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I wonder what would cause you to say something so stupid. When you say "this shit" do you mean the negative image the USA is gaining from this? Why on earth wo

I wonder what would cause you to say something so stupid. When you say "this shit" do you mean the negative image the USA is gaining from this? Why on earth would you prefer to remain in ignorant bliss about these happenings?

nwh 13y ago
No, I thought that Australia was independent enough that we wouldn't be ferrying our data to the United States. It's a reasonably enough assumption.
- DanBC 13y ago
  People on HN have been mentioning ECHELON and five eyes. ECHELON is a system from the 90s, and involved Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK, and the US.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Five Eyes itself dates back literally to the last World War as well.
bigiain 13y ago
I read that not as "stupid", but (perhaps incorrectly) as a fellow Australian finally admitting to themselves that we're fooling ourselves if we think we can point an laugh at USA's treatment of their citizens while hiding behind some expectation that our local government is treating us with any more respect. The sad thing is, our government is no better, out intelligence service is just as amoral and unaccountable, and our civil liberty movement is ineffectual to the point of being invisible. Perhaps "ignorant bliss" was preferable…
- robryan 13y ago
  Actually it is likely worse than the US, the US government spying would generally stay US government only. Whereas ours in Australia is likely accessible by US agencies.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    Indeed, and given the NSA's unique interpretations of some fairly commonly understood english words (like for example "collect" and "no"), I have no doubt that they're capable of creative legal interpretations where they can look their elected representatives and (in theory) overseers in the eye and say "we're not spying on US citizens" - claiming later if caught that it's "the least untruthful answer" - when what they really meant was "we asked the Australians to spy on US citizens for us, and hand over everything they found. _We_ didn't engage in any spying." On the plus side, while I have niggling doubts about whether GPG and encfs/OpenSSL/AES are really secure against the NSA - I'm reasonably sure that even if they've got practical attacks against them, they aren't likely to be sharing even the existence of them with ASIO. I'm as close to 100% certain as makes no difference that GPG/encfs are secure against even the most powerful Australian government agencies (which is to say, only as secure as anything that'd break easily with rubber hose cryptography…).

nwh 13y ago

No, I thought that Australia was independent enough that we wouldn't be ferrying our data to the United States. It's a reasonably enough assumption.

DanBC 13y ago
People on HN have been mentioning ECHELON and five eyes. ECHELON is a system from the 90s, and involved Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK, and the US.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Five Eyes itself dates back literally to the last World War as well.

bigiain 13y ago

I read that not as "stupid", but (perhaps incorrectly) as a fellow Australian finally admitting to themselves that we're fooling ourselves if we think we can point an laugh at USA's treatment of their citizens while hiding behind some expectation that our local government is treating us with any more respect. The sad thing is, our government is no better, out intelligence service is just as amoral and unaccountable, and our civil liberty movement is ineffectual to the point of being invisible. Perhaps "ignorant bliss" was preferable…

robryan 13y ago
Actually it is likely worse than the US, the US government spying would generally stay US government only. Whereas ours in Australia is likely accessible by US agencies.
- bigiain 13y ago
  Indeed, and given the NSA's unique interpretations of some fairly commonly understood english words (like for example "collect" and "no"), I have no doubt that they're capable of creative legal interpretations where they can look their elected representatives and (in theory) overseers in the eye and say "we're not spying on US citizens" - claiming later if caught that it's "the least untruthful answer" - when what they really meant was "we asked the Australians to spy on US citizens for us, and hand over everything they found. _We_ didn't engage in any spying." On the plus side, while I have niggling doubts about whether GPG and encfs/OpenSSL/AES are really secure against the NSA - I'm reasonably sure that even if they've got practical attacks against them, they aren't likely to be sharing even the existence of them with ASIO. I'm as close to 100% certain as makes no difference that GPG/encfs are secure against even the most powerful Australian government agencies (which is to say, only as secure as anything that'd break easily with rubber hose cryptography…).