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Comment by chroem- | Hacker News Reader

I'm not clear on what GP's connection to vaccinations is, but for what it's worth, Australia has recently implemented some very authoritarian covid policies despite it being sparsely populated. People are only allowed to leave their homes for two hours a day and everyone is required to take pictures of themselves inside their homes at regular intervals to prove their location to the police. Violators are being shot with rubber bullets, and yet despite the severity of these measures, the total number of deaths in each state can be counted on your fingers.

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There are some half-truths in there, but otherwise what you're saying is misleading.

For example, there is a (quite small) trial of facial recognition for home quarantine of international travelers. Now that's a topic worthy of discussion - But it's an extraordinary leap to say everyone is taking pictures of themselves (i.e that's just not true at all).

It's similar for most of your assertions.

There have been quite a number of strict rules in different parts of Australia at different times. Most are now being wound back in line with vaccination rates.

It looks like you are correct that the surveillance app is limited to anyone who has crossed state or national borders in the last two weeks. That being said, the Australian government has not relinquished its emergency powers, and is instead pushing for additional powers such as mandatory internet ID.

everyone is required to take pictures of themselves inside their homes at regular intervals

That is... bizarre. Very bizarre. Do you have a link to read more?

An overview: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

Allowing people to leave their house for up to an hour of exercise: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58277503

Firing on protesters: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/21/victo...

"violators" aren't being shot with rubber bullets. Nazi fuckwits are being shot with rubber bullets after being given hours to leave their violent protests of their own free will before attacking police with projectiles and charging at them.

I watched the entire thing live, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The Guardian also did an expose on the instigators of those protests are accessed a group chat where the organisers were discussing how to slowly introduce the "Jewish question" to the crowd they'd managed to rile up.

They're trade unionists. Not exactly the type of people I would put at the top of my suspected "nazi fuckwits" list.

Well, perhaps they need to move up your list now.

The "anti-lockdown protests" have consistently attracted some very unpleasant kooks, cranks and opportunists, from the "5g mind control" lot to the "international banker conspiracy" lot. It's omni-nutty. Piers Corbyn is a regular at the UK ones. In the US, I am sure that all roads lead to QAnon and their anti-Semitic totalising conspiracy theory. The intensity and nature of crankery is shifting.

I'm sure all those "kooks, cranks and opportunists" had breakfast, too. Should we start calling French toast a conspiracy? Last year when people (in the US) were protesting, violent protests were called "mostly peaceful" because it was claimed that there was a peaceful majority and an opportunistic minority. Why be so eager to do the opposite now and taint the majority with the odd few?

In other words, someone off the rails agreeing with a large group on one issue doesn't mean the whole group is off the rails.

This is specifically why, in the case of these exact protests, the police gave the crowd ample opportunity to leave the area without being arrested, around 5pm, after allowing them to protest peacefully the entire day.

Half the crowd left, then the remaining crowd pumped themselves up and attacked the police after being peaceful the entire day.

Seems to me like the reasonable ones left and the remainders were assholes. The extremists were the ones being shot with rubber bullets. Anyone that wasn't an extremist and still got shot is an idiot, they had every opportunity to voice their opinion peacefully.

But all I hear from the fucking yanks on HN is them projecting their own politics onto what's happening over here. There's so much misinformation in threads like these and everyone laps it up like idiots. Like I said before, I watched the entire day live on my second monitor, from livestreams run by the protestors themselves. I got their viewpoint, which shows clearly what happened. Whereas the people trying to argue against policy brutality here are doing so with Fox News rhetoric, not with facts.

We need more eyes on the police, at all times. But we need that scrutiny to come with facts. I have no love for Victoria Police, but I'm sick of them and our liberal (small L) government being the focal point of a debate half way across the world that completely misses the mark. HN seems like it skews left on privacy and surveillance issues, but because of it's American focus, the people here just spew dangerous rhetoric that risks cutting the head off the lesser evil, when we have an ultra conservative federal government pushing the most authoritarian tech surveillance laws in the western world. They're on opposite sides here. As long as there's no realistic chance of getting the average person to vote for a third party, if it's all the same, I'd prefer if you all stop letting an American media invasion turn us into the 4th fucking reich.

> someone off the rails agreeing with a large group on one issue doesn't mean the whole group is off the rails.

No, it means that the "nazi fuckwits" and "off the rails people" are _recruiting_ and doing so where the audience is worked up and receptive to their radicalisation.

What should we expect when we are pushing any disagreement whatsoever out of the mainstream? I was vaccinated the day I was able to be, but if I started browbeating everyone else around me who was slower, they'd just cut off contact and start associating with people who weren't total jerks to them.

If the only ones who are listening to the disagreeing moderates are radicals, we should expect an increase in radicalization.

Are you saying that it's the fault of the groups not directly present, we can blame the moderates who aren't there?

You'll either eject the cranks or become them. The (possibly apocryphal) tale is "As we say in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis."

This dynamic has happened many many times on the left, with the far left cranks.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australias-two-la...

From what I can garner, there are such systems on trial, though as of Sept 16 the trials were on a voluntary basis.

Why would you run trials of this Big Brother system if you weren’t considering making it mandatory?

There are facts and there is my personal opinion. Personally I find this technology extremely worrisome and there is a good chance they will make it mandatory before long.

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