‘Extraordinary’ hacking powers pass Australian Parliament
innovationaus.com
innovationaus.com
This has all happened under the auspices of the most overtly corrupt and authoritarian government we’ve had in my lifetime, within four years.
If I had the option, I’d pack up and move, but having written this and other anti-government sentiment, it’s entirely possible that they stop me at the border. [2]
Combining this with the political apathy of nearly everyone here that I know, the current vilification of protestors (not entirely wrongly given the circumstances), and the utter spinelessness and complicity of the “opposition”, I don’t see a future for my country that doesn’t involve violent revolution (we’ve tried it before [3]) or tyranny.
But it gets better: the tech industry is not only under attack, they’re complicit. Beyond even the ordinary run-of-the-mill scumbaggery we see from tech companies, a number have recently formed the Tech Council of Australia [4], aiming to make Australia a startup capital of the world. Scroll down that page and you’ll see a list of member corporations, several of which sent opposition to the AABill when consultation was open. Now, apparently, they’ve decided that it’s too hard to beat ‘em, so they’ll join ’em.
[1] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
[2] https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia
I've seen "Border Control Australia", and if leaving the country is anywhere near as difficult as entering it, you're in for a rough time.
"Do you have dirt from another country under your shoes?"
/s
Ordinarily, I don't believe Australia practices any meaningful exit controls beyond the usual: visa overstays, warrants. Certainly not capriciously based on your feelings regarding the current administration. In fact, I believe it's automated.
If you're trying to do so over the land border with Canada, I believe the Canadians will notify the Americans on your way over, and happily hold onto you for a hot minute.
You'll always have to answer to an authority when attempting to leave a country.
However, ordinarily, neither AU, US nor CA will stop you from exiting. Now re-entry is another matter.
https://www.agriculture.gov.au/pests-diseases-weeds/plant/fr...
I also heard that Australia was making it very difficult for Australians who were abroad prior to COVID from coming back, is that true? Has that changed much? Again, does the government give a rational for this decision? And the discourse?
I think that Australia and NZ were right to lock down hard and stamp out COVID but I'm a bit baffled by the fact that it has managed to get in a few times and more specifically how it has managed to get in.
It seems to be that once if you're an island the size of Australia and you've eliminated domestic transmission the simple solution is to route all international flights to an airport in remote location (not one in a large city) where absolutely everyone involved in the process be they passangers, crew or quarantine staff must stay for two weeks with zero exceptions.
If you did that then you could easily repatriate Australians living abroad.
You might be infecting some more people during those two weeks, which means you'd have to prolong the quarantine.
As an Australian living abroad - nope, nothing has changed. It's near impossible for us to get back although at this point, why would I want to..
> And the discourse?
Australians overseas are distraught with many being forced to watch friends and family go through tragedy from afar. The ones living at home don't seem to give a crap at all - "you left, serves you right" isn't an uncommon sentiment.
It's been discussed in other posts recently on HN about Australia - life there is pretty good and Australians are generally laid back to a fault. If a problem doesn't affect an individual on a personal level, it doesn't exist.
</rant>
Feeling a bit East and West Berlin right now.
Whether all that was indeed necessary to prevent the spread of COVID (despite several negative tests and all but total isolation in that time) is up for debate, but yes the government certainly makes it as hard as possible to enter the country, virtually impossible unless you can purchase upper-class tickets (bribe the border force).
Somewhere after "flatten the curve", Australia aimed for "covid zero" - so they don't want any cases in the country, at all. They did well at that for most of the pandemic, but now delta is running rampant.
They don't want anyone leaving, because they know you'll just come back again and you might bring covid in.
> What is the public discourse like over this?
There was a court case about it being unconstitutional, but it got over ruled because "dangerous times". [1]
> I also heard that Australia was making it very difficult for Australians who were abroad prior to COVID from coming back, is that true?
(for what it's worth, I returned to Australia from Canada in late June 2021 - so I went through all of this).
Again, they're trying to keep covid out, so they have a strict limit on the number of people that can fly into the country from the outside world. Right now it's 3,035 people per week for the entire country [2]. With numbers so restricted, and a mandatory 2 weeks of being locked in a hotel for the cost of $3000, it's difficult to get a flight. From Canada it wasn't nearly as bad as the media makes it out to be, but supposedly there are well over 10,000 people "trying" to get back... though in my experience, and talking to everyone in my quarantine hotel and on my flight, I don't actually believe that's true.
> Has that changed much? Again, does the government give a rational for this decision? And the discourse?
The incoming people cap was halved in July because of the current Delta outbreak (which escaped hotel quarantine). The government's justification is "dangerous times". The discourse is "this is being done for your safety, and you should be thankful".
> I'm a bit baffled by the fact that it has managed to get in a few times and more specifically how it has managed to get in.
After going through it myself, I'm shocked covid didn't escape quarantine more. Just in Sydney airport more than 10 people spoke face to face with all of us arrivals, touched my passport with bare hands, etc. etc. Multiple people picked up and moved my bags, were physically close to me in elevators, etc. etc. If I were running the show, anyone coming into the country would be treated like they had the zombie plague and nobody would get within 10 feet of them. Certainly nobody would be touching their bags and physically touching documents.
> the simple solution is to route all international flights to an airport in remote location (not one in a large city) where absolutely everyone involved in the process be they passengers, crew or quarantine staff must stay for two weeks with zero exceptions.
Surely good in theory, but where will you find a remote location with a big enough airport and enough accommodation you can just take over? also remember staff want to have days off, food must be delivered, people in quarantine want packages delivered, etc. etc.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/asia-pacific-australia-lifestyle-...
[2] https://www.mondaq.com/australia/health-safety/1090494/decre...
Speaking for myself, I am not wanting to return permanently, so I do not want to take the quota place of someone who does want to. There is also uncertainty for me if I would be able to leave the country.
I do want to see my family however, and I have no idea when that will be possible. Video calls only do so much.
I will now have to apply for an "exemption" to leave, though with my proof of residency and personal business in another country, I should be fine (all fingers are crossed)
> Surely good in theory, but where will you find a remote location with a big enough airport and enough accommodation you can just take over? also remember staff want to have days off, food must be delivered, people in quarantine want packages delivered, etc. etc.
The planes full of zombies can land in an air force base with a suitable air strip and then they are lead to quarantined trailer camps like you would find in many remote mining and oil and gas operations around the world.
At the end of it all the camp that you've built can be dismantled and either sold to the mining industry in Australia or redistributed to the armed forces.
Guy tested negative before the flight, and on days 2, 7 and 14 of quarantine. Then drives around and spreads it. They assume he caught it on his last or second last day in quarantine.
Which is why I had to have tests 72 hours before my flight, then on days 2, 7 & 14 of quarantine, then yet another test on day 16
Old don't mix with new arrivals, previously anyone could go to the common room
Perhaps that is 2.5 or 3 weeks?
Either way, the fact remains that Australia's decision to leave thousands of their citizens stranded abroad and to lock their citizens in their country is both peculiar and unreasonable.
Meanwhile if 10,000 people enter the country, 1 makes in to the community and incubates on the 34th day, and things aren't detected immediately with amazing contact tracing it can turn into 1000 cases in no time.
All at the incredible cost of already having put 9,999 unnecessarily through a ridiculously long 34 days quarantine.
So there is a certain impracticality in this type of thinking, since a human lives for only so long. A human has only so many years of his life with which to develop his career and save for his old age. A lot of 0 covid policy countries are seriously going to spiral into territory where the sacrifice of individual human lives by "portion" is no longer insubstantial if we don't see some 180 degree reversals (perhaps by violent revolt). Like if NZ and AZ carry on for 5 years like I expect them to.
That's not practical.
You need capacity to house at least 10,000 people in quarantine, then another 1,000 staff to look after them. Ideally you'd also be close to a major hospital and the airlines certainly wouldn't sign up to having their staff made to quarantine after every inbound flight.
A country shouldn't be lock their population inside and refuse to let citizens back in for an indefinite period of time. That's insane.
The past couple of years have caused me to really become ashamed of being Australian. Being part of an increasingly globalised society, I found the government's blanket dictat of "Australians come home now" to belong to another era. With 4% of its population living in other countries, one would assume they would try harder to not alienate their diaspora.
If the governments had started on this in March 2020 it would have been worthwhile but these facilities are only just starting to be built now, are too small to entirely replace hotel quarantine, and will be largely redundant by the time they open if NSW and VIC continue on their current paths.
Compared with the eyewatering sums thrown about to keep the economy alive while closed off to the world, a series of quarantine facilities that allow us to open up is surely doable.
1 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-04/cph-minister-denies-t...
They are a pretty strict process from the time you step off the plane to when you leave the hotel quarantine. It's certainly possible.
Australia foolishly believed that they could choose if and when Covid entered their country, which explains the sheer complancy at all levels of government in dealing with it. This was never true.
The result was that Australia purchased, at enormous cost, some covid-free time, and then proceeded to piss it up against the wall.
(As an aside: I'm Australian, and live outside Australia. I do not want to be "repatriated", I want to simply be able to visit the country I'm a citizen of, without being banned from leaving again, and without spending thousands of dollars on quarantine.)
No. They believed they could limit covid cases and they were right. Australia's still got some of the best covid results in the world, even with the currently rising case numbers:
Australia bought themselves time, but squandered it rather than ensuring that as many people as possible were vaccinated.
And we were struggling to lay hands on the vaccine a few months ago. Supplies were going to countries that honestly needed it more than Australia (cough India cough).
Norway's population is 5,469,887. Australia's population is 25,839,176.
Norway's covid deaths per million is 149. Australia's covid deaths per million is 38.
Australia's doing much better than Norway.
We have never been forbidden from travelling abroad, just advised against, always been able to return. Now that I am fully vaccinated I can return without having to quarantine, without tests, I don't even have to fill in a passenger locator form.
We have never had any violent protests, or violent reactions to protests, about COVID restrictions.
> Australia's doing much better than Norway.
It seems to me that reducing performance to a single dimension is counter productive both literally in GDP terms and qualitatively on a personal level.
You chose not to. That's why your deaths per population is four times higher than Australia's.
The retrospective studies on all of this across different countries is going to be really interesting.
So sure, great job on keeping Covid numbers down until now, but it’s not like it wasn’t costly in other ways.
And I say this as someone with family in Vietnam who took a similar approach. They felt like it would be a great time to create a domestic vaccine industry since they had zero cases for most of last year - plenty of time to develop their own Covid vaccine.
Well in the past 4 months cases have increased by almost 200x (2,000 to near 400,000), same with deaths and it still hasn’t peaked. Total number full vaccinated is a little under 2% (though 1 dose is almost 20%).
Now they are scrambling like mad to get any vaccine they can. And they have the military distributing food in their biggest city because nobody can leave their homes - unless for medical care.
To the grandfather’s point, the control of Covid was admirable, don’t get me wrong, but it was squandered out of complacency that they could always get it under control.
It's a meaningless question without any numbers. Show me the economic impact for, for example, the UK versus Australia. Who comes out better in growth and GDP?
Singapore had the highest suicide rate last year since 2012. No doubt the lockdown contributed to it.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/suicide-highest-re...
This confusion is one of the reasons that the US covid response was, and continues to be, such a failure. The US is at 649,754 deaths from covid and counting.
Yes, the US has failed as a nation in its covid response.
You claim Australia's health measures are now "normalized" which is absurd. They are abnormal measures to deal with an abnormal situation.
Let's make a bet: I bet Australia will remove its lockdown restrictions when either the covid case numbers are under control or it decides to just give up and let covid infections rise (like the UK did).
You bet the lockdowns are "normalized" and Australia remains an "authoritarian regime".
Let's see who turns out to be right.
A lot, economically. Australia & NZ returned to growth faster than just about anywhere else on the planet, and the states that locked down hardest returned to growth fastest.
So it was a big win heath wise, and a big win economically. Whether the new rules were a big loss of freedom is a matter of taste I guess, but we already have lots of rules like don't drive too fast, don't yell Fire! in a theatre, your kids must be schooled, don't has sex with minors. More rules than you can poke a pointed stick at in fact. In comparison the new ones were a drop in the ocean, and they disappeared as soon as they weren't needed (ie, when the lock downs worked). I sincerely wish the other rules were reviewed as quickly.
Good luck staffing such a facility.
Whether the border force will put any effort into apprehending a boat that's leaving, rather than entering, I can't say, however it's hard to slip under the radar (or sonar, as the case may be).
> ... but having written this and other anti-government sentiment, it’s entirely possible that they stop me at the border. [2]
> [2] https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia
It seems like a bit of a disingenuous stretch to push your points across.
Not even the US - which famously has guns all over - would have any kind of chance against their own military.
Like... "people with guns" vs "stand off artillery, over the horizon warfare, etc".
That is correct, if the objective is to glass the entire place. The US military is the mightiest force in the world when it comes to that.
As far as quelling armed rebellions among the citizenry goes, I think just pointing to this months' news should suffice in lieu of an argument?
Thankfully, I'm not from the US. Was there there really an armed rebellion there?
I'm not understanding how they're linked though.
The level was created by the 350,000 Australians living overseas noticing Australia had almost no covid while all the infections were going through the roof everywhere else. Understandably, they all wanted to come home.
Sadly, they couldn't because of three reasons. The first is the airline industry collapsed, and so flights went from $3K to $30k each - or more, and there was a very limited number. The second is we don't have the quarantine capacity. The third is every so often quarantine system leaks, which can cost billions.
They demanded the government fly them home for free, they said they the government had to do it because they had a duty to protect all Australians, even ones who earlier on decided not to fly home when covid started, and to bolster their case they went to the media with on sob stories about needing to see their dying long lost cousin or whatever.
No one came out out it smelling like a rose. Some came out of it dead. And understandably, no one wanted a repeat performance. Other solutions, like insisting they had an open return ticket were kiboshed by the travel industry not honouring return tickets or anything else.
Which is how we ended up with the current ham fisted approach at people needing visa's to leave Australia. It's not a good look I agree, but fortunately every politician is very aware of how unpopular it will be when the country open up after the vaccinations are done. Australian's like their travel. The policy will be dropped like a hot potato as soon as the majority political sentiment becomes "it's OK to open up". The vaccination program has been a monumental clusterfuck so it's progressing god awfully slowly, but nonetheless it's looking like we will be in that position by Xmas.
However, its baffling to me normal people are so compliant in the clear authoritarianism.
Being in full lockdown where I'm not allowed to go outside and all stores are closed and food stocks are so low at the supermarket their is no point in waiting an hour in line.
Speak out out has very real social and career consequences you are reminded daily on the media.
The only place to get information from your community, is Facebook comment section news articles, but if you know programming you can clearly see these posts are filtered and highly curated and any post that has slight disagreement with the governments actions is quickly corrected by government employed commentors paid 95k to tackle disinformation.
People are lead to believe if they just follow along and be good they will get their freedoms back.
These people are right. You should address your disdain forwards rule breakers and not those imposing the rules. Because that would be incitement.
I'm thankful I am a high wage earner and can work from home and don't have to rely on government rations ($600) like most people.
I believe we are witnessing history, in the fog. And only from the future does everything make sense. In my personal opinion I believe we are preparing for war with *insert enemy here* and covid was a dress rehearsal for real biological war.
With the USA leaving Afghanistan the "pivot to pacific" is almost complete.
The reference you linked was a national travel restriction related to Covid, not a case of preventing dissidents from leaving as some form of punishment. Maybe you meant to link a different article?
A classic example of why you really shouldn't be giving the government too much power, because even so-called "modern democracies" can and will go bad.
Backdoors in encryption, free for all to hack citizens, etc. What a mess. Hope some people fight back.
German example: The BND has been caught spying on all Germans' communication (most probably still does so), as well as connections to foreign countries. They are only supposed to watch foreign countries. So they came up with a legal theory, called "Weltraumtheorie", where satellites are in space, so outside the jurisdiction of any state. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltraumtheorie Later on, when this got out, it was just legalized and extended to fibre connections, because, well, that just replaces space, doesn't it?...
Also, later on, the government just legalized what the BND was doing, thereby invalidating any future attempt at prosecution for that past crime against the BND. Yet still maintaining the illegality for everyone else.
>"I think we've started to fill a void, a niche for the Americans to get around a few legal hurdles domestically"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-10/nsw-operation-ironsid...
By making a false comparison between the two, you are muddying any argument made against the electronic freedom restrictions.
Regardless of what the justification given is, limiting people's freedom of movement and association is by definition a restriction of their freedom.
To restate: I think the COVID lockdowns are a very different case from these electronic restrictions, in scope, duration, reason, and advisability. A critique which cites both as similar examples of government overreach is missing its mark.
Freedom is about being able to do whatever the hell you want, so long as you don't restrict the freedom of others. It's not about being good or wise or socially responsible or even sane - it's just about nobody being able to stop you from doing whatever it is you want.
Importantly, there is NO PLAUSIBLE WAY to "stop COVID" by lockdowns or any other measures. Eventually you'll have to end the lockdowns, and it'll be waiting for you. COVID is the Taliban of diseases - it can't be defeated, but we can kinda sorta peacefully coexist.
And yet, in Australia you can be forcibly detained and quarantined (in a camp, no less), forced to disclose health information, authorities can also use whatever force necessary to enter your dwelling (this would be a perilous affair in the US in particular), and so on. That is as far from "freedom" as anything I've seen. And it's also utterly and completely pointless and counterproductive as well.
So while we have less freedom initially, it seems to play better in the long term.
And if there are any epidemiological recommednations, _voluntary_ compliance would too mean freedom, but _only_ voluntary.
By your definition people in prisons are "free" too - most of them are locked up for a reason. And yet they can't go anywhere, and are most definitely non-free.
Genuinely curious, do you not think the US government has better guns than its citizens? How exactly would this work?
How exactly did that work in Afghanistan?
The US in Afghanistan, for all its successes and failures was on a nation building adventure, hoping to win hearts and minds. It was following rules of engagement, not operating an outright slaughterhouse.
In the context of abject authoritarianism, the government will just straight up execute you, or crush you with a tank like the PRC at Tiananmen Square.
This feels like a romanticized Lone Ranger against Big Brother kind of thing. The Fantasy of the Good Guy with a Gun™. I don't think it plays out that way in real life.
A counter narrative would be the Cultural Revolution as I pointed out. China's population in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution was about 750mm people. By the time Tiananmen Square happened, it was 1.1b people. I'm looking for the numbers but I believe guns were pretty common.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eV8N0bUzA0
In general, it's perfectly legal for US residents to own RPGs, artillery, tanks etc. If operational, they're classified as "destructive devices", so they have to be registered with the feds, and every transfer happens with their approval as well. It's also very expensive, obviously. But still possible.
The order of ammendments is chronological, not one of importance.
"He [king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."
This was removed from the final version during committee review. Much later, Jefferson explained what he believed the reason for this was:
"The clause...reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under these censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."
The supreme irony here, of course, is that Jefferson himself was a slave owner until his death. And he had something to say on that, as well; written in 1820, on the occasion of the Missouri Compromise:
"... as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
> sufficiently potent weapons to give the government trouble
and prove far more about how the US federal government has and continues to be reluctant to pursue anyone that has support from "small-government" right-wing groups, even if they continuously ignore or break federal laws.
We expect our government to protect our individual rights and allowing citizens to maintain some degree of dangerousness is a nod to that effect. Even basic arms are great equalizers allowing anyone to protect themselves fairly well in practice.
because they pose plenty of threat to each other, which was in fact one of the reasons for the biggest change in modern Australian history, the Port Arthur massacre[1]
Australia, like many other nations does not have the same tolerance that the US has when it comes to violence.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...
It is interesting that these restrictions pre-date the country's more authoritarian move. Disarming the populace occurred prior to communist takeovers, eg. Russia early 20th
Gun control has broad support in Australia - in a poll, 40% of respondents think the laws are fine as they are, 45% said they should be even stronger, and 6% said they were too strong.
The only reason Australians (generalising) vote at all, is because we'd get fined if we didn't. With donkey votes (vandalised ballots) counted as votes for the current government, this country exists to hold the status quo.
That is completely untrue. Informal votes are not counted at all.
"The number of Blank Votes and Spoiled Ballots are read out at the count, along with the results and are also included in subsequent reports. Your apathy towards the political parties will be heard not just forgotten."
They're counted here too - just not towards any particular political party.
I've never heard that before. Do you have a link?
Usually it is highlighted when an unlikely candidate gets a better than expected result, and the pundits would attribute it to the "donkey vote"
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7273583/bandt-looks-t...
This is how most Labor parties end up meek allies of capital - career politicians injected into the parties are funded by, promoted by and supported by institutions that owe their allegiance to capital. It's very much the safe route into politics that ends with a cushy job (which is critical coz most political careers end in failure). These people are often the best at co-opting political machinery (e.g. getting on the right committees, swinging important but less visible votes, figuring out how to get "difficult" members ejected based upon trumped up accusations of racism).
For anyone else taking a political career route you risk ending up unsupported, overworked, villified and subsequently ejected into unemployment.
If attempts to co-opt political groups edging closer to power using internal party political machinery fail, there's always a media under the full control of the upper classes that can villify individual politicians that are a threat, which a good 1/2-2/3 of the population will usually believe. Sometimes this works hand in hand (e.g. creating a facade of "unelectability" via the media and then using that internally to nix career progression).
None of this happens in parties with zero chance of getting into power (e.g. most green parties) so ironically they often end up with the best platforms.
I'm not an expert, but I'm under the impression that Australia uses a "first past the post" / "simple majority" voting system. If that is true, calling it a "modern democracy" seems deeply misguided, democracy yes, modern no.
Australian politics is dominated by the two major parties, but the minor parties form a reasonable percentage of held seats, and occasionally neither major party holds a majority, which leads to a hung parliament where the balance of power is open to negotiation.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Senators/Senate_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_House_of_Representa...
Could the difference be a lack of cost recovery for individuals or businesses having to implement backdoors? The new legislation[1] inserts a section 64B "Person with knowledge of a computer or a computer system to assist disruption of data" which appears to be similar to the Assistance and Access Act, but doesn't appear to allow a telecommunications carrier, data centre owner, computer repair shop, DNS hosting provider, some random contractor that worked on a software project 10 years ago and is now retired and going fishing every day to recover costs of complying with an order to backdoor something or provide advice on how to backdoor it?
[1] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
The ratcheting up of surveillance legislation whilst the opposition are absolutely impotent.
There are no practical reasons for this that have anything to do improving life for Australian citizens as a whole.
The media drastically overreacted to that act, to the point where the Department of Home Affairs now has an entire page dedicated to addressing the false reporting [0].
The TL;DR is that the act doesn't allow the government to introduce mass surveillance. Section 317ZG [1] expressly forbids any law enforcement request from _having the effect_ of introducing any systemic vulnerability or weakness and _explicitly_ calls out new decryption capabilities as under that umbrella.
The media's widespread report that e2e encryption was dead in Australia was therefore false. The purpose of the act was more like if Facebook or Google have data that are encrypted at rest and they hold the keys, they can be compelled to decrypt it.
[0]: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...
[1]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...
Isn't this the purpose of the Assistance and Access Act where the ISP in question doesn't have a present ability to perform MITM attacks on network traffic, and would therefore have to build and engineer at a significant cost a new solution for law enforcement use? And once that is achieved, 27KP(2)e(ii) of this new legislation is then reasonable for an ISP to perform because the capability has been built and is now present?
And section 317ZGA [1] explicitly puts compliance with interception warrants (which I believe are the warrants in the new bill) out of scope.
I _think_ the effort a provider has to put in to comply with the new act is primarily limited by 27KP(2)e's "reasonable" wording.
[0]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...
[1]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...
Table 8 (PDF page 14) of the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 Annual Report 2019-2020[2] states that only 20 such warrants were issued in that year and 11 extensions issued, and none of them were issued as a result of international requests (PDF page 25). The report doesn't indicate how many of these 20 requests resulted in assistance needing to be provided and who needed to provide that assistance.
Given the low count (20) of computer access warrants issued and likely nature that anyone providing assistance would be well aware of whether the request related to e.g. CSAM, I'd guess that most businesses involved may be happy to help out for free even if their business wears a small cost of complying with the order. I suspect though if this Act or new types of warrants generated significant workload for Australian private sector companies, and warrants were difficult and expensive to comply with, there would suddenly be a lot of backlash.
ACMA states[3] that the private sector self-reported costs during 2019-2020 of AUD$24m related to telecommunications interception legislation and AUD$21m related to metadata retention for at least 2 years. It also reported only 8 requests to block websites (7 being ACMA wanting to block foreign gambling websites) and 17 requests for Internet/communications services being switched off.
Aside from the metadata retention laws which the private sector has reported costing $237m to implement to date (with only ~21% cost recovery from the government), the other costs of complying with law enforcement warrants appear to be fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things and are just a small consideration towards the cost of doing business in Australia.
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00296
[2] https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/nat-security/files/surveillan...
[3] https://www.acma.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-12/Telecomm...
Should people be concerned about keeping commercial secrets in systems run Atlassian or Fastmail?
The oversight here seems to just be one copper asking his mate to give him the nod to go on a fishing trip whenever he likes.
I'm not sure if the NSA is really any better, perhaps just less forthright.
I mean, I don't know what to believe, the whole FBI app.le thing makes me feel less cynnical about the chance of NSA knocking on the door in the name of national security - but I've heard they can do that, which seems like you'd have no choice.
As a programmer from Australia though I can't believe they are passing these laws. Seriously depressing.
I'll be trying out https://mailbox.org/en as an alternative. They seem to have good PGP infra and are hosted in Germany.
The last somewhat (!) safe haven is Switzerland.
For attackers to passively surveil TLS en masse, they'd need to MITM those connections. That in turn requires rogue CAs signing the attacker's certificates in large numbers. If that happens, the public would notice and the CAs involved would be permanently banned. Not sensible if the attacker's goal is to carry out persistent mass surveillance.
Much easier to just obtain the emails directly from few popular email providers instead.
My personal theory is that it's a manifestation of fear and insecurity. Australia, and many of its citizens have always had a certain lack of confidence, which is often covered up by bravado about being "the best country in the world" (as if there even is such a thing) and things like the tall poppy syndrome, currently often directed at expats("Too good to live in Australia, are you?")
On top of this, a huge amount of fear has been manufactured over the Covid-19 pandemic, both by the media seeking clicks, and by politicians seeking electoral advantage. This is one of the most shameful aspects of the entire thing to me: the deliberate emotional abuse of the population. The contrast between Dan Andrew's daily fear-mongering and berating of "rule-breakers" and Angela Merkel, most of whose public statements during the pandemic were about reassuring the German people (with occasional expressions of "concern" at most when things were going badly) has been stark for me. Even Jactinta Ardern has been much more measured in her statements, although NZ wasn't immune from madness like banning the delivery of fiction books.
And so, yes, I think a lot of Australians are on board with the border closures, the lockdowns and the like, which is astonishing to me, but I think the degree of fear there is what fundamentally explains it. As for government snooping, hardly anyone in Australia cares.
You mean "the lucky country"? That's an ironic, self-deprecating joke.
>The contrast between Dan Andrew's daily fear-mongering and berating of "rule-breakers" and Angela Merkel
As have the number of deaths between the two countries. 90k+ in Germany vs. <1k in Aus. (If you scale it per-capita, it's still about 25k vs 1k).
>I think a lot of Australians are on board with the border closures, the lockdowns and the like, which is astonishing to me, but I think the degree of fear there is what fundamentally explains it.
No, we're on board because it saves lives and people don't want to see their family die in the name of some abstract concept.
For anyone reading GP's comment, my take is that some expats do hate their home country.
It's insanity that some people think that strict lockdown rules are an invasion of freedom.
I'll tell you what's an invasion of freedeom: selfish, infected people partying and infecting everyone else sticking the the rules and toughing in out.
I couldn't care less about my karma, it just feels like I am getting punished simply for expressing my point of view here in a way that's not any more or less emotional than the GP.
b) strict lockdowns are invasions on freedoms, quite obviously, because they suspend rights you have. They do so for a reason, and society can very well decide "this is a legitimate restriction on freedoms" (hopefully guarded by legislative and judicial process), as it has in much of the world to varying degrees, but that is not the same as pretending it's not a restriction.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."
It's both. It started (I learned today) as a negative criticism, but is also used favorably and positively, also it is sometimes a joke. I'd heard the positive and joke usage but wasn't aware it started life as a negative thing. Funny to think that Aussies were previously more self-critical than we seem today.
Different context, different people, all referencing the same phrase. There's no "one true" meaning...but it's good to know there's might be more to it than just what you've seen already. :)
I am of course against wrongful online surveillance such as this new passed legislation, but when it comes to the lockdowns I don't know where I stand. I just hope lockdowns end as our vaccine roleouts start. One thing I know for sure though is that I will not be staying in this country for too much longer, if I can avoid it.
Both the US and AUS can access your e-mail if they just get a judge to sign a warrant (which, if Germany is any indication, is barely a hurdle).
Australia is actually fulfilling an important role here: Exemplifying a democracy just short of becoming a dystopian banana republic.
I think a lot of this fear remains to this day and drives a lot of these weirdo authoritarian, draconian policies.
Australia is like a child without her mum, scared of the dark and unknown.
Lastly the leader of the country is a religious fanatic who believes in all types of weird things.
It’s a shame it’s going in the wrong direction for sure.
Everything is great down-under!
> “Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!” (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!) Walter Ulbricht, State Council of the GDR, less than 2 months before they built the wall
This is exactly the sort "capability" that is designed to be used through the legal loophole of "you spy on our citizens and we'll spy on yours" which is the (realpolitik) basis of the Five-Eyes intelligence sharing agreement.
Seems like free democracy is just a brand at this point.
Largely (albeit not completely) created by the state thanks to drug criminalization. For fuck's sake.
Funded and empowered by the state, and totally unaccountable...
“I have said before, if you write a ticket, and you get it wrong, I understand, and I won’t hold you to account for that. We have to shape the behaviour of people to get out of lockdown, and I know all of us want to be out of lockdown by Christmas, so please take the challenge.“ -- NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, https://www.smh.com.au/national/police-commissioner-says-off...