back to article Oz crime-busters' calls for data retention get louder

The Australian Crime Commission is the latest agency to demand that Australia's government – and by extension, its citizens – embrace the surveillance state. With the opening of a Senate inquiry reviewing the Telecommunications Interception Act, the ACC's acting chief executive Paul Jevtovic has called for telcos to be …

COMMENTS

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  1. M Gale

    "without a stick we are getting rejections"

    People with free will in using-their-free-will SHOCKER.

  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    Devil

    Hey, asshats!

    Record this: Fuck off

  3. Sanctimonious Prick
    WTF?

    Can't Wait

    For the first case to be tried with METADATA evidence - hopefully the METADATA will be deemed inadmissible - for freaking obvious reasons!!!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What happened?

    Did Tony Blair borg Australia or something while they weren't looking? They used to make a studious effort to portray themselves as devil-may-care, but these days they seem to be vying to be frontrunners in some competition to be the illiberal capital of the world.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What happened?

      No, but we do have our own "Tony".

      He's also a religious bigot and a flat-earther.

      1. P. Lee

        Re: What happened?

        I didn't know Mr Rabbit was a member of the ACC or that the ACC was part of the flat earth society.

        Or are you just spamming hate?

        In other news, organizations seek more power and politicians interfere.

      2. jgarbo
        Terminator

        Re: What happened?

        The Mad Monk is CIA/NSA-approved. He stays. Get back to the footie and your VBs, and let the grownups do the job. Cobber...

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Gimp

    Clearly the law needs to be changed alright.

    To mandate the destruction of the metadata as well.

    And you'd think the word that the EU Data Retention Directive is being binned had not reached the antipodes.

    Let's be clear. This has (as usual) f**k all to do with "fighting crime" and is the usual data fetishist obsession with knowing (and storing) more data about everybody, because they can.

    "Fighting crime" is just the excuse de jour.

  6. DropBear
    Mushroom

    Exactly. Who the hell decided snooping on who and when I talk to is fair game?!? This must not stand.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If they're going to do this for real...

    Then the data should be impossibly encrypted, and the keys placed solely in the hands of an impeccable judge that overseas each and every data access which is logged and made public! Otherwise, welcome to your new police state Stasi drinkers! Er-- I meant 4X drinkers there...

  8. Down not across

    Reform

    "These issues will increasingly impact the ability of the ACC to fulfil its functions without reform."

    Ah, I suggest you reform then.

  9. -tim

    We've seen this before

    If the statute of limitations doesn't exist, why shouldn't the government keep their data for ever? It won't be pleasant if you happen to be on the receiving end of their request for an explanation decades after the fact but you didn't have anything to hide? Did you citizen?

    Claiming to be fighting crime is always how the control freaks start.

  10. FlatEarther
    Big Brother

    Is this a joke?

    "Jevtovic said the data retention is required in case today's citizen becomes tomorrow's person of interest."

    I can't believe he said it with a straight face. And that everyone listening just accepted it and didn't walk over and punch him right there and then.

    Why not lock us all up straight away just in case?

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Gimp

      Re: Is this a joke?

      "Why not lock us all up straight away just in case?"

      To these people the answer is not "Because that would be a police state where due process and the right of trial by jury has gone down the gurgler."

      It is "Because we don't have enough space (yet)."

      But you're quite right surveillance without warrant --> imprisonment without trial --> world without crime.

      Or at least as far as I can tell that's how these people reason.

      Personally I think such thinking should be grounds for a stay in a room with mattress wallpaper.

  11. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Australians trying to out do the Americans

    Australia, like several countries, are hung up on American technology. This time the Australians want to outdo the Yanks.

    Not satisfied with hosting two NSA controlled spy stations, it has even built it's very own Australian-only spy base. One of it's other bases has NSA-staff only areas and that, along with another, have remote controlled NSA satellite spy facilities.

    The US likes Australia, because the Chinese and Russians can't copy downloads from US spy satellites sent back to the NSA.

    Seems like New Zealand are the most sane - they banned nuclear anything from their territory.

    1. jgarbo
      Unhappy

      Re: Australians trying to out do the Americans

      What makes you think the Australians ever had a choice? After WW2 they went from British colony to US colony. By the 1970s Oz was an ersatz Amerika. That's when I left. Pity the Ockeroons, they need to be led.

  12. Steven Roper

    The most terrifying line in that article

    "Today's citizen may be tomorrow's person of interest."

    You mean, in the same way somebody who regularly bought groceries from a Jewish-owned store in 1920s Germany might have been a "person of interest" to the new ruling party which was voted in a few years later?

    The way this world is going, I have a horrible crawling feeling that history is about to repeat itself - only far worse this time, considering the advent of surveillance and data storage technology Germany didn't exactly have at the time...

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