Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours
tutanota.com
tutanota.com
It's not "rushed through parliament in 24 hours", it's been in a process since at least December 2020. The 'without a judge' part is strongly misleading:
(5) If subsection (4) applies, the applicant must:
(a) provide as much information as the eligible Judge or nominated AAT member considers is reasonably practicable in the circumstances; and
(b) not later than 72 hours after the making of the application, send a duly sworn affidavit to the eligible Judge or nominated AAT member, whether or not a warrant has been issued.
The AAT's decisions "are subject to review by the Federal Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court of Australia" (Wikipedia).
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
This is just the digital equivalent of a police officer being able to arrest you without a court order.
And then it happens so much it's standard practice and attorneys lose social credit for even bringing it up.
If it takes 80 hours and it turns out to be abuse, then heads would probably roll.
However, in most cases these things are legitimate. I've worked in government and most people have good intentions. We don't have to protect ourselves, as a society, against the legitimate cases, we have to protect ourselves against the abuse.
13 Nominated AAT members
(1) The Minister may, by writing, nominate a person who holds one of the following appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue warrants under this Part:
(a) Deputy President;
(b) senior member (of any level);
(c) member (of any level).
(2) Despite subsection (1), the Minister must not nominate a person who holds an appointment as a part‑time senior member or a member of the Tribunal unless the person:
(a) is enrolled as a legal practitioner of the High Court, of another federal court or of the Supreme Court of a State or of the Australian Capital Territory; and
(b) has been so enrolled for not less than 5 years.
(3) A nomination ceases to have effect if:
(a) the nominated AAT member ceases to hold an appointment described in subsection (1); or
(b) the Minister, by writing, withdraws the nomination.
(4) A nominated AAT member has, in relation to the performance or exercise of a function or power conferred on a nominated AAT member by this Act, the same protection and immunity as a Justice of the High Court has in relation to proceedings in the High Court.
Australian Police get online account takeover, data disruption powers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364140 - Aug 2021 (77 comments)
‘Extraordinary’ hacking powers pass Australian Parliament - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28311722 - Aug 2021 (212 comments)
Australia is becoming a surveillance state - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048 - Aug 2021 (423 comments)
The top commenter is throwaway created an hour ago
Curious how ranking works on HN. If that hasn't been answered already.
Comment ranking doesn't depend on account age.
Does this mean the police can create a social media account in your name? Imagine for instance that they suspect one of your family members of tax evasion. Can they create a fake social media account or email account registered to you, and impersonate you for the sake of entrapping someone else? Like hey uncle, love your new car, got any hot accounting tips? I don't even see anything in these laws that says the person whose data they're accessing has to be the target of the investigation.
Imagine if at any time in any chat, even with your partner or parent or child, you couldn't know whether you were actually talking with them or a government agent, perhaps because someone they know is tangentially suspected of a crime - without the matter even being brought before a judge. Terrifying. This is how societies turn into places where everyone is completely fearful of saying anything at all.
I agree and disagree with both of you. They're right that institutional power can and does get away with trampling the social contract, to the degree it feels it can. You're right that the contract itself is (supposedly) premised on mutual consent. But both of these strike me as defeatist postures. They both have in common the idea that the contract is with the state which holds all the power. What I think you both miss is that every state and every government is just made up of people. Whatever durability liberal democracy has, or the fact that it's emerged repeatedly over a couple millenia and shown itself capable of out-producing and out-warring autocracies, is not as much premised on a Hobbesian contract or a legal contract, or even the consent of the governed, so much as it is on the consent of those in government, their own sense of social status, and the degree to which that status results from their exclusion of the people they govern or their need for approval from those people. To the extent that all these incursions on privacy are still being done in the name of protecting children or stopping terrorism, as phony as that is, it gives the people in power a psychological pass for doing what would otherwise be Stasi or KGB style intrusion. It makes them acceptable at parties and makes them able to believe that they're "the good guys". The collapse of the USSR came about because the individuals tasked with oppressing the population - from Gorbachev down to the border guards - could no longer view themselves as the good guys if they did these things to their countrymen. The last stages of an oppressive society are where fear of punishment is no longer as bad as the need to escape oppression. For reasons that dovetail with the simplified explanations offered about what governments naturally do, etc, it's easy for a free society like Australia to slip into totalitarianism, and quite hard for it to get out. But all it really boils down to - and I mean, even down to the level of these universal observations we're all making in online comments, and up to the Congress or parliament or the inner circle of the CCP, is an individual dick measuring popularity contest. If the people in power are made to feel they are the bad guys, they'll overthrow the system. But that does require the revolution coming for its own. In this case, it will be no time at all before some MP gets entrapped by one of these things... the question on the table is really who is in charge there now and where does power flow from?
This should be a helpful - it's a list of politician speeches when the bill was debated in parliament.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary%20Business/Bills%20Legi...
For non-Australians, politicians with (LP) or (LNP) belong to the party in government.
For example, speech by government party member: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansardr...
Speech from opposition party (that still supported the bill):https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansards...
Speech from a third party: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansards...
"From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be given new freedoms.
Residents of hotspots can leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour, while people in other areas can meet five others outdoors."
Wow, that's Orwellian to say the least.
Freedom is never granted, it is earned.
In Auckland (NZ) we are in probably some of the strictest lockdown conditions in the world, with schools and non-essential business closed, travel only permitted for exercise in a local area or visit to the supermarket, and mandatory isolation and testing for close contacts. Lockdowns are still viable here because we have been so vigilant and basically everyone understands the shared responsibility. That's how we earn that freedom.
Have they?
https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-nsw-restrictio...
You might not be as restricted but large parts of your own country are off limits to you, oh and also the rest of the entire planet.
> ... oh and also the rest of the entire planet.
That wasn't what this thread was about but yes I am aware.
Its a tale of two opposing extremes.
This virus is with humanity forever now.
Let's hope the right choice is made with the least amount of time. The only proactive thing a government can do is vaccinate and increase medical capacity.
Here's the bill under discussion [1] :
This article states that it brings in new warrants, and makes no mention of "without a judge's warrant" [2].
Perhaps the original article is keying off of:
"(aab) to establish procedures for certain law enforcement officers of the Australian Federal Police or the Australian Crime Commission to obtain warrants and emergency authorisations" [3]
"emergency authorisations" would appear to not require a warrant, but it does include language of "it is not practicable in the circumstances to apply for a <warrant>" [4]
However, I'm not Australian, and definitely not a lawyer.
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
[2] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/even-hacking-field-gove...
[3] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
[4] https://pinpoint.cch.com.au/360document/legauUio1949041sl318...
The current one is a blog post from an email provider company, not a journalistic entity.
It has unnecessary hyperbole ("End of Human Rights"), and has a clear conflict of interest given that they provide secure email services and one of their main competitors (FastMail) is Australian. (though I do share their concerns)
I find @jpollock's links a good replacement.
While I agree that this seems like a massive overstep. The actual body seems similar to the FISA court in the US. There wasn’t any detail in the article but I would hope there is a massive audit trail on the ability to modify data or impersonate someone online.
Anyone have any additional details on the AAT’s effect on the average Australian citizen?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Appeals_Tribuna...
Australia's powers-that-be seem to be promoting a chilling effect on any revelations that may cause negative publicity about said powers-that-be.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/10/witne...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-29/prosecutors-proceed-c...
This is your daily reminder that FISA was originally created as a way to provide oversight for intelligence agencies after things like MK Ultra and COINTELPRO. Instead it became a rubber stamp legitimizing their actions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_court
You want a wise, just dictator for life, and maybe you luck out and get one who reigns beneficently for a few decades, but who's to say their successor will be as good, or the next one, and on and on until you inevitably get a Stalin.
Put another way: if the leader dies, and heir A spends all their effort on ruling effectively, and heir B spends all their effort on beating heir A to the throne, how can heir A succeed? You'd need metrics for being a good ruler which are immune to Goodhart's Law.
Given that—over time—power inevitably centralizes and inevitably is abused, those tendencies must be counterbalanced; or else power must be regularly reset by more crude means.
We need more people to challenge their view of reality, and accept that things may not be as happy and comfortable as we want them to be for the security of our futures and our children's futures.
And no, I don't mean "global warming is destroying the ability for life to live" wise, I mean in terms of how much our politicians and public servants are truly serving us at this point. Voting for lifelong politicians more or less got us here, the red pill is accepting that these people may have always had more sinister plans in mind than we thought.
So "Take the redpill" is (in this case) a statement about taking a different path with politics (politicians) .
Vote with your feet. Divest out of Australia.
Make sure there's a brain drain out of the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
disclaimer: I distance myself from the groups currently associated with these schools of thought. I also think the English version of this article is lacks scientific savoir faire.
The gender inequality part is empirically and historically wrong.
edit: To be honest the whole article is trash, better read it here (Psychological theory):
Serfs did it in the past when feudalism become to harsh and moved to the cities to make a living. Europeans did it when life became to harsh in Europe and moved to the Americas.
I say this a little tongue in cheek, but it's a real problem I've yet to understand -- how can an outlier intelligent person thrive in a system that caters to the masses? The masses have an incentive to drain any marginal value out of the intelligent, and have the political power to do so.
Edit: @majormajor sorry HN wont let me reply. The reason would be because the bottom 51% have something to gain from extraction. The top 51% however are already superior and dont need to rely on extraction to fulfill their wants/needs.
51% might have been too broad a number, but do you get my drift? Those in the lower intelligence brackets have a lot to gain, but those in the upper intelligence brackets do not have a lot to gain
51 + 51 = 102%
The bottom 51% have more influence than the top 49% because one is a majority. There is your answer.
As an aside, if you look at the elected representatives of Australia, I suspect you'll find most of them are highly educated.
Outside the US, countries after WW1/2 opted for democracies instead of republics with strong foundations. We're witnessing the point of failure due to the exact issues outlined in those papers.
It's very non-obvious to me why there's a natural "coalition of the bottom" versus that just being one possible way for things to shake out.
(It's also worth noting that the original American system already suffered a MASSIVE failure of the state - coincidentally also around the hundred year mark - which makes me think maybe they didn't have things perfectly figured out anyway. It hurts the credibility of the appeal to tradition/authority.)
What crisis are you talking about specifically? The closest they came to failure was definitely the civil war. Most people would put that as a crisis of absolutely irreconcilable moral differences rather than of normal politics. No political system ever devised could solve that problem without violence or complete separation.
The civil war sure seems like a bigger failure of a state than anything we've seen in Western Europe since the world wars. The "irreconcilable moral difference" was known when the constitution was being created, so punting on it is a pretty giant red flag to me about the ultimate wisdom of the founders, and about the constitution as something we should revere - we should change it constantly as situations change.
Of course, at the time this almost exclusively meant wealthy white men - which is obviously a terrible way to run a voting system.
The converse of this is the "bread and circuses" problem with Democracy. This was supposed to be mitigated by the "House of Lords" equivalent in the U.S. - The Senate.
The Senate was supposed to have been a buffer that protected against popular vote because they were assigned by the state legislature. They were beholden to the welfare of the state, not to direct-democracy political campaigning and all its ills.
Personally, I think its time to re-evaluate the 17th amendment to see if it had the desired effect, or resulted in massive unintended consequences.
Time to sell AAAU etf, you can't trust a bank if the gov't is corrupt.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/20/banki...
On that one, at least, the politicians were too spineless to take a stand.
How many times has this theory been cheated in the last thousand years?
the answer is, a lot
Just like Cuba and Eastern Europe when the USSR was still around. Wonder why.
Previously living overseas was an automatic exemption to the exit ban, but now this must be applied for with proof of overseas residence.
As Australian bureaucracy is barely up to the task of organising a chook raffle this is pretty scary. The news articles I've seen give me the impression that the application process is a bit of a dice roll as to whether you get it or not with people re-applying dozens of times over months and no transparency on why their exit permits are rejected. Whether it will be this hard for overseas resident Australians to escape home remains to be seen.
As a way of discouraging Aussies abroad from popping back in for a family funeral or holiday and clogging up the quarantine system it seems a rather effective deterrent (stay awhile, stay forever!) but the minister responsible reckons that's not the motivation for the rule, so you have to wonder what they're thinking.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/government-defends-ne...
I'd really like to know what they have to say about this.
And no I’m not self hosting.
I’ve been sufficiently satisfied with their service. Sometimes emails take a bit of time to receive, like 10 or so minutes. That’s about it.
Privately (Runbox is my employer's provider) I run my own server and desktop notifications of new mail are often faster than the page loads where it was triggered. Maybe I'm spoiled.
https://kb.mailbox.org/display/MBOKBEN/Customizing+your+mail...
``` Hi,
Thank you for contacting Fastmail support.
I’ve escalated your ticket to our privacy team, who is best suited to assist with this issue. You can expect to receive an update in approximately two business days.
I thank you for your patience as we work to get this addressed for you.
Sincerely, ** ```
```
I have heard back from our privacy team and I’d love to share their responce to your query:
Thanks for reaching out to us about the recent bill in Australia. We love that our customers care about their digital rights and want to find out more about how companies are looking after their information.
Your data is held in datacentres in the US, but we require all requests for access to customer content to be served through Australia where our company is headquartered.
The police can't intercept, access or modify your messages without us receiving a warrant, and we take our duty of care seriously. Fastmail responds to well formed warrants only and challenges requests for access that are inappropriate, either in scope (not adequately targeted), or depth (asking for information that seems out of proportion to what's being investigated). We will continue to do so, for any legislation that applies to us both now and in the future.
The new bill still doesn't allow 'trawling' for suspicious data: they can't request access to a wide variety of accounts hoping they'll come across something of interest. They need to have a particular account under suspicion and something that gives them grounds for that suspicion, and the offence in question needs to be suitably severe to be worth the intrusion.
Where we are permitted under a warrant, we will notify the accountholder of the access request, and due to our existing measures to help customers stay aware of any hackers compromising their account, police can't also enter your account without leaving evidence you can see.
What this means for you: Fastmail remains a privacy-first provider. We will comply with our legislated duties, while taking care to ensure that we do not act unless compelled by law and that all legislated preconditions have been properly satisfied. Your data remains under your control and you can rest comfortably knowing that your account won't get caught up in a surveillance net.
Please let me know if you have any other questions. Sincerely,
```
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
You're probably right. Although seeing it in context, those news coming from Australia suggest a very slippery slope where "There is still ..." might not be true sometime soon. On the one hand it could be negativity bias, on the other hand there's also the fear Australia is being used as an experiment and the rest of the Five Eyes will follow suit.
It seems to me that Australia is lagging behind more than being an experiment, considering they're still talking about encryption laws etc. But perhaps the US is as well?
[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joi...
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
[2] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
[3] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
[4] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
On the other hand, I don't think you can draw your conclusion from those two examples. Also, other than the cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, Switzerland isn't really a direct democracy, semi-direct at best. You'll notice they have representatives in a federal structure, despite having mechanisms for some direct democracy, and that's not for nothing.
The government will ignore a lot of things for a pretty long time as long as you're building, doing stuff and paying taxes.
But an independent country? Maybe on a bunch of ships in international waters.
Otherwise you'll quickly find yourself with a small army at your "borders".
Too many people these days, soldiers, guns and ammunition are cheap and all land is taken.
Really really hard. You have only a few choices and they're all terrible. First one is revolution, see history for how that tends to go. Second is conquest and then colonization followed by eventual independence, again see history for how much this sucks for your stated aims. Seasteading might work but if you develop and build the stuff to make it work you're unlikely to get any acknowledgement of your statehood from any other nation but might get attacked by them [1]. The last option is outer space somewhere and self-sufficient space colonies are still science fiction and once they're not the early pioneers are going to die a lot and their living situation is going to be awful.
1: https://reason.com/2019/10/14/how-two-seasteaders-wound-up-m...
Your next hurdle is getting a police / army force as police can take over your city if they are not faithful to you. Since you can't protect your island, you'll need some diplomatic deal with a bigger country (USA, France, China, etc...) to pledge for your protection. Gotta pay them somehow for that kind of protection.
Don't be deluded. There are no dictators out there, but representations of the current forces and powers. At some duration in the timeline of this earth, the powers and forces enabled the creation of democratic nations with generous freedoms afforded to its citizens. Of course this would change as these powers and forces shift.
Australia is a de-facto military dictatorship given that it is a resource-export-oriented nation. The forces at the time (being part of the Common Wealth and an ally to the US) has made it a democratic and free country.
A majority of the US supported the War on Terror. That was manufactured consent with thanks to the corporate press. It was only the outliers that protested from the beginning, only proven correct after 20 years, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted in Afghanistan.
Now that this has ended, be on alert for the next campaign of fear that will be used to erode freedom and increase the surveillance state. Australia is a look at the near future of western "democracy" if they are successful.
What terrifies me is that HN community continues to double-down anything but mainstream and conformity. This is in direct relation to larger societal trends that you're highliting. Even the slightest neutral stance will get you downvoted.
If no one on HN is doing the legwork for raising concerns, who will?
Every platform is likely to eventually reflect the most common forms of groupthink from the culture. The reason I love HN is that I regularly see counter points and good perspective here that I simply don’t see anywhere else.
John Adams said, "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy."
In the past, democracy was viewed as a form of government that republics devolved into.
If we are on topic of exchanging opinions of famous men, I think Machiavelli said that the people can be misled and go astray but are not prevented by pride from correcting themselves, like rulers would.
The age of their regime has nothing to do with their history of practicing direct democracy, that happened well after the founding of the US.
> This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it.
On the contrary, I'm just defending the wisdom of the existing constitutional republic framework that we have currently. There's obvious value in constitutional safeguards against the whims of the mob, while still giving the citizenry a say in the long-term direction of the state.
Stability of dictatorships is a "trains run on time" style Big Lie.
I've heard people saying that Australia is used as a test-bed for government policy. I've also heard the creep of China could be the cause of this trend.
I've seen how quickly a functioning country can dissolve (Syria, Ukraine, Hong Kong). Just how concerned should we be about this? And apart from voting, is there any kind of action that can be taken?
> The two Australian law enforcement bodies AFP and ACIC will soon have the power to modify, add, copy, or delete your data should you become a suspect in the investigation of a serious crime.
How would one prove the bodies didnt add/modify incriminating items? in the US that would be nigh impossible to argue against as the system implicitly trusts police testimony over accused
States almost-by-definition have total power should they wish to exercise it.
Western states generally have limited their exercise of power, and they have structured themselves to make it difficult for one government to obtain and exercise total power. That is now changing.
And it brings up amazing cases where the system is definitely not limiting it's powers and it's leading to false convictions.
Here's a youtube of more or less the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FENubmZGj8
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30532856-you-have-the-ri...
EDIT: errm actually that YT video is actually a little scant on details. The TLDR is say nothing except make an absolute demand for your 6th amendment rights (a lawyer). And don't be soft about it like "maybe I can get a lawyer?" ... say "I have a right to a lawyer and will not answer anything without first speaking to my lawyer"
People might be thinking "I thought it was the 5th ?" Ironically , the same conservatives that have been trumpeting the 2nd have concurrently been undermining the 5th and now can be used against you as evidence of guilt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
I think he wrote that book in part because he was frustrated by the lack of nuance in his presentation and the fact that it sort of "went viral". 13 million views for a lecture about law is pretty astonishing.
Professor Duane has a video on that topic.
Just out of curiosity - are you possibly confusing civil vs. criminal cases? The 5th amendment does apply in civil cases to the extent that you cannot be compelled to testify - but a judge can interpret your lack of response in a negative light in a civil setting. This differs from criminal cases where the lack of testimony is not admissible nor can it be considered in determination or sentencing.
Just thought I'd help clarify where I was coming from. That trial does seem to fit the scenario though.
But in the real world, unfortunately, you are absolutely correct. Even the idea that there are only a short list of things that a government can do is a foreign concept to most folks.
Correction: there is no legal defense.
There are other defenses, historically.
Indeed. Revolution, rebellion. None of these *have* to be violent per se. The Pax French have handled massive changes in gov without armed conflict in the 20th Century (not counting WWII and Nazis occupation.) It will be very interesting to see how well their democracy will counter this.
In Europe for example, complacent with the police taking away the homeless, complacent with the laws slowly eroding everyone's freedoms, complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people.
It's the same old tired trope of "first they came for X, and I didn't speak out". In the end there will be no one to speak for the majority, either.
We have it coming and we'll get it.
Odd choice of topics to be outraged about.
Canada may have better outcomes on average, because it picks up the very bottom (imagine how easy it is to help the bottom quartile of health). But I think it also drops the ball on people who are proactively trying to optimize their health because then the answer becomes "Not indicated, you're not sick enough for us to care", and then it's outright illegal to say "fine I'll pay out of pocket for the care!" (save for going international)
So it is anyway about trust - and how to check reliable, if they deserve trust.
This is how I would choose, which places to visit.
Australia is still quite good on that list, as cases where the police officers for example - are the ones doing the kidnapping and ransoming and investigation about it all by themself, like it is common in other places - are still quite rare.
My experience with australian police officers are a friendly warning for me, for ignoring a red light while at foot. And a asshole police officer stopping and handing out a hefty fine for us, for not "deadstopping" at a stop sign at a empty roadcrossing at night - explicitely, because we were driving a backpackers car and not a local one (he said so)
So all in all, I would probably visit again.
Yeah, they do, but that's illegal and NOT encoded in law
So Aus has just made police tampering legal
What is allowed here, is hacking for the police. That necessarily can include changing files on the target computers (e.g. deleting logs) - this is the way I read this. And I would see the point in it - if it really only get applied in serious crimes like terrorism to catch the whole network for example. (back to trust)
But yes, it maybe makes it more easy to tamper undetected with evidence in sneaky ways, but not if for example you would log the hacking activities by default of the police. In fact, I strongly believe that this should be done, but doubt, it will be.
> What is allowed here, is hacking for the police. That necessarily can include changing files on the target computers (e.g. deleting logs)
How is this not tampering with evidence?
When there is an email on the computer that will be used as a proof - then why is this been tampered with, if just a system log was altered?
Courts are usually very strict to only allow "clean" evidence. Cases have been thrown totally over, because of a minor fuckup of police. It is all a question of how it is implemented and used. And sure, it is a very extreme thing and sadly the use case "only for serious crime" is in danger of soon to be applied to allmost anything.
Don't worry, they won't let you in anyway.
Won't even let their own people in (or out) at the minute.
EDIT: since I can't directly reply - the article linked below directly contradicts the URL on the HN post - it clearly states that warrants would be needed. It is also political hyperbole and contains very few details about the actual bill. I recommend scrolling down to jpollock's response for credible sources.
Since when is it legal in any democracy that the police can temper (modify, add) or delete proof? That's just beyond my understanding.
But strong judiciary and executive (and strong borders between them) is a core understanding in every real democracy.
If the executive OR the judiciary can do everything (or are completely intermingled) you have no democracy but a "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Anyways, the Fourth Amendment says nothing about alterations by LEAs to seized documents. That hadn't been invented yet, I guess, back in 1789. Though arguably Due Process requires a well-behaved justice system that wouldn't do that.
It was designed to help fight « hate speech ».
It enable police to remove literally ANY content from the interne t as long as it was « hateful » of course there is no legal definition of hateful.
I think similar laws have been passed in Belgium and Germany.
I find it funny that has economic growth from the post war era is slowing down and climate change is accelerating our fundamentals rights and freedom are slowly being taken away from us ,bits by bits with more or less the same laws everywhere.
Very strange.
They do carry the same weight.
They are both useless.
Standing around holding signs and marching and chanting has never been effective.
Having the crowds filmed and broadcast, on the other hand, is effective. If the media isn’t making a story out of it, it means nothing.
In the 60s and 70s people began to believe marching and protesting en mass was effective. But, it was only effective because the media, for their own reasons and agendas, decided to broadcast the Freedom Marches and anti-war marches and all the rest.
I don’t believe that prior to the 60s, anyone would have considered milling around in front of govt buildings effective at all. To be sure, having mobs tearing down the buildings was effective and happened frequently.
You could assemble a million protestors in DC and, if it’s not shown in CNN, you might as well have stayed home.
That's what the founding fathers did, ironically. Didn't work either.
Also protests have been heavily repressed during Macron, it's becoming scary to actually go sometimes.
I don't keep up with all the protests but it's a far more active middle finger against infringement than most countries where we sit around and watch our liberties erode away in the name of progress and security.
That erosion is really all a front in the US for increasing power of already concentrated power and we sit back idle and watch it happen as we struggle to stay afloat in a set of abstract rules we must follow to survive.
When I see France, I at least feel like your citizens haven't given up and are still trying to fight for their rights. How effective it is is another thing, but at least there's some will left. In the US we just bend over and say, "oh boy, this again..." We seem to have already given up the fight, are unaware, and/or simply don't care anymore. I'll take an ineffective attempt at retaining rights over complacency any day. It's not like we have more clever strategies that are more effective, we just don't participate at large, period.
I don't care, it's the spirit that counts.
> Also protests have been heavily repressed during Macron, it's becoming scary to actually go sometimes.
You helped us during our revolution. Maybe it's time to become state #51?
I don't know about the French. For the most part, they protest for the wrong reason.
https://truthout.org/articles/how-hate-crimes-against-police...
Offenses Against Police Could Be Hate Crime
https://www.post-journal.com/news/page-one/2020/09/offenses-...
If you squint enough, lése-majesté starts to look like hate crime legislation. Paul Kagame maintains his dictatorship on a foundation of hate speech and genocide denial accusations.
When the enemy is an abstraction like "hate" there's no way to create a bright line between it and "disagreement" or "opposition." Are you publicly condemning a politician's behavior, or are you inciting hate against him?
'Data disruption warrant: gives the police the ability to "disrupt data" by modifying, copying, adding, or deleting it.'
What does it really mean? Can they now legally change what website says to me? Intercept and change what signal message says?
I am genuinely trying to understand what functionality hides behind this broad language.
if you start from a place without reception, doubly so.
The issue comes in when the justice system is not providing correct oversight for this capability. That is wrong and should be vigorously opposed. The capabilities themselves I have no problem with.
I’m playing devil’s advocate, and am interested in a stance arrived at reasonably.
Warranted, targeted surveillance is less bad than surveilling everyone to see if they are committing crimes, which less bad than recording what everyone did so they can be charged with crimes retroactively, which is less bad than charging people for crimes they're only predicted to commit.
Sure. Wire-tapping has been a thing almost as long as phones themselves. With a warrant, it is best that the police should be able to surveil your phone calls.
> Ring camera
With a warrant? Absolutely.
Is it? Any government could make $thing illegal tomorrow. Anyone associated with $thing could then be watched and imprisoned. With judicial oversight.
Some possible values from $thing taken from history: being gay, (not) being christian, being a pacifist, being poor/homeless
The above have all been persecuted in the past. Sometimes in the present. All quite legally. With judicial oversight. With political (and often popular) support.
Edit: formatting, HN doesn't seem to like lists
The fact that the majority has often historically been in the wrong doesn't mean that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of enforcement of the laws: Anarchy is not preferable to a well ordered peaceful society.
This capability is currently very much lacking. We (by which I broadly mean western countries in general) are seeing less and less government transparency. Trade deals are brokered in secret, surveillance bills are rushed through parliaments, terrorism and child abuse are being used as blanket excuses for pretty much everything. Journalists get less and less access. In some countries (Italy comes to mind) there are very strong ties between the government and the media.
And sure, we have some form of representative democracy, but it seems like governments in many cases don't represent their people, but rather their own interests. The people are often unaware of what their governments get up to (various atrocities in the Middle East come to mind). By the time the next election comes up, the damage is already done, with zero accountability.
Long story short: it's good for governments to be able to enforce laws that benefit (all? most?) people, but the people need to be able to stick it to the government if need be. And with all this government surveillance, that's become virtually impossible.
Okay, but if a government wasn’t legally allowed to surveil you, they could change the law tomorrow so that they could legally surveil you. I’m not sure what this mode of argument really shows.
Besides which, the state has done just fine without such invasive measures before. Even with perfect oversight, the goals themselves can still be horribly corrupt, and no one should consider it "correct" to go about enforcing clearly immoral laws.
I did not confuse anything. You may be confused about what I mean, and if so, I'm sorry for any unclear communication on my part that led to that state of affairs. Feel free to ask for clarification of my position if you're curious.
> Besides which, the state has done just fine without such invasive measures before.
That is not obviously true to me. For most of the period of time during which the people have had the capability to communicate remotely, the state has also had the capability to surveil that communication when warranted. And it seems plausible to me that the lack of that capability before permitted much criminality that since has been prevented.
This is only the legal framework, I doubt they can surveil your traffic without getting physical access to your devices.
If that doesn’t highlight their true aims, I don’t know what else does.
Do we think that a problem persists even when it has become less frequent? Levari et al. show experimentally that when the “signal” a person is searching for becomes rare, the person naturally responds by broadening his or her definition of the signal—and therefore continues to find it even when it is not there.
Incidentally, it’s really hard to counter this reasoning, no matter what subject it is applied to. The truth is, we don’t know what crime would have done without such a system in place. It may have dropped even further. It’s the typical causation / correlation confusion.
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2016/12/australias-enemies-looking-w...
It would be much easier to occupy a foreign territory if all of this intel were available as you roll in. Makes one wonder...
We have fewer cultural roots so it makes the above process faster.
Versions of all of those things exist, but not in the way you describe them.
So "not allowed to leave for any reason" is hyperbole. It has a grain of truth but like the other things on your list is a gross exaggeration.
It's almost as if you shouldn't take everything you read online at face value
We can leave for business, compassionate grounds, medical reasons etc etc. The line that we cannot "for any reason" is being pushed by people with an agenda and a particular interest in politicising a public health crisis just like all the other exaggerations you have parroted here.
I'm sorry you refuse to see that and in fact choose to participate. I'm not saying this is you, but the hilarious thing about the "free thinkers" on the pandemic is that they refuse to even entertain the possibility that they might be being used as pawns to peddle misinformation while accusing the rest of the world of being just that.
Makes me really consider the information I was told about FM.
They seem to follow the same idea. Purportedly they are being passed to stop crime or at least aid the investigation of suspected criminals.
The other set of laws are purportedly meant to stop the spread of infectious disease.
But the laws are clearly not well balanced in terms of privacy rights and personal freedom.
There is also this ominous synchronization between government and trans-national bodies such as the WHO with major technology firms; having the latter act as uncritical propaganda arms of the former - no matter the evidence or reasons for doubt.
Rather than discussion and reasoning, there is this flow of labels thrown around at dissenters, regardless of who they are and what they say.
If they critique transwomen competing with women they are called transphobic and accused of hate speech.
If they prefer not to take a vaccine shot and/or critique lockdowns and restrictions; they are called anti-vaxxers and accused of spreading misinformation.
All of this points in the direction of tyranny and totalitarianism. All we can do is vote with our feet.
not looking good.