Canada Population: 37M
Australia: 1694 device requests (~70x)
Australia Population: 25M
Why such a big difference between both of these safe countries? The crime rates are pretty similar, Australia definitely doesn't have 70x more crime than Canada, and there aren't simply way more iPhones in Australia. Very different police/prosecuting strategies I guess.
But for some measurement, it seems to work. Drugs are insanely expensive in aus.
I don't have a great definitive answer on why that's the case, but I do have suspicions. One is around the (perceived?) strength of our democracy, driven by mandatory voting and a well designed parliamentary system. Also, we don't have the American history of revolution - distrust for government just is not part of the thinking.
The other is that, for the most part of the last 50 years, our more public institutions have done a good job. The ABC (think the BBC, but Australian) is a trusted news source, Medicare largely "just works" for most people, our public/private education system mostly works, etc.
When it comes to law enforcement, I think the general perception is that while they're far from perfect, they tend to be well governed and as a result given a generous amount of power.
Again, whether this perception is justified or not is a different thing, especially if you're not of Anglo descent.
Culture of war crimes (ADF regularly executed civilians), metadata retention (bipartisan support), anti-encryption (bipartisan support), raiding journalists, letting multiple newborns die because of coronavirus travel restrictions, university censorship kowtowing to China, police brutality, no free speech, no free expression and repeated attacks on the IT industry (many companies incl Microsoft yanked data and compute away from Australia after the bi-partisan laws rammed through parliament allowing the government unfettered access to data).
All of the above has wide bi-partisan responsibility. Most of it has happened in the last 5 years.
In Australia, both parties sell you down a river and tell you they're the best party because of some irrelevant policy minutiae, meanwhile supporting war crimes and the evisceration of the IT industry and our rights.
But the other thing to note about Australia is that the country is a bit of a demographic and cultural misfit in SEA, and reliant on the US umbrella to have unquestioned security against the countries just to the north including two superpowers and any number of countries with the potential to be economic and military powerhouses.
It would be strategically justifiable for Australia to get serious about building up a powerful intelligence system, in a way that it just doesn't for Canada. I imagine if Canada wanted to become the next US State it probably could. Australia is much more isolated and it is foreseeable that the US might withdraw from the Pacific in the next 50 years.
Isn't everything? Also consider that Australia's borders are much easier to patrol due to its "island" nation status.
It’s traditional stereotypical “she’ll be right mate” image is far from reality. Hugely litigious, lots of red tape, if there is a fine for something you will be fined.
The ex prime minister stood in parliament and said “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” in regards to wanting to back door encryption. That’s what you are dealing with.
> The new law also allows officials to approach specific individuals—such as key employees within a company—with these demands, rather than the institution itself. In practice, they can force the engineer or IT administrator in charge of vetting and pushing out a product's updates to undermine its security. In some situations, the government could even compel the individual or a small group of people to carry this out in secret. Under the Australian law, companies that fail or refuse to comply with these orders will face fines up to about $7.3 million. Individuals who resist could face prison time.
https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-...
In practice though I don't think anyone actually cares. I certainly haven't been asked about it by any prospective employers and I work in areas of finance where companies are famously protective of their IP.
Maybe this works well for Australia, or they are stuck in 1990 and simply haven't looked back and wondered if anything could be done differently.
Example would be: instead of catching everything you see, you can also collect information until you find a pattern, central driver or societal problem and solve that to solve the underlying problem. The counter-example would then be: instead of always trying to catch the biggest fish you can also make a few examples and disturb something like a criminal network by messing up the actions of their foot soldiers.
I suspect the way you go about it increases or decreases the amount of individual requests you need in order to execute your mandate.
because it is hard to measure the effectiveness. How many terrorist attacks and domestic incidents are there (assuming in good faith those are the only things to be prevented) ?
I would assume in the absence of any of these national security agencies that there were only very few per year if not decade. That makes it hard to adjust the strategy even if you assume that they are totally focused on security only, and not e.g. on the continued presence of their paycheck of suppression of opposition parties.
To give you an example: the (American) security measures at the airport that were introduced in 2001 can be considered a total success, as there has been no incidence since then (success = good, people can get promoted for that[0]), although these measures have been called security theater at times[1].
And with these measures called successful by those promoted people, why change them? Of course some other people opine that they may not be as successful as they claim they are [2], but it is still hard to quantify.
> instead of catching everything you see, you can also collect information until you find a pattern
yeah that seems likely. Though this scares me personally as I may demonstrate a pattern now that will make me a suspect in the future, despite doing nothing wrong.
[0] I worked at big tech once upon a time [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-bus... [2] https://www.thelocal.de/20091231/24279
“The ancestors of Australians aren’t prisoners, but rather prison _guards_”