Aussies face 10 year browsing lock-up
Anything Europe does, Australia would like to think it can do better – and when it comes to snooping on individual internet usage, Australia is determined to lead the way. A report in ZDNet Australia this week reveals that the attorney-general's department has been holding discussions with industry on setting up an Australian …
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At this rate perhaps we should relocate Starlin's tomb in Canberra.
Yeah. At this rate perhaps we should relocate Starlin's tomb in Canberra.
Please don't give them ideas
"That would be like tapping people's phones before they are suspected of doing any crime."
Except that 10 years worth of all phone conversations would require much less storage, the data collected would have a much higher signal to noise ratio, and it is much less likely to be encrypted with military strength ciphers.
Enough with this police state mentality...
I would expect the Australian post office would have similar laws to the UK laws against a post office opening and reading post (as these laws were pushed through back in a time when people fought for freedom from state interference. So back then such interference was deemed totally illegal and morally wrong, so the law protects against for example open letters and parcels). I guess you can see where I'm going with this. Because its about time all lobbying against all these intrusive forms of spying started to use the example of the post office, as a metaphor that everyone can understand, to force home the idea of how morally wrong the state is in its aims to use the Internet as a means to spy on everyone.
Just because they can now open and read everything, doesn't mean they morally have the right to open and read and so spy outright on their population!
It would be an unthinkable, (even a criminal violation of privacy), for the post office to behave the way the governments want ISP's to behave. Its time this disparity was brought to everyone's attention *worldwide* and the post office provides a non-technical metaphor to get the message across to absolutely everyone so everyone can finally stand against their utterly morally corrupt governments with their increasing attitudes of totally spying on an entire population!
Its also more than time the Australians started protesting for a regime change. Enough of these arrogant Narcissists ruling over everyone. As the world becomes ever more connected, these arrogant Narcissists become ever more of a problem for all of us. :(
They are elected representatives, so its time they started representing the people they say they represent!
They sure as hell don't have the right to turn their countries into police states!
Internal mail can't be touched
But PARCELS from other countries can be x-rayed and/or searched by Customs....in every country.
They could take the view that internet involves things coming from other countries, so may be searched on this basis.
I wonder if they want to keep your searches that you type into the address bar? or if they're after every site you "visited"? would this include the nasty sites a Trojan redirected your browser to? then blame you for visiting places you've never even heard of?
And why 10 years? the statute of limitations is 7 years on crimes at the moment.
And what do they hope to gain from all that data, which they'd never be able to sort through? it's not as if it will give them warning of any terrorism in advance.
The Customs precedent won't wash. It is very hard to hide, say, 2 kilos of cocaine in an email attachment.
And if that kind of thing were possible, people might give priority to emailing letter-bombs to the idiots that dreamed up this spying scheme.
YAY!
I am so glad I immigrated to Canada and not to Australia 6 years ago. I remember telling my now ex-wife that I would never move to a country that had a political party with the slogan: "Australia for the white people". I am so happy I was right. Bunch of right wing nazis they have on the government there. I don't pity the average Aussie though. They are the ones that put those bastards in power.
They used to be such nice people. Is NZ crazy like that too? I hope the kiwis are not into this mess....
Talk about misinformed
If you think think that we have a "bunch of right wing nazis they have on the government there" you probably believe that the tooth fairy made your wife pregnant.
It's a far-left government of socialist idealogues, with an avowed communist as the deputy PM.
Who's misinformed?
If you think the Labor party are left-wing, you really need to read the news a bit more. The only parties of any size at all in Australia who aren't right-wing are the Greens and the Democrats, and neither of them could really be described as far-left either. The Greens are moderate-left and the Democrats are fairly centrist. Labor is mostly right-wing, just not as hard, frothing right-wing as the Liberals. Labor are about as "left" as Britain's NuLabour.
OK...
So exactly how did these nutjobs get the power to do this? Are they allowed to do this? (seem so) I dont remember giving them permission to do this. So what are we going to do about it Australia? We expect the Iraqis to rise up against the axis of evil Al Qaeda leader Saddam Hussein yet we do nothing, too distracted to make use of the democracy we have, too stupid to vote any other way, too gutless to take action.. that's right the footy is FAR more important, enjoy the cesspool YOU have created, I wont be here, I tried to warn everyone about this years ago... the conspiracy is only a theory.
@OK
What you do is not vote for either of the major party, ie nominally right or left, but strangely enough with the same policies and vote for another party, independent that favors common sense not batshit crazy.
The idiot responsible is Labor senator Stephen Conroy.
It's a sign...
It's a sign that those making these decision have "certain uncontrolled urges" and if they have to wall-off an entire continent to protect themselves from themselves, so be it.
Icon chosen because sooner or later, it'll be revealed that those pushing this insane agenda are flaming.
Requirement is on the ISPs, though
Unfortunately, the ISPs are the ones who are required to maintain the data. This means that the ISP will go out of business or raise rates to compensate. So that means that as the data piles up, the ISP rates will go up, and then everybody will link up to sattelite delivery and just skip over the Oz firewall, data retention, and insane snooping laws.
Then the politicians will outlaw all sattelite communication, and will forget to write a provision for government exemption. So everything that communicates with a sattelite will be off the air, including things like GPS.
Finally all electronic communication will be banned, and everything must be written (typed, no less) on postcards.
But who is the ISP anyways?
Is the ISP that the citizen uses to connect to the internet going to be the one who has to snoop on all traffic and store the emails?
In the case they use a non australian ISP for their email boxes, that ISP has no legal obligation to Aussie law, so they won't store the emails... Is it then not simply a matter of not using port 25 and 110, but the SSL encrypted ports instead and use the sending SMTP server of that non Aussie ISP?
Its really too easy to circumvent this rule, rendering it completely useless and just costing Australian ISP's and tax payers a lot of money.
There's so many other ways to communicate, email is for old people...
don't blame the govt
we do live in a democracy (more or less). ask around and most Australians would *want* this.
had a surreal conversation with PhD lit student of Melbourne uni last week. she was shocked (and horrified) that the govt *wasn't* currently logging web traffic.
Australia has never had any particular culture of individual freedom and that's what needs to change - spitting the dummy at the govt doesn't help
"Consulted broadly" with the telecomms industry?
Based on past history, that means Mr Conroy rang up one of Telstra's government relations people and said "Yeah we're thinking of doing this, would you people object to it? How about if I threatened your job if you didn't comply? Good, thanks."
Hmmmmm
Yeah... I have not read the report and to see if it applies to EVERYONE or just persons of interest., based upon PROVEN needs...
OK so I can say this fucking nazi reigeme (where is dictiionary) stuff is just soooooo bad., and it is...
But at the same time Austraia is as full of arseholes as everywhere else and I don't want arse holes getting away with all sorts of scams on a personal or national interest basis.
And yes our governments are inclined to exercise the "night and fog" decree, using "official agencies" to exorcise fear and intimidation against our citizens.
It's an issue tho - of fine tooth combing the entire nation through stratafied sources, using Google searches, using internet filtering, and keeping records for 10 years...
And recording everything...
Australia is filled with shitheads, and this is an excellent way to "get the dumber ones" who need to use these ways to communicate over longer distances, but I dunno.....
What email to be tracked?
What about the details...
What do they mean by 'subscriber'?
Does the email retention apply to Oz-based services only?
Or accessed through an Australian ISP?
Web-based email?
What if I'm in Oz but using an overseas-hosted mail service (encrypted or not).
What if I'm outside Oz accessing an Australian-based email service.
Are Facebook messages outside of the scope of this? Why?
etc..
i have an idea for the aussies
Everyone just send eleventy billion emails and ping every site indexed by google on a daily basis. Then lol when you do something naughty and they have to get the ISPs to find it.
Mad as cut snakes
Don't be fooled.
The current Oz government is beholden to the far-right xtian extremists.
These morons actually think they can sanitise the Internet.
They truly think they can.
Asshats, the lot of them.
The truth
OK, time to tell it like it really is, now LISTEN UP AND LEARN!!!!
IT's not about terrorism or paedophilia, it's about controlling and censoring the spread of information regarding the atrocities committed against the world populations in order to implement the Draconian Global Government forming as we speak.
The global banking and corporate Elite that control all Western Governments and ALL mainstream media are starting to panic as information available on the net is waking people up to the truth.
Truth/fact: 911 was an inside job, it's scientifically proven. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scam, there is zero evidence to support it. The credit crisis was engineered through manipulation of derivatives. All major terrorist acts in recent times have been organised by the Elite controlled CIA.
The collapse of global economies via the carbon trading scam, the credit crisis, the attack on fossil fuel infrastructure is central to their plans as they want to reduce world population, and desire world populations to be poor, scared, weak, and desperate enough to accept, even welcome the new Tyrannical, Orwellian Global Government.
Now they're accelerating plans worldwide in multiple countries to censor the net. Wake up people and THINK!
No worries...
I'll let them have all the spam, and just keep a clean inbox :-)
I can see it now
Aussie gov : your web site shows restrict material . We are going to arrest you .
innocent guy: But my web site is not hosted in oz and I'm not an Aussie.
Aussie gov : to bad your site contains subversive material .
Innocent guy: fuck off ass holes. I'm an American in the USA good luck on trying get me with this BS
Aussie gov: Hello White house, we have located a Muslim terrorist in your country.
IPSec
"plus applying crypto to messages etc."
The solution has been around for quite a while -- people REALLY should start using IPSec. The main advantage being it's at the IP layer, so the crypto is essentially transparent. "They" will still be able to record what machines you are connection to, and possibly the port, but the http headers and junk would all be encrypted. The ISP probably couldn't even play "man in the middle" because the CPU load would rapidly become too high from handling all that crypto.
This wouldn't help for E-Mail, of course, but there's already crypto available for E-Mail, plus the possibility of just not using your ISP's E-Mail server.
In the 18th century...
...in the (then) colonies. We had this problem with firearms. It led to our (now famous) 2nd amendment. It seems that now in the 21st century the world needs something to prevent the sniffing noses of government out of our internet habits.
Look, if they suspect something, let them get a warrant (or equivalent). But having everything on the internet recorded (which this appears to be coming to). This is like having every conversation that ever was recorded "just in case". How silly is this (very!). We don't have enough storage capacity to do part of this even now, so why are we even trying.
Get real!
Overwhem the system
To counteract this what is needed is a WEB site obfuscator that is a browser add-on that would troll through randomly selected sites to hide the real browsing but would also create such a data logging volume that it would force the government to allow off line storage of the data because of the sheer volume and cost of maintaining the data online. The big problem is that politicians don't have the mental capability to understand the volume of data these moronic ideas would require to be stored.
I don't get what is happening ot the "free world"
Everyday you can read about some new law that is introduced, which negatively impact on the freedom, private lives, and reduction of civil liberties, where the state, and bureaucrats continually undermine those freedoms, that cost the lives of so many forebearers.
I really wonder, the "free world" will very soon have to change the designation, as it's is no longer free, and it is starting to be comparable to china and other restrictive regimes. I won't be long before "the free world" will refer to china, iran, and so forth, if we keep going the way we're going.
Most of the changes that "the free world" are introducing are measures that were the ultimate wet dreams of the KGB, SS, and various secret police forces.
It's sad to see.
And it's all brought in with arguments about pedophilia, terror, and other such things, completely ignoring the negative side effects of those laws, I really don't see what these new laws are giving us that we didn't have before, except for the loss of private life, civil liberties and so forth, because the state is not taking police powers that do not belong in a free society.
And unfortunately, not a singel westeren country is excempt from this.
Sounds like a laugh!
Yes I completely disagree with it but can you imagine what a complete waste of time and effort this will be. I mean can you imagine ten years of emails of average person...
"Hi Derek, yeah I'm great. How's the weather? See you and Susan on Tuesday. Bye"
"Yo dude, lik wo't hapnin. sis'all fukd here man, yo cmin ovr man?"
"I really like him, but you know, he's like really really like you know and I told Amy and she's all like you know and I'm like yeah but, you know wot like, but he's like you know?"
Samual Pepys has nothing on this lot! Yep, a huge database full of the most staggering drivel ever passed between members of the human race. Still it will give historians something fun to read, when the human race finally grows up and realises that we let a bunch of dumb fucktards rule over us!
SMTP email
The only way I reckon this would be easily done was if home users all used SMTP relays that belonged to the ISPs. As far as I can make out, SMTP in the home user scene is dying out in favour of Hotmail and Gmail etc, which would require at least DPI work to intercept, not to mention that they both support SSL encryption anyway and are surely not far away from switching it on by default.
Again, stellar government thinking that is technically flawed from the start.
Go back to basics
With all thats going on with the internet you all have to think ouside the box.
Cancel your Face book accounts, encrypt all (emails while its still legal) and finally go back a step and buy a portable typewriter from any op shop and type your letters and then send them through the mail.
And when you have done this dont forget to photocopy the Item before sending it as well as remembering not to touch the letter or envelope without surgical gloves( finger prints and DNA) as well as getting someone else to lick the stamp and finally post as far away from home as possible.
The filter
Haven't any of you idiots realised that the filter infrastructure proposed by the egregious Senator Conroy is ideal for this kind of mass-scale interception?
What did you think it was for?
Protect your liberty - Use crypto
As has been stated many times, there are so many ways to circumvent this kind of filtering. The reg did a great HowTo for securing your email a while back:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/14/email_encryption_how_to/
And regarding Hotmail / Gmail - they already have far to much access to their users personal information.
I use a nice (and free) combination of SSH / Putty and SOCKS to create a secure tunnel to the net via a cheap hosting account. Firefox can be configured to forward DNS requests to the remote proxy too, so my ISP has zero profile on my surfing habits.
http://thinkhole.org/wp/2006/05/10/howto-secure-firefox-and-im-with-putty/
It's not that I have anything to hide (apart from my plans to geneticly cross breed the worlds strongest chilli plant), it's entirely about having the right to individual privacy - and that is a right that we all have to exercise or it WILL be taken away from us.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
As true now as it was then, if not more so.
Whats Next?
Will the Australian government require that people are fitted with voice recorders that record everything they say?
Seems like the Australian government is attempting to become the poster child for totalitarianism.
I guess you can only emigrate to Australia now if you have tendency towards Dictatorship.
Not thought through....
...for two obvious reasons....
Firstly, the cost of securely storing this amount of data for that period of time will be huge.
Secondly, everyone, and certainly those at which this is aimed at will just start using VPNs and encrypted communications. I already make use of these services myself now.
And surely it's a violation of your human rights or something like that - I mean if every postal letter you wrote was intercepted, read and a copy stored for 10 years...!
"CHICKEN LITTLE SYNDROME".
Someone puts an article on line that's so science fiction to be impossible and everyone gets the "CHICKEN LITTLE SYNDROME".
That's the trouble when average educated people have to much coffee and are put next to a keyboard.
Lots of "THE WORLDS ENDING" but no technical facts at all. Nothing is thought threw, Just ramblings of incoherent thoughts and emotions.
From what I have read of the posts 98% are not deep thinkers, but try this on. Could it be that the press releases are put out for a reason? THINK, WHY? ....... To shake you up!.......
After all half the game is phycological.
Why spend the money when they can write articles that will get the job done for them for free.
You'll see more article's. Ask yourself? who gets them published? Ever asked yourself that? Who's driving the agenda?
They know your (lack of) education, how you spend your time, how many hours in front of the TV, the average IQ is about 100 ( not to bright). That's perfect for this type of campaign.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING. ...Well,,,,,,,not really, He just wrote an impossible article about saving everyone's web browser activity for 10 years and gave it to a reporter and then went to lunch. There still laughing there ass off about this one over there. This gets filed under URBAN LEGENDS.
You on the other hand are crouched beside your front window. Moving the curtains aside slowly with a stick because you thought a government agent was sneaking through your yard. Your computer is unplugged because of the new super government spy bug there using. You know the story is true because its written by the same people that said this story is true.
10 years
That's the old trick, then they "settle" for 5 and claim it to be a huge victory for privacy.
Is encryption legal in Australia?
I don't recall the WWII era restrictions on encryption ever being lifted, although there haven't been any recent prosecutions that I know of.
We always had telecommunications policies reminiscent of other Asian nations (Burma springs to mind, China to a lesser degree), so I don't know why you are all acting surprised now.
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