back to article Oz Attorney-General wants ISPs to hold data for 2 years

Australia’s descent into internet madness continues apace with the leak of confidential minutes suggesting that that country’s law enforcement agencies have no understanding of either the technology behind the web, the ethics behind a functioning democracy – or both. If such leaks are to be believed, the Office of the …

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  1. Denarius
    FAIL

    more timid twits

    typical bureaucrat and lazy bean counter based pollie proposal.

    Remember the clerks who think degrees make life experience irrelevant and political parties bought and paid for by the wealthy will only see the common herd as food for their own aims.

    Ironic this is the same mob pushing a $45G broadband net work

  2. lglethal Silver badge
    Welcome

    Dont worry World...

    From every single Australian ive talked to (not just young 20-somethings, but even reaching to the levels of my parents and their friends!), this has finally begun to seep into the conscious of voting Australians that this governments IT policies are likely to destroy our rights to privacy and our accepted societal norms.

    The makings of a massive backlash are forming - Believe me this will never get off the ground, just like the bloody firewall!

  3. mmiied

    to misqoute a tenis star

    "you can not be SERIOUS"

  4. mark l 2 Silver badge
    WTF?

    Oz internet in meltdown

    They want to hold passport info for every internet connection, im guessing that if this comes in then all public WIFI spots and internet cafes are going to have to ask you to provide a passport before you can logon and check your email? WTF is going on in Oz i have family there and was considering moving there myself at some point but i think thats going to be on hold or at least ill be using a VPN to surf but how long before they get ISPs to block VPN. tor traffic under national security concerns

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Inmate Island

    How do we expect the inhabitants of the largest Prison Island of the British Reich, errm Empire to think ? Like proper inmates. You don't have uncontrolled communications in a prison, do you ?

    But this is smoke&mirrors anyway, as the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) already has all the data and interception capabilities. Now Ozie Law Enforcement want their own jar pot where they can stick in their stinky fingers, because DSD won't let them as often as they would prefer.

  6. Roger B
    FAIL

    Australian Life

    A few years ago I spent a year working in Sydney and much to my parents annonyance I came back to the UK, they could'nt understand why I would leave and why I'd not bought a flat out there so they had somewhere to stay!

    While I admit having the surf and the mountains so close was nice and Sydney harbour is beautiful you soon realise that Australia has just the same problems as the rest of us, racist attacks on the beach was a big thing when I was there, dodgy police, boy racers and one strange restriction no 18 certifcate games for my 360 and yet its fine to have a brothel on every other street? weird.

    After reading the most recent events though relating to internet usage like this and the black list of websites I am now more than happy that I left and came back to the UK, but when ever I mention this to my parents they see it as such a small factor in life out there. I sometimes wonder if a majority of people will live with restrictions like this, after all, if they cant see what they are missing how do they know somethings wrong?

    Will people end up using Twitter as a method to communicate with Australians to inform them what is happening in the real world?

  7. NRT

    This should be easy to break.

    There are a number of add-ons that fire off random search requests to stop profiling (TrackMeNot on Firefox). A change to the programme to follow one of the returned urls in the background should swamp the collected data with noise.

    1. Steven Knox
      Black Helicopters

      Not necessarily a good idea

      Since the next logical* step for the government to take would be to mine the logs looking for anyone accessing suspect sites, having an add-on that regularly runs random searches and visits random sites might not be the best idea...

      *Logical within the context of the absurd framework of this plan, that is.

  8. Alien Doctor 1.1
    Big Brother

    At last...

    I know Aus was the bucket into which we poured our detritus many years ago, but at last I now know where we've sent the neo-labour scum-suckers that ran the U.K. for the last 13 years.

    I hope Tony, Gordon, Wacqui-Jacqui, Alan, David et al feel at home down-under.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "law enforcement agencies..."

    "...have no understanding of either the technology behind the web, the ethics behind a functioning democracy – or both."

    A fair description of those professions pretty much everywhere I'd have thought. Certainly true of the UK.

    They all have their own agendas, which have very little to do with public service much of the time.

  10. Chris Miller

    Eric Blair, thou should'st be living ...

    The creatures outside looked from Australia to China, and from China to Australia, and from Australia to China again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

  11. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Twunks the lot of them

    What next, all Aussies to only use the net while a Policeman sits next to them?

    Idiots, fools and politicians.

  12. Otto von Humpenstumpf
    Alert

    Dear Ozzies,

    do yourselves a favour and chase these clowns out of Canberra while you still have the option. Otherwise you'll be in the situation as we've been over here on the UK, and you'll end up with a thirteen-year long nightmare of disappearing privacy, data-collection mad ministers, and a government that dumps on civil liberties from a great height.

    All the best.

    1. Chad H.
      Grenade

      The problem is....

      The problem is the clowns in the other party made similar pushes when they were in government.

      One might be tempted to some up with some sort of conspiracy theory involving a hidden individual preparing Australia for a Tyranical Dictatorship

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        "Tyranical Dictatorship"

        "...One might be tempted to some up with some sort of conspiracy theory involving a hidden individual preparing Australia for a Tyranical Dictatorship".

        All countries are preparing for that. And with the plebs rising up against their overlords in the next few years, across the western world, that's exactly what will happen. They haven't been creating a police state just for fun you know.

        Democracy is so 20th century.

  13. Dazed and Confused

    how long

    till every website in Oz redirects everything to HTTPS?

    Going to make for some very boring logs.

    Given Australia's history of leaking personal data from government computers you can see why they don't want to own the database, they know how secure it would be then.

  14. Asgard
    Big Brother

    What Australia wants is totally Orwellian...

    With a government so hell bent on created a Police State it looks like the Australian people have no choice. They have to protest for a regime change because they are being ruled by literally sociopathic tyrants. This increasingly tyrannical control is not for society, its for them in power, so it is literally sociopathic.

    Sociopathic: “a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience” ... Their own actions prove they don't care about freedom, liberty or privacy because they show they are determined to mercilessly control everyone so their actions are sociopathic.

    All politicians are government representatives and the role of government representatives is to represent the people (like they say they represent, when they want the people to vote them into power). Yet this lot of tyrants in Australia are dictating to the people. Its time to throw them out of power. The people say, the politician do, not the other way around. The politicians work for the people and the people are not slaves to be herded to do what the tyrannical politicians want. Yet that is exactly how these sociopathic tyrannical politicians are behaving.

    They show they are determined to abuse technology to create a Police State. Yet in an ever more connected world, these repressive sociopathic tyrants become an ever bigger problem for all of us in every country. Not least because other leaders will use what Australia creates. This has to be stopped. Australia is trying to lead the world into constructing an outright Orwellian Police State.

    History is filled with examples of the dangers of when repressive tyrants gain ever more power to rule over their people. Its why so many in history have fought and died trying to free their societies from state interference. Its why freedom, liberty and privacy from state interference is so important. Australia is heading into a horrific situation. :(

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Maybe

      ...they should simply grill their Ozi MPs a little bit on the issue. That's how people in democratic countries ensure sanity in politics.

      1. Alan Newbury
        Flame

        Re: Maybe...

        We tend not to use grills - barbecues work much better...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Hilarious!

    "It would like IP address linked to a personal identifier, such as a passport."

    I love that one. Fantastic, I needed a bloody good laugh on a Friday afternoon!

  16. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    WTF?

    So what *is* the Australian terrorist threat this is all for?

    Authentic/Continuity//Real/Accept-n0-substitute IRA?

    Would they not be more likely to be blowing stuff up in NI, or the UK mainland?

    Fundamentalist Christian anti-abortionists?

    Not that barking mad.

    Aboriginal rights?

    Hardly likely to be in the ANC catagory.

    Seriously, when was the last terrorist "incident" on Australian soil?

    So WTF is this pervasive surveillance *meant* to be countering?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Identity theft anyone?

    With all those details locked up in, SECURE, ISP databases. Who will get the blame for identity theft?

    The Banks, the ISP's, the government.

    ahh you mustnt have your AV up to date. You looser.

    Joke alert! I wish!

  18. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Pint

    What's the problem here?

    The ISPs should just turn round to the government and say, "OK, it's all done.".

    Of course, it won't be, but the government are clearly *so far short* of having any clue whatsoever about anything more technical than digital watch, that they'd probably never notice.

  19. D. M
    Big Brother

    La Révélation

    All these mad laws are part of gov war against people. We have no good politician who would earn people's vote. All of them are so afraid of people.

    The only hope is when people realised politicians must represent people's will, their job is to serve people, not the other way round. Only then, people will wake up and throw those blood sucker control freaks out for good.

  20. John 179

    Identity theft, indeed

    Yes, you're right. We should be worried about unencrypted (or poorly encrypted) data being stored in someone's database.

    Of course, we can use PGP or TrulyMail or the like to encrypt our email and we can use Firefox add-ons to encrypt our browsing sessions where possible but still, keep ANY information on my where it might be harvested later just seems like something bad for me.

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