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> Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to outlaw the practice after the details of a private WhatsApp group involving hundreds of Jewish Australians were pu

> Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to outlaw the practice after the details of a private WhatsApp group involving hundreds of Jewish Australians were published online in February. Uploading "the details" of an online group is not doxxing. It is an unhelpfully broad superset of interpretations that include anything from inside jokes to someone's cellphone number. Doxxing means what it always has - posting someone's physical location or credentials that lead to that information. This is a perversion of the term.

ranger_danger 2y ago
You should see their "coercive control" law.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
So publishing a telephone book is now a crime against humanity?
- Retric 2y ago
  Inclusion in a phone books was optional. Edit: And required setting up a phone line with the company distributing this information.
  - qup 2y ago
    If I offer an opt-out option for my doxxing website, it'll be fine?
    - Retric 2y ago
      No. Phone companies only included actual customers, and it was clear when signing up what would happen. Your doxxing website has no relationship with a random celebrity or such implied consent.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In the US at least, sort of but not really. It was definitely opt-out--for a fee. There's a huge amount of information that is public as a matter of law. I'm sure that many people here don't like the degree of that information being public but nonetheless it is. See also recent discussion on salary information.
    - Retric 2y ago
      It was always free to not be a customer. The fee applied to customers who wanted an unusual service.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        Yes. You could not have a landline telephone. Which was not very practical for most people pre-cell phones.
        Retric 2y ago
        Not initially, phone’s have been around long enough it’s easy to forget ubiquity took time. At the beginning you just said the name and location of the person you wanted to call. Publishing names addresses and phone numbers was a useful feature after phone numbers existed but before everyone had a pocket supercomputer. Callers avoid needing to talk to an operator and addresses distinguished between different John Smith’s. So being included was just part of the service. Sure some people with unusual requests were charged more, but it’s inherently a different situation from doxxing. If you pay a carpenter to build you a deck you can’t exactly sue them for trespassing while they’re doing what you asked for.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Also, the world changes over time. Phone books do seem to have included a bit more info than it is currently prudent to share. It was before industrial-scale scamming. Didn’t schools used to use social security numbers as student IDs. And then use them to post grades, or something like that? (I might be mixing up stories).
- klyrs 2y ago
  Wild, isn't it? Just recently they criminalized calling 911 and lying to them about being in distress at somebody else's house. Free speech!
kspacewalk2 2y ago
>or credentials that lead to that information. Including names and/or phone numbers. What exactly was leaked from the WhatsApp group? Did it include names and/or phone numbers?
- viraptor 2y ago
  Names, images, professions, social media accounts at least. Not sure about phone numbers. But it was enough for some to be identified and threatened enough to make them hide away from their home.
decremental 2y ago
[flagged]
viraptor 2y ago
> Doxxing means what it always has - posting someone's physical location That's not really what it always meant. Publishing the real name of someone maintaining anonymity online is also doxing. Wikipedia uses "providing personally identifiable information" for example. There's lots of cases historically of social media users, streamers, creators getting doxed, as in their identity being revealed.
FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
More context: > Pro-Palestinian advocates who shared the transcript from the WhatsApp group have defended the move as being in the public interest and rejected the suggestion it was doxxing. They argue personal details beyond names were largely redacted. (From [1].) The immediate question is: Ok, what information was in those transcripts? Presumably it was something that would have supported the Palestinian cause, or else the activists wouldn't have released it. So what was it? Those "targeted" would not have reacted so strongly if the contents had not, in fact, made them look very bad. So we can make a decent guess about what the transcripts contained. To be specific, we can infer that the chat probably contained a lot of dehumanizing rhetoric about Palestinians coming from powerful Australians. In fact, after looking around a little more, this appears to be part of a larger back-and-forth. It looks like there was a campaign, by a group of lawyers, to get fired a number of prominent people who had expressed pro-Palestinian views (to make an example of them, we must assume), e.g., Antoinette Lattouf of the ABC (she was indeed fired). If I'm understanding correctly, this document release came from the pro-Palestinian side, to show the workings of this group. Some other sources like Matt Chun appear to be firing broadsides from the pro-Palestinian direction [2]. His sub stack is a little too long on left-cant and a little short on content, but there is some information there. I am left unsure as to what exactly is going on between these various factions in Australia, but this gives some idea. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/federal-government-to-criminalise-doxxing/103458052 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/federal-government-to... [2] https://mattchun.substack.com/archive https://mattchun.substack.com/archive
- globalnode 2y ago
  I have not read your links, but I can only assume from watching events unfold elsewhere that what is happening in Australia is a subset of the global situation.
Saturnial22 2y ago
[flagged]

ranger_danger 2y ago

You should see their "coercive control" law.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

So publishing a telephone book is now a crime against humanity?

Retric 2y ago
Inclusion in a phone books was optional. Edit: And required setting up a phone line with the company distributing this information.
- qup 2y ago
  If I offer an opt-out option for my doxxing website, it'll be fine?
  - Retric 2y ago
    No. Phone companies only included actual customers, and it was clear when signing up what would happen. Your doxxing website has no relationship with a random celebrity or such implied consent.
- ghaff 2y ago
  In the US at least, sort of but not really. It was definitely opt-out--for a fee. There's a huge amount of information that is public as a matter of law. I'm sure that many people here don't like the degree of that information being public but nonetheless it is. See also recent discussion on salary information.
  - Retric 2y ago
    It was always free to not be a customer. The fee applied to customers who wanted an unusual service.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Yes. You could not have a landline telephone. Which was not very practical for most people pre-cell phones.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Not initially, phone’s have been around long enough it’s easy to forget ubiquity took time. At the beginning you just said the name and location of the person you wanted to call. Publishing names addresses and phone numbers was a useful feature after phone numbers existed but before everyone had a pocket supercomputer. Callers avoid needing to talk to an operator and addresses distinguished between different John Smith’s. So being included was just part of the service. Sure some people with unusual requests were charged more, but it’s inherently a different situation from doxxing. If you pay a carpenter to build you a deck you can’t exactly sue them for trespassing while they’re doing what you asked for.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Also, the world changes over time. Phone books do seem to have included a bit more info than it is currently prudent to share. It was before industrial-scale scamming. Didn’t schools used to use social security numbers as student IDs. And then use them to post grades, or something like that? (I might be mixing up stories).
klyrs 2y ago
Wild, isn't it? Just recently they criminalized calling 911 and lying to them about being in distress at somebody else's house. Free speech!

kspacewalk2 2y ago

>or credentials that lead to that information. Including names and/or phone numbers. What exactly was leaked from the WhatsApp group? Did it include names and/or phone numbers?

viraptor 2y ago
Names, images, professions, social media accounts at least. Not sure about phone numbers. But it was enough for some to be identified and threatened enough to make them hide away from their home.

decremental 2y ago

[flagged]

viraptor 2y ago

> Doxxing means what it always has - posting someone's physical location That's not really what it always meant. Publishing the real name of someone maintaining anonymity online is also doxing. Wikipedia uses "providing personally identifiable information" for example. There's lots of cases historically of social media users, streamers, creators getting doxed, as in their identity being revealed.

FooBarBizBazz 2y ago

More context: > Pro-Palestinian advocates who shared the transcript from the WhatsApp group have defended the move as being in the public interest and rejected the suggestion it was doxxing. They argue personal details beyond names were largely redacted. (From [1].) The immediate question is: Ok, what information was in those transcripts? Presumably it was something that would have supported the Palestinian cause, or else the activists wouldn't have released it. So what was it? Those "targeted" would not have reacted so strongly if the contents had not, in fact, made them look very bad. So we can make a decent guess about what the transcripts contained. To be specific, we can infer that the chat probably contained a lot of dehumanizing rhetoric about Palestinians coming from powerful Australians. In fact, after looking around a little more, this appears to be part of a larger back-and-forth. It looks like there was a campaign, by a group of lawyers, to get fired a number of prominent people who had expressed pro-Palestinian views (to make an example of them, we must assume), e.g., Antoinette Lattouf of the ABC (she was indeed fired). If I'm understanding correctly, this document release came from the pro-Palestinian side, to show the workings of this group. Some other sources like Matt Chun appear to be firing broadsides from the pro-Palestinian direction [2]. His sub stack is a little too long on left-cant and a little short on content, but there is some information there. I am left unsure as to what exactly is going on between these various factions in Australia, but this gives some idea. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/federal-government-to-criminalise-doxxing/103458052 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/federal-government-to... [2] https://mattchun.substack.com/archive https://mattchun.substack.com/archive

globalnode 2y ago
I have not read your links, but I can only assume from watching events unfold elsewhere that what is happening in Australia is a subset of the global situation.

Saturnial22 2y ago

[flagged]