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There are far bigger issues in Australia right now to care about meta data logging. Climate change and now the vaccine delay consume all of the publics attentio

• Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Multitasking isn't something new.
  • aplummer 5y ago
    In Australia it is, when the horses race the nation stops
• Guthur 5y ago
  The meta data happened long ago and was pushed through with the most flimsy of pretence. I remember it was after the shooting in Sydney by an Iranian refugee who had not only just been in custody but had arrive under the pretence that he was an Iranian spy seeking asylum. They had every reason to surveil the guy under normal laws but used it as an excuse to justify a drag net approach. It was obviously an Orwellian trick but no one cared. Freedom should not be so whimsically thrown away, getting it back will be impossible through normal means.
• BelenusMordred 5y ago
  > Metadata logging is a theoretical issue There are over 350,000 requests a year for metadata, about ~1000 a day. Any level of government can make a request, right down to local councils of towns with 2000 people. The oversight committee is comprised of three bureaucrats who have never found a single instance of the system being abused in years. In fact all the instances of misuse have been self-reported by agencies. Metadata itself seems like an innocuous term but includes the location of every single mobile phone in the country. The enormous cost of all this is passed onto the consumer and the government doesn't subsidise reporting entities at all. What exactly is "theoretical" about all that?
  • brokenmachine 5y ago
    >The enormous cost of all this is passed onto the consumer and the government doesn't subsidise reporting entities at all. Sorry, who's the consumer in this? Can you explain more?
    • milderworkacc 5y ago
      The telcos bear the cost of retention, and so consumers of telco services are paying more as a result.
• BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Not for the government, it seems. And you can't really include either Climate Change or the Vaccine rollout as issues the government may care about because they've fucked up both of them pretty royally. Possibly, for the political class, metadata logging is THE issue of the moment.
• baazaa 5y ago
  You're not wrong. I find it hard to take articles like this seriously when there's the more pressing issue of still being under effective house arrest (which has now gone for about a year with no end in sight). Hell the premier implemented a curfew and said it was due to public health advice, the public health advisors denied it, then he said it was on the advice of the police, and they denied, and that was that. No further questions asked why we implemented a curfew for fun. In this environment it's positively quaint the idea that our cyber laws are the thin edge of the wedge. I would leave, but like North Korea, it's against the law for citizens to leave the country.
• CTDOCodebases 5y ago
  Yeah maybe the coronavirus economic recovery committee should have been stacked with business leaders from the medical sector instead of the fossil fuel industry. The future looks bright for those manufacturing and developing covid vaccines.