Australia has similarly draconian monitoring of it's citizens. The whole blow-up about metadata in the US surprised me, because I was already conditioned to bel

Australia has similarly draconian monitoring of it's citizens. The whole blow-up about metadata in the US surprised me, because I was already conditioned to believe the government was reading all our actual messages. A couple of years ago there was a violent confrontation between white Australians and Lebanese, and part of the news cycle around that was the media nonchalantly reporting on the contents of text message conversations the white supremacists in Australia were having. Australia probably has an even broader reaching surveillance state, but Australian media never reports on it because the Australian people and its government have a far less antagonistic relationship than that of US citizens and the government.