22 ms·

The Australian federal government is planning to de-anonymize the internet

299 points by wsc981 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago
Australia is becoming a surveillance state: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  Maybe Australia was always a surveillance state, and instead, we are just now becoming aware of it?
- Ambolia 5y ago
  Austrialia is just the beta-version for what's coming to the rest of the "free world". If Covid and global warming didn't exist, they would have to invent them.
tpmx 5y ago
April fools' joke? https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/federal-government-considers-forcing-australians-to-provide-id-to-use-social-media-and-dating-sites-c-2497510 https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/federal-government-... Edit: Apparently not: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-a-long-bow-social-media-id-push-dubbed-a-privacy-risk-20210402-p57g7d.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-a-long-bow-soci...
- mkj 5y ago
  Thanks for the smh link. Parliamentary committees propose all kinds of things, they don't become law. The title here is wrong, it isn't the govt proposing it as a law. Not that they mightn't try, but it's silly to conflate the two.
randomhodler84 5y ago
We need to disconnect Australia from the internet. To protect us all.
- sharperguy 5y ago
  They're barely connected as it is
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
marcus_holmes 5y ago
It'll be interesting to see what effect this has on the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [0]. Though "normal person" for Straya tends to be someone who considers the c-bomb to be punctuation, so it may be tricky to tell if it's having any effect. [0] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
- gruez 5y ago
  > It'll be interesting to see what effect this has on the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [0]. Do we really need this when people already shitpost on facebook with their real names?
somehnacct3757 5y ago
I would be okay with an identity provider that guaranteed a mapping of online account to real person, and online businesses could choose to use this IdP or not. Is this possible without government involvement? Seems like a can of worms to get the govt involved.
- inetknght 5y ago
  > Seems like a can of worms to get the govt involved. Yeah because corporations have been a GREAT steward of mapping online accounts to real persons. There's no way corporations could fudge up identity mapping as badly as governments could. There's definitely no way that people would get a false sense of security from corporations handling that and governments getting their data from corporations instead of directly from the real person. Governments are always bad and will never do anything well ever! /s
- qualudeheart 5y ago
  That sounds like a very bad idea. It only takes a single data breach and all of that information is public. This system imposes an enormous long term responsibility on the organisation(s) storing the data to keep it secure. I don’t trust any organisation to do that when something as large as facebook or the US military can’t even prevent data breaches. I’ll change my mind when we have mathematically proven unhackable databases behind quantum resistant cryptography.
  - somehnacct3757 5y ago
    I agree it's not cryptographically bullet proof, but that didn't stop everyone from handing over their passwords to the private companies running password managers. Some people even hand over 2FA to them. Yet others have a file in their vault with their driver license or passport number. One breach there and they have your bank accounts, utilities, and something approximating your identity.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kar1181 5y ago
Disclaimer - I'm Australian. There's something really weird about the contemporary Australian culture that's seems to be permitting increasingly authoritarian governance. If think if you asked my grandparents what defined 'being Australian' it would be been belief in freedom, mateship and irreverence of authority.
- tjpnz 5y ago
  As a Kiwi I've frequently interacted with Australians and must've taken close to a dozen trips across the ditch. I've tended to view Australians as being somewhat similar which makes reading headlines like this rather jarring. What have I been missing here?
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    Very few people know about most of these laws. I’m actually really surprised to see this from a mainstream news source. In general, the Government and the media increasingly hand in hand to control the narratives, keep people distracted from things they don’t want them to know about, and focused on what they want them focused on. I do get it, people have lives, they’re busy, it’s “out of sight, out of mind”. None of this is in the news. But it’s really quite distressing to see the manipulation working so well and society unknowingly being taken the direction it is.
- bloqs 5y ago
  At risk of sounding corny, could the sole contrubution of Murchochs dynasty be cited accurately as a cause?
  - revscat 5y ago
    This seeks accurate. The rise of totalitarianism and fascism worldwide seems to largely be the responsibility of Murdoch, Putin, and some American billionaires (among others, I’m sure). For Australia, though, it seems that Murdoch’s fascist influence outweighs all others.
  - roflc0ptic 5y ago
dabbledash 5y ago
What is going on with Australia? Are they just generally giving up on liberal democracy and the idea of individual rights?
- justbored123 5y ago
  > democracy and the idea of individual rights lol, you need to lean about the history of minorities in Australia starting with the indigenous people and how they were treated. Same thing with their relations with all their small neighbors and with "undesirable" immigrants. This is a great place to start: https://www.youtube.com/user/thejuicemedia https://www.youtube.com/user/thejuicemedia There is nothing new to this in Australia's culture, is was just aimed at the weak and vulnerable, but as the famous quote by Tucidides goes: "The tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself."
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Yea it was really awful, got a few lectures on it during my psychology bachelor. I was horrified when I heard what they did. The people who've enacted these policies should be behind bars IMO. You can't displace children from their families because of "cultural integration" reasons.
  - salt-thrower 5y ago
    That is a great quote, but it's misattributed. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed
- swayvil 5y ago
  In a nutshell, yes. But it's for our own health. For the public welfare. In this time of pandemic crisis strong measures are called for. /S
  - goatcode 5y ago
    Never let a good crisis go to waste.
cblconfederate 5y ago
"Social media" is not the internet. As long as the authoritarians are occupied with the few big tech monopolies, i don't mind. FB et al. brought this on themselves, let them live with it.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Giving into fascism just because you don't like the victims of it is not a good way to just let democracy slip away in Australia. It will eventually come to YOUR doorstep. People should be fighting this tooth and nail and completely fire their legislature and hire someone more sensible.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    fb & google are a threat to liberalism themselves, they are not victims. I d rather have the authoritarians from either side fight each other, divide and conquer style
tristor 5y ago
I'm unsurprised this is occurring in Australia. Australia has for a long time now been pursuing policies which seem on their face to feel more at home in China. I suspect for most Australians though, they'll just go along with this and there will be a greater proportion of tech-savvy people who find a way to dodge this and exclusively connect via VPN. It's becoming more and more commonplace for people outside the US to connect to the Internet exclusively via a VPN egress in the US, creating "US-based" online accounts, and operating online as if they were a US person. It seems in the future this may be necessary just to experience the Internet with even basic expectations of free access and anonymity. As long as they continue to play ball geopolitically with the rest of the West, nobody is going to call them out, but the last decade in Australia has seen a significant curtailing of human rights. The most surprising thing is that it seems few people are speaking out about it, generally.
- ostenning 5y ago
  Ausgov will probably classify commercial VPN providers as terrorist organisations, put gag orders on developers or sysadmins to install backdoors, all while oppressing their rights for judicial review. Australia has lost its way.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Do you think that politicians there are being tempted into authoritarian legislation under CCP influence or is it more homegrown? Most Australians I've met have seemed to be freespritied, I just don't see them so easily rolling over for 24/7 surveillance and 1984 policies like this.
- qutreM 5y ago
  VPNs wont be a solution for long... all countries are becoming like this, it seems.
jollybean 5y ago
This seems really odd. I always cringe at seeing the anti-mask or whatever protest, but this seems like it's getting out of hand. Literally taking their cue from China, i.e. 'social credit'? I find it odd that they don't consider this to be a kind of political suicide, like, after a 18 months of lock-downs, the population has 'had enough' and ready to burst, this seems like a bad idea out of a Will Farrell political comedy.
- joshuahughes 5y ago
  As mad as they might seem, this is precisely why those protesters have been on the streets - because the slippery slope is all too real. Allow your government a little taste of authoritarianism and they’ll want more.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Think about it from the aristocrat's point of view.This is a very desirable thing.
- Radim 5y ago
  Cringe less, act more. Consider this: "What would MY government need to do, for ME to decide "This is too much" and take action? Of course, different people will have different answers, it's a cultural thing. The line often runs close to the physical integrity of themselves or their children. But knowing the limits of your loyalty to your government (even if those limits seem ridiculously distant now) let's you avoid the fate of "boiling frog". Things tend to go bad slowly for a while – with copious foreshadowing – then all at once. Examples of people who were "genuinely surprised, SURELY this cannot be happening to this civilized nation" (all the way to the camp/gulag train) are trite in their horrific innumerability.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Cringe more at people protesting reasonable measures, and 'act' by doing your part during a pandemic. Consider this: "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country" It only works if we act conscientiously. If we start with a selfish mindset, and don't consider our obligations, it will all unravel quickly. The question of government control is of course important, which is why we have to weigh things carefully. Anti-mask protests are cringe because the mandates are within reason for a quasi national emergency, and it's a very mild form of control, from what I see it's people who are probably angry over a host of things. The lock-downs, obviously much more severe curtailment of rights. Arbitrary controls such as this new proposal should be met with revolt, maybe with some protest, but really at the ballot box. It's the kind of thing that should cause a party to lose most of their support, i.e. they propose it, and then 2 weeks later they recant it and pretend it didn't happen because it was such a bad idea. This is an investigative committee's proposal, my bet is that it won't go forward.
daniel-thompson 5y ago
The only reporting I’ve seen on this dates back to April 2021, and the first comment on the tweet says the video dates to then as well. And that this wasn’t or hasn’t yet been taken up. Is it actually going to happen?
- ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  It may be like the recent hacking bill. They talked about it months earlier and 'shelved' it. They let you forgot about it then ram it through parliament in one day. Most people may not even know when it happens
  - nkssy 5y ago
    Waiting for a suitable "incident" to occur.
dejw 5y ago
does this initiative come form department of defense or politicians ass aka lobbyists from big corp?
scohesc 5y ago
I wonder if the legislation they passed within 24 hours allowing police to read/delete/edit social media posts of anybody without warrants is related to the australian truckers blocking off major highways in the past couple of days. Australia is more and more like China every day. The rest of the world is next. We're being pushed into an authoritarian globalist society and we're okay with it.
- dqpb 5y ago
  They’re getting their tech stack in order so they can prepare for acquisition.
- fouric 5y ago
  > the legislation they passed within 24 hours allowing police to read/delete/edit social media posts of anybody without warrants You can't be serious. I hope you're not being serious.
  - tcbasche 5y ago
    Oh yeah. This thing is crazy. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6623 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat... Kinda glad I live in Europe now tbh
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill/ https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill/ Totally serious, although it’s hard to say if this is directly related to the trucker strike or not. They have been keeping a tight lip on that news. I didn’t believe it because I couldn’t find any news about it, but it’s pretty hard to fake road closures going entirely across New South Wales. https://ibb.co/dk1ZCFM https://ibb.co/dk1ZCFM
    - AustinDev 5y ago
      I saw it happening in google maps when it was being done they locked down all the roads in and out of the major cities was pretty interesting to see.
apples_oranges 5y ago
Highly worrying, but I'm also convinced it will happen in EU soon, too. Let's hope USA remains the USA.. we need a champion for personal freedoms in the world. (Yes some platforms censored Trump and others and they are American and it's bad, but it was not mandated by the government. Let's hope that never happens.)
- NotEvil 5y ago
  I think platforms not government banning individual is better. Because that actually distribute poer. I rather have twitter block me and I can move or make a new account-ish then a government blocking and getting around that
- Ambolia 5y ago
  >"but it was not mandated by the government" That's not really true, if Twitter decided to ban Biden or a big DNC politician they would get obliterated by antitrust laws in weeks. They just were able to do it to Trump because it agreed with the consensus of current day power.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Didn’t it happen when Trump was President and had his hands on the exact same levers of power that Biden has now?
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      It happened like a week before Biden became president. Even if Trump wanted to do something he wouldn't have had time.
vmoore 5y ago
Isn't there a thing a lot of people do where they have a professional, respectable, and rarely used social media account there they use their legal name, have photos of their pets and are shown to be giving to charity or otherwise being approachable and respectable? Then they have other accounts where they use a pseudonym, login with a VPN, preferably on a laptop with FDE, and in a dedicated browser profile where they can 'shitpost' and vent or otherwise say things that could potentially get them fired or stop them from getting a job? Australia thinks people don't do this. They think people are naive and don't compartment their digital identity, but it's common practice.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  > Australia thinks people don't do this. They think people are naive and don't compartment their digital identity, but it's common practice. It seems like they fully understand that people do this and this is exactly the reason why this topic came up. I agree with some comments on that Twitter thread - once (if? when?) it goes live in AU, the rest of the world will follow quick. Want VPN? Show the passport. Want your own VPN in x cloud provider? Show the passport. Want a colocated server so you can host that VPN yourself? Show the passport. Want to host the VPN at home? Well, tough luck - your ISP knows who you are. There are only so many places one can connect to the net from. The governments will not allow any unreegulated medium for long. It will either get regulated and incorporated or banned and criminalized. That's the sad state of things. Legitimate users can only do so much to "not have anything to hide". Keep it legit and limit your online presence to the legit stuff, I guess.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- phone8675309 5y ago
  When you outlaw being anonymous then only outlaws will be anonymous.
the_third_wave 5y ago
Fortunately there is already quite a bit of experience in handling these policies given that people inside and outside of China have been working at bypassing restrictions for a long time. There may not be a "Great Firewall of Oz" yet but that is probably one of the next steps they'll proclaim, all to protect us from the conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids [1] of course. So come, all ye Ozzians and prepare to exfiltrate your data from the clutches of your caring government. How the great are falling everywhere... Australia used to be the country of Crocodile Dundee - "that's not a knife, this is a knife" - but those days seem to be gone. The USA used to be The Land of the free and the Home of the Brave, neither of which are applicable to those who officially represent the country. Quo Vadis, Orbis Occidentis... [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/characters/nm0001330 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/characters/nm0001330
tharne 5y ago
What's going on with Australia these days? I feel like every time I read about some wildly excessive overreach around privacy, it's coming out of Australia. Granted, I'm American and we have our own problems regarding privacy, but Australia seems markedly more open and and aggressive in their approach.
- dbetteridge 5y ago
  Australia has always been something of a nanny state. Unfortunately most of the last decade we've had a Liberal (Conservative) government and a fairly centrist opposition that tries to minimise their attack surface lest Murdochs Newscorp find a new way to attack them in the media. Unfortunately this leads to things like this, where it is politically infeasible to vote against it with cries of 'think of the children'. Basically media forcing the Labor party (historically pro privacy and workers rights) to shift more right to avoid losing votes.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  They are simply realizing their true potential as a prison island.
bigbob2 5y ago
I wonder what this means for users of Australian services who reside outside of Australia? For example I live in the US and use Fastmail as well as some Atlassian products.
poxwole 5y ago
Australia has been slipping hard right for quite some time
- claytongulick 5y ago
  I'm curious why you associate these things with "hard right"? Would you consider China to be "hard right?" Silencing dissenting viewpoints seems to be very much a modern "left" thing to me. As a liberal, I've been dismayed at how the modern left seems to have completely abandoned the mantle of liberalism.
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    The whole "left vs. right" thing is reductive. Politics isn't so simple that it can be mapped onto a 2d space.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    Since you seem to be confident using political labels, could you clarify what you think "left" ideologies are? For the record, calling these policies "left" or "right" is silly as authoritarianism isn't inherently one or the other. But whether China even qualifies as "leftist" is extremely debatable even if it was already quite authoritarian under Mao.
    - claytongulick 5y ago
      I agree with you completely, authoritarianism is on a different axis than "left" or "right". I was commenting on what I am seeing coming from those who described themselves as being ideologically aligned with the "left" today. I see censorship, speech limiting, "canceling", compelled speech, etc, coming from that area today. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s this was very much the kind of thing I saw coming from the "right", limiting expression for political and religious reasons. Like I mentioned, as a liberal (which I don't belive is inherently left or right) I've been disappointed in the modern "left" which seems to me to be taking a step back from liberalism. I see a lot of authoritarianism coming from that direction right now.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
Maybe the 5 eyes should become 6, and allow China in now since they are aligning with chinese internet policy.
heywherelogingo 5y ago
Ninnies and nannies.
3maj 5y ago
Are there any other links/resources about this, I want to know more but can't find anything anywhere?
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I wonder if it's because Murdoch controls most of the media there...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bobbytit 5y ago
This is what happens when a populace is stripped of their guns. A policy most HN faggots support.
lonelyPM 5y ago
Few things upset me as much as headlines like this. Why are people ok with this - can they not see the second order effects?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tomxor 5y ago
This was literally an episode in "Black Mirror"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) > set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars for every interaction they have, which can impact their socioeconomic status.
spinitch 5y ago
People are acutely aware of the relative anonymity and long-reach that being on the Internet gives them. This felt power enables them to act like total jerks to strangers online in ways they would not do in person. IRL, for such behavior they would garner opprobrium---or a punch in the teeth. There is some sense in adding some friction to online interactions. The details of the mechanism are important, but it's not a terrible or absurd proposition on its face.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  Who's spinitch?
  - ffwacom 5y ago
    Probably an ASIO intern.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Rescinding privacy (and by extension democracy) just because you don't like it when some anonymous person tells you to "go fuck yourself" is not really a good policy to pursue in a supposedly healthy democracy.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Not absurd perhaps, but I think being forced to talk with no threat of being punching people is quite refreshing. Yes, some will exploit that, ironically often those that have a problem with anonymity. But they really need to learn to vent in other ways than hitting people, would be a healthy development.
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
I left Australia less than a decade ago, but some of the recent changes in politics and culture are so alien to me, it feels like I could have left a century ago. The state policing what people who receive government aid are spending their money on, for example -- I can't imagine anyone being for this 10 years ago. I've noticed that it's more acceptable to be xenophobic amongst certain groups too. Many things have been reduce to "us vs. them". Us vs. the "scroungers", us vs. the immigrants, us vs. the "lefties", us vs. the "climate lunatics" I struggle to recognise the country I left.
- tcbasche 5y ago
  Only left a few months ago and in hindsight the draconian and somewhat arbitrary lockdown & border control laws have really opened my eyes. If you squint it looks somewhat like a Cold War state.
nemo44x 5y ago
Ronald Reagan was right - “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
- wavefunction 5y ago
  That's rich coming from a HUAC flunky like Ronnie Raygun. He could certainly deliver a line, even if he didn't believe it himself.
rektide 5y ago
Osama Bin Laden, by flying some planes into the World Trade Center, has gotten America to do far more damage to itself than any external entity possibly could. We have given up right after right after right. We stopped thinking of ourselves & the world at large & become narrow minded & thinking only of our "enemy": we lost control of our thoughts to this attack. And here we are again: underbelly of the world is once again getting what they want, is once again convincing us that freedom & liberty are too dangerous to keep. They once again are goading us into de-legitimizing ourselves, into making democratic society look like a fool. These attempts to try to wrest control, to walk back rights, to control speech: they're all giving the terrorists (and other anti-westerns) exactly what they want. We are in a sticky time. The avenues for exploration that I think are worthwhile hinge around better cross-site online reputation systems. We should forge & publish our own crytopgraphic identities, expose them on places like Keybase. This serves as an anchor, where we can use tools like Web Annotations specification to decentralizedly provide feedback/moderation on this person. Where we can begin to let a track record emerge. We can increase the quality of visibility into those who post, we can make Anonymous Cowards notably cowardly, notably anonymous, where-as today, a well established upright citizen of the world doesn't look any different in most sites, doesn't have much more context attached to them, than a sock puppet in a anti-western government's troll-farm, who created an account three months ago. A lot of these problems are internal, but a huge amount of the strife we are experiencing right now is nation-state sponsored. For us to secure ourselves by stripping ourselves of freedoms, trying to unmask every evil in our realm, gives in to assault being waged against democratic systems. It reverts to the baser means these nations want to lower us to, it assuages their authoritarian guilt, confirms the sense of hypocracy they want us to be guilty of. We need to build up, we need to tool up, we need to become a more robust information society. Not a more authoritarian one.
leokennis 5y ago
So one of the bigger tech things from Australia is Fastmail...any clue what this law will mean for users of that?
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  It's probably time to start downloading your email and moving to protonmail or tutanota. Maybe fastmail will move their servers completely away from australian territory
Ms-J 5y ago
Australia is increasingly being used to 'test' restrictions on fundamental human rights and to see how the a Western population reacts. It's extremely immoral and sickening.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
witchuer 5y ago
It reminds me of this great short-story called Manna[0]. I really like the idea of complete transparency and no anonymity. [0]: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
nkssy 5y ago
[censored by Australian government due to wrongthink violation]
kbsspl 5y ago
To be fair, anonymity and de-anonymysing are both problems. Social Media anonymity is often used to incite riots in many parts of the world. And obviously, in tyrannical regimes, de-anonymysing is a issue. The third issue is defining who is tyrannical.
btbuildem 5y ago
I guess they're getting ready to sell the whole island/continent to China?
phkahler 5y ago
A properly de-anonymized internet readily allows for end-to-end encryption, so I don't think that's quite what they're doing.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Not really interested in that to be honest.
bbpost 5y ago
How will this be enforceable?
zthrowaway 5y ago
All the shit going on in Australia right now makes me want to watch V for Vendetta.
samizdis 5y ago
Having looked through this comment thread as it has built up over the past couple of hours, I'd like to point to an article in The Atlantic from earlier today that raises many parallel concerns to some expressed here. The article [1] is headlined Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty and carries the sub-heading How long can a democracy maintain emergency restrictions and still call itself a free country? I can't view the article as unbiased (and neither would I expect that from The Atlantic), although it does make some effort to support measures introduced for the public good - especially in times of pandemic. However, for me at any rate, it was worth reading and gave me food for thought. I worked in Australia for nearly three years (2013 to 2016) and wouldn't like to see a shift in its society to the extent feared by the writer. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
- stephen_g 5y ago
  It’s a bit different. The State Governments are enacting health measures that only have any authority under temporary declared state of emergency, and immediately cease as soon as that expires (they have had to be extended a bit). This proposal is the Federal Government, which has been passing increasingly draconian, increasingly authoritarian mass surveillance, “national security” laws and ostensibly “eSafety” laws over decades now. They have passed the worst in the last four or five years, but really it’s been going back to 9/11, even though we never had any “real” terror attacks on our shores… These federal laws stick.
  - joshuahughes 5y ago
    "It’s a bit different. The State Governments are enacting health measures that only have any authority under temporary declared state of emergency, and immediately cease as soon as that expires (they have had to be extended a bit)." Worldwide, I'm seeing a heck of a lot of extension and precious little expiry so far...
dhx 5y ago
South Korea failed with implementation of similar legislation back in 2009[1]. From a research paper[2] that studied the effects of the legislation: "The comparison of flaming proportions between identity verified and non-verified groups, as seen in Table 4 above, supports our inference in that the identity verified users are more likely to repeatedly write inflammatory comments and become aggressive against the opposite opinions." "The results regarding the Identity Verification Law suggest that some potential commenters may withdraw themselves from writing comments due to the inconvenience and risks associated with the verification process, whereas others who undergo the verification process may do so because they perceive the benefits gained from becoming an online community member and expressing opinions to be higher than the costs incurred from the verification process." The eSafety Commissioner of Australia position[3] on de-anonymizing online discussions appears to call for a repeat of the naive mistakes that South Korea made with their attempts to de-anonymize the Internet. Likely what would happen if de-anonymization legislation is introduced into Australia is: 1) Local Australian websites and online services would lose traffic to international sites that people gravitate towards (and are even less regulated and more out of Australian law enforcement reach). 2) Local Australian websites and online services will be overrun with people with fringe opinions and views that don't care about using their real name for posting up neo-nazism content, anti vaxxer content, etc. Many of these people are comfortable sharing their views today with their real identities. The reason for an overrun is that those with moderate/mainstream views and opinions will perceive online discourse with their real identity as having too much risk, with no outweighing benefits. 3) Memes and other creative methods will become more commonplace, making enforcement particularly hard if not impossible to achieve. If someone shares a meme such as "Happy Merchant"[4], did they share a picture of a happy old man not noticing the connotation of the kippah in the image, or did they deliberately share the image with an intent to incite racism? Or if we look to a case from China, is it a picture of someone relaxing on the grass by a beautiful lake, promoting tourism, or is it someone sharing the picture with an intent to raise awareness of the "Tang ping"[5] movement? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-name_system#South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-name_system#South_Korea [2] The impacts of identity verification and disclosure of social cues on flaming in online user comments. DOI 10.1016/j.chb.2015.04.046. Full text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277302786_The_impacts_of_identity_verification_and_disclosure_of_social_cues_on_flaming_in_online_user_comments https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277302786_The_impac... [3] https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/tech-trends-and-challenges/anonymity https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/tech-trends-and-challeng... [4] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-merchant https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-merchant [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
axguscbklp 5y ago
Politicians who want to de-anonymize the Internet should first do a trial run of de-anonymizing all of their own financial transactions, Internet browsing, use of the post office, and so on. Maybe for a year or so. Then after they have done that, maybe we can get together and see whether they still think that it is a good idea.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  This would be sensible because in a democracy the voters are responsible for their conduct. This would make sense. Also external audits of intelligence agencies and their access on information.
rolph 5y ago
how about z3ta == zeta
sneak 5y ago
The Five Eyes (which includes AU already) has already done this. In the US, you're crazy if you think your cable modem account, IP history, Apple ID, Facebook account, Instagram account, and Google account aren't all linked to your full name, phone number, DOB, street address and passport number by the NSA/IC. They consider this to be their job, and they're fairly good at it, because they have access to the large US providers to get whatever data they want.
- caeril 5y ago
  Indeed. I'd add to this list: every major VPN provider too, "no-log policy" be damned. And if you spin up your own wireguard exit, your VPS provider too. They all take credit cards only, and require a non-voip phone number for "verification".
b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago
Maybe they have control over people because its as easy as reducing complicated nuanced issues into black and white or red and blue. We can't have choice, or freedom with duopolys working to prevent any competition. The narative is set and the people molded into one of two beliefs.
shushpanchik 5y ago
Hackernews taking 6-month old Murdoch news story as a credible source? Yes, whatever tickles your alarmist fancy. Living in Australia for many years, I can't stand reading all those "Privacy in Australia is dead, and look at their lockdowns!" articles here. I can download whatever torrent I want without getting warning from ISP or some antipiracy body. I can post "my prime minister is a cunt" wherever I want and be alright. I don't have mobile ISP injecting ads in my "https" traffic. I'm not forced to install SSL certificates issued by some government body. None of E2EE messengers are banned. Media that have critical view on government do not get their licenses revoked. All the breaches of privacy from the state and all government fuckups are all over the news and not silenced. Not many countries that were my home in the past can boast about all of this. What we have here is one of the best tradeoffs you can get in modern democracy.
bjowen 5y ago
Just a small caution - this is a weird place for the news to break (5:40 am in Adelaide). There’s been talk of this move for 5 months, since a report was tabled in April with this alongside other recommendations [0]. I can’t find other recent mentions of this being drafted into legislation. The news this week is that the “Identify and Disrupt” bill has been passed to allow federal law enforcement to interfere with computer equipment in a way that deserves its own thread. [1][2] That bill was rushed through without time for members to read it [3] [0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Social_Policy_and_Legal_Affairs/Familyviolence/Report https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Hou... [1] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r6623_aspassed/toc_pdf/20144b01.pdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/tony-abbott-and-kevin-rudd-could-be-spied-on-by-asio-under-new-laws-heres-why https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/tony-... [3] https://twitter.com/helenhainesindi/status/1430459548507144193?s=21 https://twitter.com/helenhainesindi/status/14304595485071441...
dpumpshitlord 5y ago
Deanonymizing the internet is regulatory capture for the advertising industry. Good news for Facebook and Google. Time to fight
dpumpshitlord 5y ago
Deanonymizing the internet is regulatory capture for the advertising industry. Good news for Facebook and Google. Bad news for the people that it harms. Time to fight
xtiansimon 5y ago
Many attacks on this front. Also from this week—gaming laws in China are reported to require companies to have user’s real names. “In China, Kids Are Limited To Playing Video Games For Only 3 Hours Per Week” (NPR, August 30, 20214:39 PM ET) https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-games-limits https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-g...

299 points by wsc981 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago

Australia is becoming a surveillance state: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139048

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
Maybe Australia was always a surveillance state, and instead, we are just now becoming aware of it?
Ambolia 5y ago
Austrialia is just the beta-version for what's coming to the rest of the "free world". If Covid and global warming didn't exist, they would have to invent them.

tpmx 5y ago

April fools' joke? https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/federal-government-considers-forcing-australians-to-provide-id-to-use-social-media-and-dating-sites-c-2497510 https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/federal-government-... Edit: Apparently not: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-a-long-bow-social-media-id-push-dubbed-a-privacy-risk-20210402-p57g7d.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-a-long-bow-soci...

mkj 5y ago
Thanks for the smh link. Parliamentary committees propose all kinds of things, they don't become law. The title here is wrong, it isn't the govt proposing it as a law. Not that they mightn't try, but it's silly to conflate the two.

randomhodler84 5y ago

We need to disconnect Australia from the internet. To protect us all.

sharperguy 5y ago
They're barely connected as it is

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

marcus_holmes 5y ago

It'll be interesting to see what effect this has on the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [0]. Though "normal person" for Straya tends to be someone who considers the c-bomb to be punctuation, so it may be tricky to tell if it's having any effect. [0] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

gruez 5y ago
> It'll be interesting to see what effect this has on the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [0]. Do we really need this when people already shitpost on facebook with their real names?

somehnacct3757 5y ago

I would be okay with an identity provider that guaranteed a mapping of online account to real person, and online businesses could choose to use this IdP or not. Is this possible without government involvement? Seems like a can of worms to get the govt involved.

inetknght 5y ago
> Seems like a can of worms to get the govt involved. Yeah because corporations have been a GREAT steward of mapping online accounts to real persons. There's no way corporations could fudge up identity mapping as badly as governments could. There's definitely no way that people would get a false sense of security from corporations handling that and governments getting their data from corporations instead of directly from the real person. Governments are always bad and will never do anything well ever! /s
qualudeheart 5y ago
That sounds like a very bad idea. It only takes a single data breach and all of that information is public. This system imposes an enormous long term responsibility on the organisation(s) storing the data to keep it secure. I don’t trust any organisation to do that when something as large as facebook or the US military can’t even prevent data breaches. I’ll change my mind when we have mathematically proven unhackable databases behind quantum resistant cryptography.
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  I agree it's not cryptographically bullet proof, but that didn't stop everyone from handing over their passwords to the private companies running password managers. Some people even hand over 2FA to them. Yet others have a file in their vault with their driver license or passport number. One breach there and they have your bank accounts, utilities, and something approximating your identity.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kar1181 5y ago

Disclaimer - I'm Australian. There's something really weird about the contemporary Australian culture that's seems to be permitting increasingly authoritarian governance. If think if you asked my grandparents what defined 'being Australian' it would be been belief in freedom, mateship and irreverence of authority.

tjpnz 5y ago
As a Kiwi I've frequently interacted with Australians and must've taken close to a dozen trips across the ditch. I've tended to view Australians as being somewhat similar which makes reading headlines like this rather jarring. What have I been missing here?
- stephen_g 5y ago
  Very few people know about most of these laws. I’m actually really surprised to see this from a mainstream news source. In general, the Government and the media increasingly hand in hand to control the narratives, keep people distracted from things they don’t want them to know about, and focused on what they want them focused on. I do get it, people have lives, they’re busy, it’s “out of sight, out of mind”. None of this is in the news. But it’s really quite distressing to see the manipulation working so well and society unknowingly being taken the direction it is.
bloqs 5y ago
At risk of sounding corny, could the sole contrubution of Murchochs dynasty be cited accurately as a cause?
- revscat 5y ago
  This seeks accurate. The rise of totalitarianism and fascism worldwide seems to largely be the responsibility of Murdoch, Putin, and some American billionaires (among others, I’m sure). For Australia, though, it seems that Murdoch’s fascist influence outweighs all others.
- roflc0ptic 5y ago

dabbledash 5y ago

What is going on with Australia? Are they just generally giving up on liberal democracy and the idea of individual rights?

justbored123 5y ago
> democracy and the idea of individual rights lol, you need to lean about the history of minorities in Australia starting with the indigenous people and how they were treated. Same thing with their relations with all their small neighbors and with "undesirable" immigrants. This is a great place to start: https://www.youtube.com/user/thejuicemedia https://www.youtube.com/user/thejuicemedia There is nothing new to this in Australia's culture, is was just aimed at the weak and vulnerable, but as the famous quote by Tucidides goes: "The tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself."
- mettamage 5y ago
  Yea it was really awful, got a few lectures on it during my psychology bachelor. I was horrified when I heard what they did. The people who've enacted these policies should be behind bars IMO. You can't displace children from their families because of "cultural integration" reasons.
- salt-thrower 5y ago
  That is a great quote, but it's misattributed. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed
swayvil 5y ago
In a nutshell, yes. But it's for our own health. For the public welfare. In this time of pandemic crisis strong measures are called for. /S
- goatcode 5y ago
  Never let a good crisis go to waste.

cblconfederate 5y ago

"Social media" is not the internet. As long as the authoritarians are occupied with the few big tech monopolies, i don't mind. FB et al. brought this on themselves, let them live with it.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Giving into fascism just because you don't like the victims of it is not a good way to just let democracy slip away in Australia. It will eventually come to YOUR doorstep. People should be fighting this tooth and nail and completely fire their legislature and hire someone more sensible.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  fb & google are a threat to liberalism themselves, they are not victims. I d rather have the authoritarians from either side fight each other, divide and conquer style

tristor 5y ago

I'm unsurprised this is occurring in Australia. Australia has for a long time now been pursuing policies which seem on their face to feel more at home in China. I suspect for most Australians though, they'll just go along with this and there will be a greater proportion of tech-savvy people who find a way to dodge this and exclusively connect via VPN. It's becoming more and more commonplace for people outside the US to connect to the Internet exclusively via a VPN egress in the US, creating "US-based" online accounts, and operating online as if they were a US person. It seems in the future this may be necessary just to experience the Internet with even basic expectations of free access and anonymity. As long as they continue to play ball geopolitically with the rest of the West, nobody is going to call them out, but the last decade in Australia has seen a significant curtailing of human rights. The most surprising thing is that it seems few people are speaking out about it, generally.

ostenning 5y ago
Ausgov will probably classify commercial VPN providers as terrorist organisations, put gag orders on developers or sysadmins to install backdoors, all while oppressing their rights for judicial review. Australia has lost its way.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Do you think that politicians there are being tempted into authoritarian legislation under CCP influence or is it more homegrown? Most Australians I've met have seemed to be freespritied, I just don't see them so easily rolling over for 24/7 surveillance and 1984 policies like this.
qutreM 5y ago
VPNs wont be a solution for long... all countries are becoming like this, it seems.

jollybean 5y ago

This seems really odd. I always cringe at seeing the anti-mask or whatever protest, but this seems like it's getting out of hand. Literally taking their cue from China, i.e. 'social credit'? I find it odd that they don't consider this to be a kind of political suicide, like, after a 18 months of lock-downs, the population has 'had enough' and ready to burst, this seems like a bad idea out of a Will Farrell political comedy.

joshuahughes 5y ago
As mad as they might seem, this is precisely why those protesters have been on the streets - because the slippery slope is all too real. Allow your government a little taste of authoritarianism and they’ll want more.
swayvil 5y ago
Think about it from the aristocrat's point of view.This is a very desirable thing.
Radim 5y ago
Cringe less, act more. Consider this: "What would MY government need to do, for ME to decide "This is too much" and take action? Of course, different people will have different answers, it's a cultural thing. The line often runs close to the physical integrity of themselves or their children. But knowing the limits of your loyalty to your government (even if those limits seem ridiculously distant now) let's you avoid the fate of "boiling frog". Things tend to go bad slowly for a while – with copious foreshadowing – then all at once. Examples of people who were "genuinely surprised, SURELY this cannot be happening to this civilized nation" (all the way to the camp/gulag train) are trite in their horrific innumerability.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Cringe more at people protesting reasonable measures, and 'act' by doing your part during a pandemic. Consider this: "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country" It only works if we act conscientiously. If we start with a selfish mindset, and don't consider our obligations, it will all unravel quickly. The question of government control is of course important, which is why we have to weigh things carefully. Anti-mask protests are cringe because the mandates are within reason for a quasi national emergency, and it's a very mild form of control, from what I see it's people who are probably angry over a host of things. The lock-downs, obviously much more severe curtailment of rights. Arbitrary controls such as this new proposal should be met with revolt, maybe with some protest, but really at the ballot box. It's the kind of thing that should cause a party to lose most of their support, i.e. they propose it, and then 2 weeks later they recant it and pretend it didn't happen because it was such a bad idea. This is an investigative committee's proposal, my bet is that it won't go forward.

daniel-thompson 5y ago

The only reporting I’ve seen on this dates back to April 2021, and the first comment on the tweet says the video dates to then as well. And that this wasn’t or hasn’t yet been taken up. Is it actually going to happen?

ajkdhcb2 5y ago
It may be like the recent hacking bill. They talked about it months earlier and 'shelved' it. They let you forgot about it then ram it through parliament in one day. Most people may not even know when it happens
- nkssy 5y ago
  Waiting for a suitable "incident" to occur.

dejw 5y ago

does this initiative come form department of defense or politicians ass aka lobbyists from big corp?

scohesc 5y ago

I wonder if the legislation they passed within 24 hours allowing police to read/delete/edit social media posts of anybody without warrants is related to the australian truckers blocking off major highways in the past couple of days. Australia is more and more like China every day. The rest of the world is next. We're being pushed into an authoritarian globalist society and we're okay with it.

dqpb 5y ago
They’re getting their tech stack in order so they can prepare for acquisition.
fouric 5y ago
> the legislation they passed within 24 hours allowing police to read/delete/edit social media posts of anybody without warrants You can't be serious. I hope you're not being serious.
- tcbasche 5y ago
  Oh yeah. This thing is crazy. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6623 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat... Kinda glad I live in Europe now tbh
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill/ https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill/ Totally serious, although it’s hard to say if this is directly related to the trucker strike or not. They have been keeping a tight lip on that news. I didn’t believe it because I couldn’t find any news about it, but it’s pretty hard to fake road closures going entirely across New South Wales. https://ibb.co/dk1ZCFM https://ibb.co/dk1ZCFM
  - AustinDev 5y ago
    I saw it happening in google maps when it was being done they locked down all the roads in and out of the major cities was pretty interesting to see.

apples_oranges 5y ago

Highly worrying, but I'm also convinced it will happen in EU soon, too. Let's hope USA remains the USA.. we need a champion for personal freedoms in the world. (Yes some platforms censored Trump and others and they are American and it's bad, but it was not mandated by the government. Let's hope that never happens.)

NotEvil 5y ago
I think platforms not government banning individual is better. Because that actually distribute poer. I rather have twitter block me and I can move or make a new account-ish then a government blocking and getting around that
Ambolia 5y ago
>"but it was not mandated by the government" That's not really true, if Twitter decided to ban Biden or a big DNC politician they would get obliterated by antitrust laws in weeks. They just were able to do it to Trump because it agreed with the consensus of current day power.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Didn’t it happen when Trump was President and had his hands on the exact same levers of power that Biden has now?
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    It happened like a week before Biden became president. Even if Trump wanted to do something he wouldn't have had time.

vmoore 5y ago

Isn't there a thing a lot of people do where they have a professional, respectable, and rarely used social media account there they use their legal name, have photos of their pets and are shown to be giving to charity or otherwise being approachable and respectable? Then they have other accounts where they use a pseudonym, login with a VPN, preferably on a laptop with FDE, and in a dedicated browser profile where they can 'shitpost' and vent or otherwise say things that could potentially get them fired or stop them from getting a job? Australia thinks people don't do this. They think people are naive and don't compartment their digital identity, but it's common practice.

rad_gruchalski 5y ago
> Australia thinks people don't do this. They think people are naive and don't compartment their digital identity, but it's common practice. It seems like they fully understand that people do this and this is exactly the reason why this topic came up. I agree with some comments on that Twitter thread - once (if? when?) it goes live in AU, the rest of the world will follow quick. Want VPN? Show the passport. Want your own VPN in x cloud provider? Show the passport. Want a colocated server so you can host that VPN yourself? Show the passport. Want to host the VPN at home? Well, tough luck - your ISP knows who you are. There are only so many places one can connect to the net from. The governments will not allow any unreegulated medium for long. It will either get regulated and incorporated or banned and criminalized. That's the sad state of things. Legitimate users can only do so much to "not have anything to hide". Keep it legit and limit your online presence to the legit stuff, I guess.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
phone8675309 5y ago
When you outlaw being anonymous then only outlaws will be anonymous.

the_third_wave 5y ago

Fortunately there is already quite a bit of experience in handling these policies given that people inside and outside of China have been working at bypassing restrictions for a long time. There may not be a "Great Firewall of Oz" yet but that is probably one of the next steps they'll proclaim, all to protect us from the conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids [1] of course. So come, all ye Ozzians and prepare to exfiltrate your data from the clutches of your caring government. How the great are falling everywhere... Australia used to be the country of Crocodile Dundee - "that's not a knife, this is a knife" - but those days seem to be gone. The USA used to be The Land of the free and the Home of the Brave, neither of which are applicable to those who officially represent the country. Quo Vadis, Orbis Occidentis... [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/characters/nm0001330 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/characters/nm0001330

tharne 5y ago

What's going on with Australia these days? I feel like every time I read about some wildly excessive overreach around privacy, it's coming out of Australia. Granted, I'm American and we have our own problems regarding privacy, but Australia seems markedly more open and and aggressive in their approach.

dbetteridge 5y ago
Australia has always been something of a nanny state. Unfortunately most of the last decade we've had a Liberal (Conservative) government and a fairly centrist opposition that tries to minimise their attack surface lest Murdochs Newscorp find a new way to attack them in the media. Unfortunately this leads to things like this, where it is politically infeasible to vote against it with cries of 'think of the children'. Basically media forcing the Labor party (historically pro privacy and workers rights) to shift more right to avoid losing votes.
UnFleshedOne 5y ago
They are simply realizing their true potential as a prison island.

bigbob2 5y ago

I wonder what this means for users of Australian services who reside outside of Australia? For example I live in the US and use Fastmail as well as some Atlassian products.

poxwole 5y ago

Australia has been slipping hard right for quite some time

claytongulick 5y ago
I'm curious why you associate these things with "hard right"? Would you consider China to be "hard right?" Silencing dissenting viewpoints seems to be very much a modern "left" thing to me. As a liberal, I've been dismayed at how the modern left seems to have completely abandoned the mantle of liberalism.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  The whole "left vs. right" thing is reductive. Politics isn't so simple that it can be mapped onto a 2d space.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Since you seem to be confident using political labels, could you clarify what you think "left" ideologies are? For the record, calling these policies "left" or "right" is silly as authoritarianism isn't inherently one or the other. But whether China even qualifies as "leftist" is extremely debatable even if it was already quite authoritarian under Mao.
  - claytongulick 5y ago
    I agree with you completely, authoritarianism is on a different axis than "left" or "right". I was commenting on what I am seeing coming from those who described themselves as being ideologically aligned with the "left" today. I see censorship, speech limiting, "canceling", compelled speech, etc, coming from that area today. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s this was very much the kind of thing I saw coming from the "right", limiting expression for political and religious reasons. Like I mentioned, as a liberal (which I don't belive is inherently left or right) I've been disappointed in the modern "left" which seems to me to be taking a step back from liberalism. I see a lot of authoritarianism coming from that direction right now.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

Maybe the 5 eyes should become 6, and allow China in now since they are aligning with chinese internet policy.

heywherelogingo 5y ago

Ninnies and nannies.

3maj 5y ago

Are there any other links/resources about this, I want to know more but can't find anything anywhere?

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I wonder if it's because Murdoch controls most of the media there...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bobbytit 5y ago

This is what happens when a populace is stripped of their guns. A policy most HN faggots support.

lonelyPM 5y ago

Few things upset me as much as headlines like this. Why are people ok with this - can they not see the second order effects?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tomxor 5y ago

This was literally an episode in "Black Mirror"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) > set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars for every interaction they have, which can impact their socioeconomic status.

spinitch 5y ago

People are acutely aware of the relative anonymity and long-reach that being on the Internet gives them. This felt power enables them to act like total jerks to strangers online in ways they would not do in person. IRL, for such behavior they would garner opprobrium---or a punch in the teeth. There is some sense in adding some friction to online interactions. The details of the mechanism are important, but it's not a terrible or absurd proposition on its face.

foxfluff 5y ago
Who's spinitch?
- ffwacom 5y ago
  Probably an ASIO intern.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Rescinding privacy (and by extension democracy) just because you don't like it when some anonymous person tells you to "go fuck yourself" is not really a good policy to pursue in a supposedly healthy democracy.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Not absurd perhaps, but I think being forced to talk with no threat of being punching people is quite refreshing. Yes, some will exploit that, ironically often those that have a problem with anonymity. But they really need to learn to vent in other ways than hitting people, would be a healthy development.

dkdbejwi383 5y ago

I left Australia less than a decade ago, but some of the recent changes in politics and culture are so alien to me, it feels like I could have left a century ago. The state policing what people who receive government aid are spending their money on, for example -- I can't imagine anyone being for this 10 years ago. I've noticed that it's more acceptable to be xenophobic amongst certain groups too. Many things have been reduce to "us vs. them". Us vs. the "scroungers", us vs. the immigrants, us vs. the "lefties", us vs. the "climate lunatics" I struggle to recognise the country I left.

tcbasche 5y ago
Only left a few months ago and in hindsight the draconian and somewhat arbitrary lockdown & border control laws have really opened my eyes. If you squint it looks somewhat like a Cold War state.

nemo44x 5y ago

Ronald Reagan was right - “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

wavefunction 5y ago
That's rich coming from a HUAC flunky like Ronnie Raygun. He could certainly deliver a line, even if he didn't believe it himself.

rektide 5y ago

Osama Bin Laden, by flying some planes into the World Trade Center, has gotten America to do far more damage to itself than any external entity possibly could. We have given up right after right after right. We stopped thinking of ourselves & the world at large & become narrow minded & thinking only of our "enemy": we lost control of our thoughts to this attack. And here we are again: underbelly of the world is once again getting what they want, is once again convincing us that freedom & liberty are too dangerous to keep. They once again are goading us into de-legitimizing ourselves, into making democratic society look like a fool. These attempts to try to wrest control, to walk back rights, to control speech: they're all giving the terrorists (and other anti-westerns) exactly what they want. We are in a sticky time. The avenues for exploration that I think are worthwhile hinge around better cross-site online reputation systems. We should forge & publish our own crytopgraphic identities, expose them on places like Keybase. This serves as an anchor, where we can use tools like Web Annotations specification to decentralizedly provide feedback/moderation on this person. Where we can begin to let a track record emerge. We can increase the quality of visibility into those who post, we can make Anonymous Cowards notably cowardly, notably anonymous, where-as today, a well established upright citizen of the world doesn't look any different in most sites, doesn't have much more context attached to them, than a sock puppet in a anti-western government's troll-farm, who created an account three months ago. A lot of these problems are internal, but a huge amount of the strife we are experiencing right now is nation-state sponsored. For us to secure ourselves by stripping ourselves of freedoms, trying to unmask every evil in our realm, gives in to assault being waged against democratic systems. It reverts to the baser means these nations want to lower us to, it assuages their authoritarian guilt, confirms the sense of hypocracy they want us to be guilty of. We need to build up, we need to tool up, we need to become a more robust information society. Not a more authoritarian one.

leokennis 5y ago

So one of the bigger tech things from Australia is Fastmail...any clue what this law will mean for users of that?

stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's probably time to start downloading your email and moving to protonmail or tutanota. Maybe fastmail will move their servers completely away from australian territory

Ms-J 5y ago

Australia is increasingly being used to 'test' restrictions on fundamental human rights and to see how the a Western population reacts. It's extremely immoral and sickening.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

witchuer 5y ago

It reminds me of this great short-story called Manna[0]. I really like the idea of complete transparency and no anonymity. [0]: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

nkssy 5y ago

[censored by Australian government due to wrongthink violation]

kbsspl 5y ago

To be fair, anonymity and de-anonymysing are both problems. Social Media anonymity is often used to incite riots in many parts of the world. And obviously, in tyrannical regimes, de-anonymysing is a issue. The third issue is defining who is tyrannical.

btbuildem 5y ago

I guess they're getting ready to sell the whole island/continent to China?

phkahler 5y ago

A properly de-anonymized internet readily allows for end-to-end encryption, so I don't think that's quite what they're doing.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Not really interested in that to be honest.

bbpost 5y ago

How will this be enforceable?

zthrowaway 5y ago

All the shit going on in Australia right now makes me want to watch V for Vendetta.

samizdis 5y ago

Having looked through this comment thread as it has built up over the past couple of hours, I'd like to point to an article in The Atlantic from earlier today that raises many parallel concerns to some expressed here. The article [1] is headlined Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty and carries the sub-heading How long can a democracy maintain emergency restrictions and still call itself a free country? I can't view the article as unbiased (and neither would I expect that from The Atlantic), although it does make some effort to support measures introduced for the public good - especially in times of pandemic. However, for me at any rate, it was worth reading and gave me food for thought. I worked in Australia for nearly three years (2013 to 2016) and wouldn't like to see a shift in its society to the extent feared by the writer. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

stephen_g 5y ago
It’s a bit different. The State Governments are enacting health measures that only have any authority under temporary declared state of emergency, and immediately cease as soon as that expires (they have had to be extended a bit). This proposal is the Federal Government, which has been passing increasingly draconian, increasingly authoritarian mass surveillance, “national security” laws and ostensibly “eSafety” laws over decades now. They have passed the worst in the last four or five years, but really it’s been going back to 9/11, even though we never had any “real” terror attacks on our shores… These federal laws stick.
- joshuahughes 5y ago
  "It’s a bit different. The State Governments are enacting health measures that only have any authority under temporary declared state of emergency, and immediately cease as soon as that expires (they have had to be extended a bit)." Worldwide, I'm seeing a heck of a lot of extension and precious little expiry so far...

dhx 5y ago

South Korea failed with implementation of similar legislation back in 2009[1]. From a research paper[2] that studied the effects of the legislation: "The comparison of flaming proportions between identity verified and non-verified groups, as seen in Table 4 above, supports our inference in that the identity verified users are more likely to repeatedly write inflammatory comments and become aggressive against the opposite opinions." "The results regarding the Identity Verification Law suggest that some potential commenters may withdraw themselves from writing comments due to the inconvenience and risks associated with the verification process, whereas others who undergo the verification process may do so because they perceive the benefits gained from becoming an online community member and expressing opinions to be higher than the costs incurred from the verification process." The eSafety Commissioner of Australia position[3] on de-anonymizing online discussions appears to call for a repeat of the naive mistakes that South Korea made with their attempts to de-anonymize the Internet. Likely what would happen if de-anonymization legislation is introduced into Australia is: 1) Local Australian websites and online services would lose traffic to international sites that people gravitate towards (and are even less regulated and more out of Australian law enforcement reach). 2) Local Australian websites and online services will be overrun with people with fringe opinions and views that don't care about using their real name for posting up neo-nazism content, anti vaxxer content, etc. Many of these people are comfortable sharing their views today with their real identities. The reason for an overrun is that those with moderate/mainstream views and opinions will perceive online discourse with their real identity as having too much risk, with no outweighing benefits. 3) Memes and other creative methods will become more commonplace, making enforcement particularly hard if not impossible to achieve. If someone shares a meme such as "Happy Merchant"[4], did they share a picture of a happy old man not noticing the connotation of the kippah in the image, or did they deliberately share the image with an intent to incite racism? Or if we look to a case from China, is it a picture of someone relaxing on the grass by a beautiful lake, promoting tourism, or is it someone sharing the picture with an intent to raise awareness of the "Tang ping"[5] movement? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-name_system#South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-name_system#South_Korea [2] The impacts of identity verification and disclosure of social cues on flaming in online user comments. DOI 10.1016/j.chb.2015.04.046. Full text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277302786_The_impacts_of_identity_verification_and_disclosure_of_social_cues_on_flaming_in_online_user_comments https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277302786_The_impac... [3] https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/tech-trends-and-challenges/anonymity https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/tech-trends-and-challeng... [4] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-merchant https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-merchant [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

axguscbklp 5y ago

Politicians who want to de-anonymize the Internet should first do a trial run of de-anonymizing all of their own financial transactions, Internet browsing, use of the post office, and so on. Maybe for a year or so. Then after they have done that, maybe we can get together and see whether they still think that it is a good idea.

raxxorrax 5y ago
This would be sensible because in a democracy the voters are responsible for their conduct. This would make sense. Also external audits of intelligence agencies and their access on information.

rolph 5y ago

how about z3ta == zeta

sneak 5y ago

The Five Eyes (which includes AU already) has already done this. In the US, you're crazy if you think your cable modem account, IP history, Apple ID, Facebook account, Instagram account, and Google account aren't all linked to your full name, phone number, DOB, street address and passport number by the NSA/IC. They consider this to be their job, and they're fairly good at it, because they have access to the large US providers to get whatever data they want.

caeril 5y ago
Indeed. I'd add to this list: every major VPN provider too, "no-log policy" be damned. And if you spin up your own wireguard exit, your VPS provider too. They all take credit cards only, and require a non-voip phone number for "verification".

b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago

Maybe they have control over people because its as easy as reducing complicated nuanced issues into black and white or red and blue. We can't have choice, or freedom with duopolys working to prevent any competition. The narative is set and the people molded into one of two beliefs.

shushpanchik 5y ago

Hackernews taking 6-month old Murdoch news story as a credible source? Yes, whatever tickles your alarmist fancy. Living in Australia for many years, I can't stand reading all those "Privacy in Australia is dead, and look at their lockdowns!" articles here. I can download whatever torrent I want without getting warning from ISP or some antipiracy body. I can post "my prime minister is a cunt" wherever I want and be alright. I don't have mobile ISP injecting ads in my "https" traffic. I'm not forced to install SSL certificates issued by some government body. None of E2EE messengers are banned. Media that have critical view on government do not get their licenses revoked. All the breaches of privacy from the state and all government fuckups are all over the news and not silenced. Not many countries that were my home in the past can boast about all of this. What we have here is one of the best tradeoffs you can get in modern democracy.

bjowen 5y ago

Just a small caution - this is a weird place for the news to break (5:40 am in Adelaide). There’s been talk of this move for 5 months, since a report was tabled in April with this alongside other recommendations [0]. I can’t find other recent mentions of this being drafted into legislation. The news this week is that the “Identify and Disrupt” bill has been passed to allow federal law enforcement to interfere with computer equipment in a way that deserves its own thread. [1][2] That bill was rushed through without time for members to read it [3] [0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Social_Policy_and_Legal_Affairs/Familyviolence/Report https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Hou... [1] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r6623_aspassed/toc_pdf/20144b01.pdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/tony-abbott-and-kevin-rudd-could-be-spied-on-by-asio-under-new-laws-heres-why https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/tony-... [3] https://twitter.com/helenhainesindi/status/1430459548507144193?s=21 https://twitter.com/helenhainesindi/status/14304595485071441...

dpumpshitlord 5y ago

Deanonymizing the internet is regulatory capture for the advertising industry. Good news for Facebook and Google. Time to fight

dpumpshitlord 5y ago

Deanonymizing the internet is regulatory capture for the advertising industry. Good news for Facebook and Google. Bad news for the people that it harms. Time to fight

xtiansimon 5y ago

Many attacks on this front. Also from this week—gaming laws in China are reported to require companies to have user’s real names. “In China, Kids Are Limited To Playing Video Games For Only 3 Hours Per Week” (NPR, August 30, 20214:39 PM ET) https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-games-limits https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-g...