Hacker News Reader

Comment by RileyJames | Hacker News Reader

Since 2015 and the meta data laws it’s no wonder things have continued to get worse.

There was practically no opposition to the meta data laws. No popular resistance. No protests. It’s a non-issue for the public or political class.

The extent to which non-tech people in my social circles care is to switch to signal. Not that they’ve stopped using the other tools.

There seems to be a “what else can we do” attitude.

Unfortunately, there is also no other party to vote for, as both major parties (liberal and labour) hold the same policies on ‘national security’.

View on HN

I blame NewsCorp and Nine Entertainment as well as the “she’ll be right” attitude of most fellow Aussies. It’s kind of funny the way the media cried when the Federal Police raided the ABC and they cried victim. Yet dodgy law after dodgy law gets passed and no one bats an eyelid.

The relationship the media has with government is disturbing but I guess they are bought and paid for now that the News Media Bargaining Code is a thing.

With due credit to your friends they kind of have a point with the Assistance and Acess Act 2018 in effect. How do they know that the signal app they are downloading is the real deal.

Read up about Firearm Prohibition Orders in NSW too. No need for judges or warrants if you have a rookie police officer and a police commissioner.

Also the police harassment of FriendlyJordies, where the deputy premier of NSW fabricated allegations to get the counter-terrorism police to arrest a journalist. Scary. Nascent police state vibes and few people care.

There’s really too many to name at this point.

The bikie laws in Queensland.

Permits for protests which can denied on the basis of ‘harmed local commercial interests’.

Terror police being sent after the friendlyjordies.

Let alone the corruption (nsw libs, barrier reef grant, detention Center security contracts) & complete lack of accountability (Angus Taylor)

It was sad to see the recent protests in the name of ‘freedom’, when in reality it was about government support. Which I support them to get, it just saddens me that that’s the extent of collective action.

It's not just that - I think there's a link (but I'm not sure how best to describe it) between the policies enacted in many commonwealth countries and a fundamental disrespect for privacy and freedom of expression; take the fact that Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand all banned cartoon porn that appears to depict fictional minors (the famous "Simpsons porn" case in Australia), and even prohibit its mere possession in a private residence - all while admitting there is zero scientific justification for those laws, and relying only on the words of charity representatives, and in the England, with MPs justifying the ban by saying that only "perverts" would be against such a law.

National security of Australia?

What?

Security from who?

China-funded paramilitary dropbear gangs, obviously

There are far bigger issues in Australia right now to care about meta data logging. Climate change and now the vaccine delay consume all of the publics attention.

Metadata logging is a theoretical issue while the lack of vaccine supplies is a very real and immediate issue.

Multitasking isn't something new.

In Australia it is, when the horses race the nation stops

The meta data happened long ago and was pushed through with the most flimsy of pretence.

I remember it was after the shooting in Sydney by an Iranian refugee who had not only just been in custody but had arrive under the pretence that he was an Iranian spy seeking asylum. They had every reason to surveil the guy under normal laws but used it as an excuse to justify a drag net approach. It was obviously an Orwellian trick but no one cared.

Freedom should not be so whimsically thrown away, getting it back will be impossible through normal means.

> Metadata logging is a theoretical issue

There are over 350,000 requests a year for metadata, about ~1000 a day. Any level of government can make a request, right down to local councils of towns with 2000 people. The oversight committee is comprised of three bureaucrats who have never found a single instance of the system being abused in years. In fact all the instances of misuse have been self-reported by agencies.

Metadata itself seems like an innocuous term but includes the location of every single mobile phone in the country. The enormous cost of all this is passed onto the consumer and the government doesn't subsidise reporting entities at all.

What exactly is "theoretical" about all that?

>The enormous cost of all this is passed onto the consumer and the government doesn't subsidise reporting entities at all.

Sorry, who's the consumer in this? Can you explain more?

The telcos bear the cost of retention, and so consumers of telco services are paying more as a result.

Not for the government, it seems. And you can't really include either Climate Change or the Vaccine rollout as issues the government may care about because they've fucked up both of them pretty royally.

Possibly, for the political class, metadata logging is THE issue of the moment.

You're not wrong. I find it hard to take articles like this seriously when there's the more pressing issue of still being under effective house arrest (which has now gone for about a year with no end in sight).

Hell the premier implemented a curfew and said it was due to public health advice, the public health advisors denied it, then he said it was on the advice of the police, and they denied, and that was that. No further questions asked why we implemented a curfew for fun. In this environment it's positively quaint the idea that our cyber laws are the thin edge of the wedge.

I would leave, but like North Korea, it's against the law for citizens to leave the country.

Yeah maybe the coronavirus economic recovery committee should have been stacked with business leaders from the medical sector instead of the fossil fuel industry. The future looks bright for those manufacturing and developing covid vaccines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com