedom) on the economy and the
economy itself are 2 separate things, and the Chinese government was censoring
the press.

~~~
contingencies
You did conflate the two.

Me: "I feel more free here in China than the US/UK" [doesn't include economy]

You: "It seems a bit hyperbolic to write something like this right when the
Chinese economy has been in a tail spin, and the Chinese government has been
censoring the press coverage of declining value of public companies (many of
which have significant government ownership stakes)." [includes economy]

That's called conflating two issues.

While you are correct that China censors the press, the western press is also
deeply controlled and manipulated for political purpose. For example, the UK
has more concurrent gag orders in operation than anywhere else on earth. US
and Australian media ownership is ridiculously centralized, worse if you
include viewership.

------
1971genocide
I am really happy the Anglo-Saxon World is shooting itself in the foot with
technology.

I worked for a tech company in the UK who had german clients that produced
economical policies that were used by Merkel's Cabinet.

It was the same time that the snowden scandals were all over the news and the
client flat out told us no amazon, microsoft or american cloud computing
platform.

It was a pain to find good European cloud providers but as a young 20 year old
I was cynically happy - It meant that just like in the cold war - physicist
never ran of jobs In my lifetime there wont be a shortage of jobs for
programmers. Essentially the world had twice as many physicist ( Soviet and
America ).

Snowden has been the best thing to happen to the tech world.

Finally I can stop making shitty apps to connect to amazon and make my own
amazon !

~~~
trengrj
My wish is not that the Snowden scandals cause European companies to make
shallow clones of American cloud platforms but that libre / free software
software and open hardware emerge. I feel this is the path to real privacy and
freedom.

~~~
openfuture
I could not agree more with this.

We need to figure out a way of making a more united front in this war. Its
crazy how hard it is to reach people regarding the danger of all this
surveillance, I feel completely drowned out.

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
The people you're trying to inform are incapable of seeing beyond what Big
Brother tells them the way things are.

Best of luck waking others up

~~~
openfuture
That's why the 'we' I was referring to doesn't include them.

------
ZoeZoeBee
Before today, Australia was on my short list of countries to consider moving
to, now its on a growing list of countries I'll have nothing to do with.

Looks like it might be time to make friends with some Kiwi's

~~~
cloudier
What does your shortlist look like right now?

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
New Zealand, Switzerland, Chile

~~~
undefined0
Mines: Switzerland, Czech Republic, maybe some caribbean island or south
american country such as paraguay/panama. If PiratePartyIS win the election,
they I'll be adding Iceland to the list.

I'm suprised that you listed New Zealand considering all the political dirty
which came out of the Kim Dotcom scandal.

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
He hasn't been extradited from there as far as I know, hell he even set up a
political party called the Internet Party last year.

The Czech Republic seems pretty cool too. The only reason I left it off my
list as a place to reside is its strategic location.

------
lemming
Sadly, I guess Fastmail will now have to change their privacy policy:
[https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html](https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html).
They were pretty openly appealing to people worried about surveillance but
that will be more difficult for them now.

~~~
brokentube
No they don't: [http://blog.fastmail.com/2015/04/09/fastmail-is-not-
required...](http://blog.fastmail.com/2015/04/09/fastmail-is-not-required-to-
implement-the-australian-metadata-retention-laws/)

~~~
lemming
That's great news, thanks - I hadn't seen that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10139442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10139442)
is very worrying though and I'm sure that sooner or later the gaps in the law
will be plugged since the intention is clearly to catch the likes of Fastmail.
The direction that the law in Australia in general is taking is clearly
towards more surveillance - Fastmail was top of my list of alternative mail
providers, but this will definitely make me think twice even if they're exempt
right now.

~~~
hga
Unless Fastmail is really dumb, and they've not been dumb in the 6 1/2 years
I've been using them, they've got contingency plans to move their business (as
opposed to their servers, which can't realistically be in Australia with its
very expensive connections to the rest of the world) to a better jurisdiction
if/when Australia continues to have the 1st World's worst Internet regime.

They've already experienced this sort of thing in the 2010-2013 period when
Opera in Norway owned the company
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastMail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastMail)).

------
cbaleanu
Australia also has one of the slowest internet in the world, which is a
consequence of the Telstra monopoly there. It is just sad data retention
happens now, it will only hinder even more future development in the IT
sector.

I lived there for one and a half years then moved back to Europe, enjoying my
500mbps fiber connection.

------
anonymousab
Growing pains of the post privacy era.

