Australian senate passes controversial anti-piracy, website-blocking laws
smh.com.au
smh.com.au
Surveillance, website blocking ... And not to forget the new definition of "asylum", where refugees are kept against their will in camps, "unfit for human habitation". One former government psychiatrist called it "torture". Including, of course, children.
But the system works reasonably well. I mean, why flee to Australia from political persecution, when Australian refugee camps are worse than most cases of political persecution?
No, all that applies, it's just the current government thinks it can ignore it.
It's only in the US that "liberal" came to mean "socially progressive" for some reason, and only relatively recently (i.e. at least post-LBJ, I would say, if not later).
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-and-r...
P.S. Australian politics is dumb.
First thing to understand is that the Australian constitution is more about the formation and rights of the Government and less about personal rights as many Americans come to expect from their own. Australia is very strict about its obligations to its constitution, and issues like the roll-out of a single Goods and Service Tax (the GST) and the Tasmanian Dam Case which both had issues regarding the separation of powers and were heavily debated.
Nothing in the Australian constitution or any foreign treaty Australian is a signature of prevents Australia from passing this law. The Constitution of Australia grants the Federal government power to legislate in this matter. The law was passed with votes in the house from both of the major parties.
To be fair, your mention of Australia's refugee obligations and how it has handles it now and in the past is of no concern to this matter. There is very little reason to discuss that issue (even though it is worthy of being discussed) other than to paint the Australian Government as more villainous than an Australian might fairly say.
I brought the asylum issue up because I find this a much more extreme and urgent example of a human rights issue than to restrict free speech to a very low degree.
Here in Australia, we're already restricted from discussing certain aspects of voluntary euthanasia because it upsets the fundies.
I fully agree, that free speech in general is very important, though.
In American, it seems like many of us think modern medicine will cure most disease, or we fall victim to rhetoric like "death squads".
The reality is when that time comes, and modern medicine gives gives up; we are sent home to die. Oh yes, a bureaucratic nonprofit steps in and finally the aganoizing patient is given opioids, and benzodiazepines. The problem is the Palliative Care is hit, or miss. The doctor never seems to come around and read adjust medication levels, and the nurses--well they try.
My father died of liver cancer. He had a tumor the size of a football in his abdomen(by the way, he had a tumor for at least 15 years. I don't know when it turned cancerous, but all professionals overlooked the bulge in his upper right quadrant. Not one professional palpated his abdomen--I guess they don't do that anymore? And he had good insurance?
Well, finally one doctor promised to save his life, but reneged after further review, the hospital then sent him home. He was miserable all summer. The medications never quite took away the pain. It didn't help that the Hospice doctors weren't increasing dosages.(I looked at the dose of morphine, and I was tempted to buy smack off the streets, but he was just too conservative to break the law. My greedy, manipulative sister played around with his medication so she could talk him into giving her more wealth.(She is already extremely wealthy). The nurses, when told, looked the other way. My retched sister told the nurses, 'I want him to spend quality time with his grandkids'. My father couldn't stand kids, and barely put up with his own.
My father gradually went from 190 lbs to 65 lbs, and was beyond miserably for weeks. His last words to me were, "Son when will it end?"
He went into a semi coma and eventually died. He was blue. He would wake up from bad dreams and scream. He was in hell!
Sorry to unload, but we need to know just how terrible death can be. There's nothing sacred, natural, or peaceful about it. We need a passionate way to end life when that day comes.
I don't go a day without thinking about my father's agony. My father was a mean, nasty person, but they pain he went through was so disturbing; I can't get the horrid ordeal out of my life. It's been nine years, and I'm still not over it.
Maybe, this is not the time to talk about this problem? I got sidetracked by a comment before me--sorry.
My wife's father died a similar way, as did my grandfather. It pisses me off to a great degree that, as a society, we aren't willing to discuss the matter of dying with dignity. It's not like it's a new idea - the Roman Stoics did.
In many ways, our society seems infantilised in comparison.
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/how-are-human-rights-protecte...
The US constantly talks about it's constitution, in pretty much every media channel available. It doesn't mean that the US doesn't engage in surveillance or torturing detainees. The US has done some horrific treatment of detainees - and if you include regular prisoners in the term 'detainees' (since they are), then Australia pales in comparison to the US treatment.
It's puzzling as to why people think that constitutional law is somehow magic.
For me, there is a world of difference between mistreating a relatively low number of terror suspects - and regretting it after a few years - and detaining innocent civilians, including children, without trial.
No behavior of the United States should dictate what Australia should allow itself to do. A state that treats people in that way will not be called a true democracy by me, though.
The US government has all these things, except perhaps the 'regretting' part.
The US prison system is stupid, no doubt. But even the worst prisons in the US are much better than what Australia is forcing refugees to endure. With the small difference that the US prison system doesn't have a 100% rate of non-convicted detainees, unless Australia's refugee detention.
You... honestly believed that I was suggesting literal magic, rather than just using a colourful word for special?
Anyway, I'm not forgiving Australia's actions on asylum seekers by comparing to US actions. I'm stating that "constitution" law does not prevent abuses. You say that there is a relatively small number of terror suspects? There is also a relatively small number of asylum seekers in offshore detention. However, the three million domestic US prisoners generally have terrible conditions. Where is the constitution protecting them? What about the police armed with military equipment that refer to civilians as 'the enemy' and have a problem with shooting black people? The constitution isn't providing much protection there.
Where did the US constitution protect over a million dead Vietnamese from a US puppet war?
Where did the US constitution protect several hundred thousand dead Iraqis from a war of US military adventurism?
My point is not to make a laundry list of US misdeeds, but to point out that there is nothing special when it comes to human rights and a document called "the constitution", and it seems the US talks about its constitution more than everyone else combined.
Just to reiterate, constitutional law is just law that's harder to change. It can be changed. The US Bill Of Rights is explicitly a list of changes to the constitution. Governments can restrict themselves further without a constitution - the UK has plenty of human rights legislation without a document called "the constitution". Likewise you can be signatories to treaties that restrict your government without making constitutional amendments or making domestic law.
On the other points:
> will not be called a true democracy by me
'True democracies' don't prevent abuses either. Democracies have a history of all sorts of abuse - apart from modern states, we can point to slavery-era US slaughtering its way across the continent, empire-building England, all the way back to the ancient Greek democracies like Athens... who kept slaves. And if it's claimed that these states aren't 'true democracies' as a result, then that's pretty much a textbook example of the "No True Scotsman" argument. 'Democracy' is not a synonym for 'egalitarian utopia'.
> detaining innocent civilians, including children, without trial.
You are aware that there were untried detainees in Guantanamo, yes? And if they're untried, you can't just claim them guilty-by-default.
> and regretting it after a few years
Give me a break. This is simply flat-out apologism. And just like the Australian people with offshore detention, the US people with suspects in Guantanamo Bay were split amongst those people who were angry, those people who were glad (some openly), and those people who don't care.
Our PM was recently waffling about not wanting to take particular cases (stripping Australian citizenship from dual citizenship holders who fight for IS) to court, because of the risk that the court might not agree with the request to strip citizenship.
Said PM displays a shocking lack of regard for the rule of law, and that approach is pretty much mirrored all the way down to the local Government level.
It's not a new idea at all. Here's a separate example.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-c...
You really really need to read a little more mainstream media (with a sceptical eye obviously). In the UK this has been debated for years now - and when one gets a new internet connection one has to (theoretically) decide whether to opt in or opt out of porn.
The important note here is that the blocking isn't done by the Government, as you might expect by those concerned about censorship, but through individual hearings to hear the impact and whether blocking the site would be a proportionate response in the circumstances (blocking an entire VPN provider might be disproportionate response for example)
Also it applies to foreign-hosted sites only, since running a hosting provider in Australian is already tenuous given we do not have anything similar to the US' safe-harbour provision. If you ran a torrenting site in Australia, there are already other laws which you can be tried under well before your site is blocked.
A explanatory memorandum was issued which has a lot of insight to the effects of the law. Check for the ID "legislation/ems/r5446_ems_1599ec23-c036-4dee-9562-a8a2e4d3d6fe".
[0] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/courts...
And then the politicians got voted out.
If you knew Australians (remember, we have compulsory voting) you would know that there is no hope in the ballot box. The sheer size of the bogan [1] voting block will make sure that any election will go to whichever party cracks down hardest on dole bludgers/boat people/sex workers/terrorists/dual citizens/Internet pirates/etc.
At the end of the day, as they say, we get the government we deserve.
I guess eventually everyone in Oz will be only allowed to visit abc.com.au and then be programmed to blame poor people or immigrants for everything
ur right tho. this is a cool graphic. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_S...
With this current Government, it's actually the Murdoch papers that look like propoganda straight from the politician's spin doctors. Especially Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
I guess a slant against government is required by a government owned media agency to appear non biased?. altho I imagine they can't be any worse than channel 7
Basically "the primary purpose of the online location [must be] to infringe, or to facilitate the infringement of, copyright," which gets around things like "we only host torrent magnet links" while shielding search engines, general discussion forums, and the like.
It's a reasonably well-drafted law (by the standards of such things) and relies on the judiciary (which is more than it sounds like considering our immigration minister, a former drug cop, wants extra-judicial power to remove citizenship), but falls down on technical merit.
I may have a fatal misunderstanding in my understanding in how a browser accesses a website...
It’s literally the same suggestion as using EC2, just with a cheaper example
EDIT Of these how many have the clout to have the block lifted when it happens?
EDIT For the record I think that these laws are utterly stupid and totally unenforceable. (I say this as someone that pays for their content.) However, the legislators will not be put off by mere technical impossibility.
Australians like stealing content. Nature finds a way!
Only to have the content providers come back with "No, we don't want you're money." I think this is changing now though as Netflix et al. become available, though I'd expect their libraries to still be relatively anaemic compared to the overseas counterparts.
Oh, wait.
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/george-...
[Edit: transcribed from about 1:40]
Brandis: "What the security agencies want to be retained is the electronic address of the website, that the web user..."
Interviewer: "So it does tell you the website?"
"Well it tells you the address of the website"
"That's the website, isn't it? It tells you what website you've been to?"
"Well when you visit a website, people browse from one thing to the next, and that browsing history won't be retained, or there won't be any capacity to access that."
"Excuse my confusion here, but if you are retaining the web address, you are retaining the web site, aren't you?"
"Well, the ... every website has an electronic address, right?"
"And that's recorded?"
"When a connection is made between one computer terminal and a web address, that fact, and the time of the connection, and the duration of the connection, is what we mean by 'metadata' in that context."
"But that is telling you where I've been on the web."
"Well it ... it ... it records what electronic web address has been accessed."
"I don't see the difference between that and what websites you've visited?"
"When you go to a website, commonly, you will go from one web page to another, from one link to another in that website. That's not what we're interested in."
I'm not familiar with Australian politics, but in the politics I am familiar with I would be more apt to accuse someone of deception than ignorance.
The politician in the video seems to be purposely ignorant in such a way that drives a stake between the folks watching, posing the question "Well, IS there a difference between addresses and web sites? Maybe the man knows something the reporter doesn't!".
Check out practically any Dick Cheney interview to see that tactic used ad nauseum.