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It’s a fairly complex situation. Most people just don’t realise all the encroaching police state laws even exist (I refer to the real ones Federally, not the te

It’s a fairly complex situation. Most people just don’t realise all the encroaching police state laws even exist (I refer to the real ones Federally, not the temporary State-Government health orders that some people have tried to blow out of proportion). We have very little media diversity. The few billionaires who own the few outlets enjoy the continuing tax cuts, random free grants, advertising spend, etc. from the conservative Government, so run what some critics have called a ‘protection racket for the Liberal National Party’. Almost nothing about any of the mass surveillance laws then really gets into the media, and if something is mentioned, it’s mostly presented in light of the Government’s line on it. The times any of this does get into the news is if there is any opposition from the Opposition party (Labor), who theoretically could get the numbers to block laws in the Senate by one vote. If it looks like they might not allow the Government to sweep them through, the Government then does what we call ‘wedging’ the Labor party. This is where they say “Labor wants the terrorists to win” or “Labor is voting in the interests of paedophiles”, and the media amplifies that narrative. Unfortunately it works because nobody knows what the laws are about (even though human rights groups, law groups, civil society groups, often even the Government’s own security legislation review committee have raised serious flaws, tried to get them out in the open but are ignored by the media). The Government also makes a mockery of any due process - sometimes having a public consultation period but ignoring it when basically every submission is negative and it’s clear nobody actually wants the laws (it’s just a box ticking exercise - if people bring it up later, they will seriously claim “but we consulted the public and experts” even though they ignored all of them). Some of these laws they have pushed through both Houses of Parliament in one or two days, with basically no debate. It’s a truly atrocious situation. There is an election coming up, but with most of the media enthusiastically running the protection racket and pushing basically just lies about politics, and only fairly actively politically informed people knowing what’s actually going on (that’s a small proportion of the population - the conservative party relies on that a lot), things may not improve.

rstuart4133 5y ago
I don't think it's that complex. I always thought it was inevitable that once everything we did happened via a computer, gathering it all together would be an irresistible attraction to man+dog. It was always going to accelerate, and it was always going to go into overshoot. And while it's painted in forum's like this as all negative, the reality is it's not. In fact there have been some pretty big positives. Crime levels have been dropping, while prosecutions have gone up. Criminologists have put that down to better surveillance. Cameras everywhere have meant the odds of getting caught for a given offense have gone up, so more people have been getting caught on their first offence. Amusingly, it's just just the criminals who have been on the receiving end of this - it's the law enforcers too. They used to be able to hide their overreaches behind the solidarity of the blue line. Now misbehaviour is very likely caught on a camera that's not behind the line, and the results have been on the world's headlines. I know the naturally privacy conscious feel like this is a personal invasion, I feel like that too on occasions. Their problem is that to date it's most likely been a net positive. Open societies with less criminality and corruption do better, and that seems to have been the net result so far. While like you I doubt many people have analysed in these terms, what they have done is evaluated how life is now vs before, and it seems OK. In simple terms, we can have more shiny things. Therefore the simply don't care some privacy guru seems a privacy apocalypse around the corner. So far the reverse has been true, and wot do these supposed experts know anyway? Still, I feel decidedly uncomfortable with the Assistance and Access bill, and its friends. My problem is not that they allow enough information to be mined - it's that they don't allow enough. Specifically, while they allow the government agencies to gather information on its citizens, the bills go out of their way to ensure the citizens have no idea how much their government is spying on them, or who is being spied upon, or why, or at whose behest. Without a little sunlight to sterilise things, it's inevitable malfeasance will grow in the dark. We already have numerous examples of petty privacy theft - police spying on their ex's, taxi's chasing credit card owners and the like. It's just a question of time before one politician plunders another's emails and polling data, or one of these systems gets hacked and mined for identity data for years before anybody becomes the wiser. The sad bit is, it is only after they have blatant examples staring them in the face that voters will conclude this overreach has downsides too. So we will have to suffer some real pain before there is a correction. The good news is the public education has already started. The Huawei bans are an example of that. It was only after Huawei won the contract to run the Danish telephone system, and later the Danish discovered their private data leaking across the world that politicians and intelligence agencies woke up to the fact the same data gathering capabilities they were exploiting could also be used against them. They reacted by banning Huawei. One day they will figure out that isn't going to fix the problem. We've since learnt Juniper was hacked for years, apparently by the Chinese who could watch all data flowing through their gear. And that's just the foreign players. In Russia we have private criminal gangs gathering data on a scale well beyond their Law Enforcement Agencies, and using it to shake down institutions like banks. The only cure I can see for this is a transparency on a scale we haven't seen to date. We have to put the days of blindly trusting government bureaucratic caesars to determine what data is collected, who can see it and what it is used for behind us. That information is too dangerous to be kept in the dark - it must be open to all citizens to inspect.
BelenusMordred 5y ago
> not the temporary State-Government health orders that some people have tried to blow out of proportion They banned single mothers from taking their child to playgrounds after being locked in their homes for weeks and then fined them thousands for doing so. They got rid of this absurd rule when cases rose by 3x, further highlighting how absolutely ridiculous it was. Certain state governments have clearly overstepped the mark and anyone defending them will not go down well in time. Thankfully you can't delete comments here.
- Handytinge 5y ago
  You're intentionally misrepresenting the facts here. They closed playgrounds - they did nothing to target single mothers specifically. And the removal was made based on vaccination position, which was announced well in advance. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, however my experience is that people who intentionally misrepresent a scenario usually don't go down well in time either.
  - BelenusMordred 5y ago
    > they did nothing to target single mothers specifically It was example of the outcome, not a declaration of the actual law. The Victorian government now has more cases than ever before and is amusingly opening up, dropping nearly all restrictions/curfews, they've been dragged kicking and screaming though this whole thing and have prided themselves on being the strictest state government possible with a tough on covid approach. Despite that, having the toughest restrictions and the world record for lockdowns, they still end up with the most deaths and infections in the country. Clearly whatever they are doing isn't working, yet the rusted-on types will support them no matter what while ignoring the clear and plain facts about the massive differential between state policy outcomes in Australia.
ImTheMaddest 5y ago
We can't blame the LNP for all of this. All of the surveillance related bills passed in the last 10 years have been bipartisan. I'd also go as far as to say this is what Australians want. Many people believe these laws won't be used against regular citizens and will assist in law enforcement efforts.
- ntSean 5y ago
  It isn't the LNP or ALP which decide which security laws are implemented. If you'd like an explainer on how security laws such as TOLA are enacted, this channel is a great resource: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu4rT3-GcHgLIHyrzA8RWzA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu4rT3-GcHgLIHyrzA8RWzA
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    It's so pathetic that every video I've seen about these issues, most of the videos on that channel you posted and EFA have like 100-200 views. Democracy dying with a whimper. Complacent is an understatement.
- vel0city 5y ago
  Laws are always used to prosecute criminals. The tricky thing is the definition of criminal can quickly be changed to include you.
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    Or with the Access and Disrupt bill, it’s no longer much of a stretch to ‘add and modify’ some illegal material onto your computers and devices…
    - gruez 5y ago
      Doesn't that obviously fall under entrapment?
      - 5y ago
waddlesworth 5y ago
I absolutely agree with you, although I'm a little more optimistic. 2PP has Labor winning the next election. Some key figures in the Liberal party (Frydenberg, Hunt) have some tough campaigns ahead of them after the massive bias against their home state that's been on display. Then there's the whole friendlyjordies thing, which I've heard commentary about in circles where I would have never expected it. I don't know if the usual election lies will cut it this time.
- nickcox 5y ago
  > I don't know if the usual election lies will cut it this time. People say that every time though and they always do.
- 0xy 5y ago
  Why would Labor winning change anything? Labor have voted for every single piece of surveillance legislation tendered over the last decade. The AA Bill, metadata retention and more. They voted for it all. They are vehement supporters of surveillance state policies and have voted for it -- repeatedly.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    At least they pretended to require amendments. But then they caved and gave in anyway, WTF.
- softveda 5y ago
  At best it will be a LNP or Labor minority govt. Very hard for Labor to win. Even if they did this issue will get the least priority amongst all things that Australia faces, like economic recovery, climate change, China, anti corruption body etc.
pentae 5y ago
As an Australian I respectfully disagree with you and agree with the article - most Australians just don't care. I've consistently mentioned this to my Australian friends, colleagues, family members for about 10 years now and it's always met with complacency. Most people don't care, some people care but won't do anything about it, and some people think that "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about". Most Australians trust the government will do the right thing.
- NoPicklez 5y ago
  As an Aussie as well, I think not knowing about something is often aligned with people also just not caring. This goes for most things technology really, most people don't care until it impacts them. We all have only a finite amount of things we can care about in a day and for many Aussies, laws, especially laws around the use of technology aren't front of mind for the average Australian. But as time goes on and these laws actually start to impact us, then you will see people caring.
  - hndamien 5y ago
    It's very Australian to care when it is too late.
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  Do you have enough historical counter examples to show how people absolutely did end up worrying? To be fair, Australia is a long way from Europe for instance, but I'm pretty sure examples from nearer by might still be available
- user123456780 5y ago
  > Most people don't care, some people care but won't do anything about it, and some people think that "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about". Most Australians trust the government will do the right thing. I think that is because of media portraying these laws as a positive thing. Almost exactly the line you're talking about. I'm pretty sure I have heard politicians saying exactly: "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about" Its a sad but true fact that 99% of Australians (probably rest of the western world) only gets their ongoing education (beyond high school/bachelors in a specific industry) from the mainstream media. And we have close enough to dictator level of media diversity pushing a single narrative. Its not wonder people dont care about their privacy being eroded.

rstuart4133 5y ago

I don't think it's that complex. I always thought it was inevitable that once everything we did happened via a computer, gathering it all together would be an irresistible attraction to man+dog. It was always going to accelerate, and it was always going to go into overshoot. And while it's painted in forum's like this as all negative, the reality is it's not. In fact there have been some pretty big positives. Crime levels have been dropping, while prosecutions have gone up. Criminologists have put that down to better surveillance. Cameras everywhere have meant the odds of getting caught for a given offense have gone up, so more people have been getting caught on their first offence. Amusingly, it's just just the criminals who have been on the receiving end of this - it's the law enforcers too. They used to be able to hide their overreaches behind the solidarity of the blue line. Now misbehaviour is very likely caught on a camera that's not behind the line, and the results have been on the world's headlines. I know the naturally privacy conscious feel like this is a personal invasion, I feel like that too on occasions. Their problem is that to date it's most likely been a net positive. Open societies with less criminality and corruption do better, and that seems to have been the net result so far. While like you I doubt many people have analysed in these terms, what they have done is evaluated how life is now vs before, and it seems OK. In simple terms, we can have more shiny things. Therefore the simply don't care some privacy guru seems a privacy apocalypse around the corner. So far the reverse has been true, and wot do these supposed experts know anyway? Still, I feel decidedly uncomfortable with the Assistance and Access bill, and its friends. My problem is not that they allow enough information to be mined - it's that they don't allow enough. Specifically, while they allow the government agencies to gather information on its citizens, the bills go out of their way to ensure the citizens have no idea how much their government is spying on them, or who is being spied upon, or why, or at whose behest. Without a little sunlight to sterilise things, it's inevitable malfeasance will grow in the dark. We already have numerous examples of petty privacy theft - police spying on their ex's, taxi's chasing credit card owners and the like. It's just a question of time before one politician plunders another's emails and polling data, or one of these systems gets hacked and mined for identity data for years before anybody becomes the wiser. The sad bit is, it is only after they have blatant examples staring them in the face that voters will conclude this overreach has downsides too. So we will have to suffer some real pain before there is a correction. The good news is the public education has already started. The Huawei bans are an example of that. It was only after Huawei won the contract to run the Danish telephone system, and later the Danish discovered their private data leaking across the world that politicians and intelligence agencies woke up to the fact the same data gathering capabilities they were exploiting could also be used against them. They reacted by banning Huawei. One day they will figure out that isn't going to fix the problem. We've since learnt Juniper was hacked for years, apparently by the Chinese who could watch all data flowing through their gear. And that's just the foreign players. In Russia we have private criminal gangs gathering data on a scale well beyond their Law Enforcement Agencies, and using it to shake down institutions like banks. The only cure I can see for this is a transparency on a scale we haven't seen to date. We have to put the days of blindly trusting government bureaucratic caesars to determine what data is collected, who can see it and what it is used for behind us. That information is too dangerous to be kept in the dark - it must be open to all citizens to inspect.

BelenusMordred 5y ago

> not the temporary State-Government health orders that some people have tried to blow out of proportion They banned single mothers from taking their child to playgrounds after being locked in their homes for weeks and then fined them thousands for doing so. They got rid of this absurd rule when cases rose by 3x, further highlighting how absolutely ridiculous it was. Certain state governments have clearly overstepped the mark and anyone defending them will not go down well in time. Thankfully you can't delete comments here.

Handytinge 5y ago
You're intentionally misrepresenting the facts here. They closed playgrounds - they did nothing to target single mothers specifically. And the removal was made based on vaccination position, which was announced well in advance. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, however my experience is that people who intentionally misrepresent a scenario usually don't go down well in time either.
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  > they did nothing to target single mothers specifically It was example of the outcome, not a declaration of the actual law. The Victorian government now has more cases than ever before and is amusingly opening up, dropping nearly all restrictions/curfews, they've been dragged kicking and screaming though this whole thing and have prided themselves on being the strictest state government possible with a tough on covid approach. Despite that, having the toughest restrictions and the world record for lockdowns, they still end up with the most deaths and infections in the country. Clearly whatever they are doing isn't working, yet the rusted-on types will support them no matter what while ignoring the clear and plain facts about the massive differential between state policy outcomes in Australia.

ImTheMaddest 5y ago

We can't blame the LNP for all of this. All of the surveillance related bills passed in the last 10 years have been bipartisan. I'd also go as far as to say this is what Australians want. Many people believe these laws won't be used against regular citizens and will assist in law enforcement efforts.

ntSean 5y ago
It isn't the LNP or ALP which decide which security laws are implemented. If you'd like an explainer on how security laws such as TOLA are enacted, this channel is a great resource: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu4rT3-GcHgLIHyrzA8RWzA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu4rT3-GcHgLIHyrzA8RWzA
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  It's so pathetic that every video I've seen about these issues, most of the videos on that channel you posted and EFA have like 100-200 views. Democracy dying with a whimper. Complacent is an understatement.
vel0city 5y ago
Laws are always used to prosecute criminals. The tricky thing is the definition of criminal can quickly be changed to include you.
- stephen_g 5y ago
  Or with the Access and Disrupt bill, it’s no longer much of a stretch to ‘add and modify’ some illegal material onto your computers and devices…
  - gruez 5y ago
    Doesn't that obviously fall under entrapment?
    - 5y ago

waddlesworth 5y ago

I absolutely agree with you, although I'm a little more optimistic. 2PP has Labor winning the next election. Some key figures in the Liberal party (Frydenberg, Hunt) have some tough campaigns ahead of them after the massive bias against their home state that's been on display. Then there's the whole friendlyjordies thing, which I've heard commentary about in circles where I would have never expected it. I don't know if the usual election lies will cut it this time.

nickcox 5y ago
> I don't know if the usual election lies will cut it this time. People say that every time though and they always do.
0xy 5y ago
Why would Labor winning change anything? Labor have voted for every single piece of surveillance legislation tendered over the last decade. The AA Bill, metadata retention and more. They voted for it all. They are vehement supporters of surveillance state policies and have voted for it -- repeatedly.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  At least they pretended to require amendments. But then they caved and gave in anyway, WTF.
softveda 5y ago
At best it will be a LNP or Labor minority govt. Very hard for Labor to win. Even if they did this issue will get the least priority amongst all things that Australia faces, like economic recovery, climate change, China, anti corruption body etc.

pentae 5y ago

As an Australian I respectfully disagree with you and agree with the article - most Australians just don't care. I've consistently mentioned this to my Australian friends, colleagues, family members for about 10 years now and it's always met with complacency. Most people don't care, some people care but won't do anything about it, and some people think that "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about". Most Australians trust the government will do the right thing.

NoPicklez 5y ago
As an Aussie as well, I think not knowing about something is often aligned with people also just not caring. This goes for most things technology really, most people don't care until it impacts them. We all have only a finite amount of things we can care about in a day and for many Aussies, laws, especially laws around the use of technology aren't front of mind for the average Australian. But as time goes on and these laws actually start to impact us, then you will see people caring.
- hndamien 5y ago
  It's very Australian to care when it is too late.
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Do you have enough historical counter examples to show how people absolutely did end up worrying? To be fair, Australia is a long way from Europe for instance, but I'm pretty sure examples from nearer by might still be available
user123456780 5y ago
> Most people don't care, some people care but won't do anything about it, and some people think that "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about". Most Australians trust the government will do the right thing. I think that is because of media portraying these laws as a positive thing. Almost exactly the line you're talking about. I'm pretty sure I have heard politicians saying exactly: "If i'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about" Its a sad but true fact that 99% of Australians (probably rest of the western world) only gets their ongoing education (beyond high school/bachelors in a specific industry) from the mainstream media. And we have close enough to dictator level of media diversity pushing a single narrative. Its not wonder people dont care about their privacy being eroded.