Let us not forget
the operation at the Hilton in Sydney that resulted in the death of two garbage collectors, Alec Carter and William Favel.
'Trust ASIO': Australia passes spook's charter Part A
Australia's draconian national security legislation has passed the Senate, and with its passage through the House of Representatives next week a certainty, will become law. As well as the “monitor an unlimited number of computers” provisions reported yesterday, the federal government has: Banned the “reckless” (as defined …
-
Friday 26th September 2014 15:41 GMT silent_count
Ya know
There's nothing inherently wrong with what is being proposed - I mean, honestly, is there anything in there which a spy agency (assumed to be operating in your interest) shouldn't be allowed to do?
Of course the catch with any such laws is how they're applied. If it could be taken for granted they're going to be applied with common sense, then all is well. If they're not, and we are talking about a fairly adept spy agency here, then we've got bigger problems than if they're strictly abiding by the letter of the law.
Incidentally, the problem for the NSA is not whether (or not) they've abided by the letter of law but that the American people don't want their own spies, and by extension their own government, working against them. And countries take umbrage at spies from an assumed-to-be friendly nation acting against their citizens.
So in the end, I guess I'll be very Aussie, say "she'll be right", and see how this all shakes out.
-
Friday 26th September 2014 21:55 GMT JamesRR
Re: Ya know
Us humans, and especially bureaucratic groups of us, find it dangerously easy to act in our own interests, rather than towards the more difficult 'general good'.
And in most cases, our legal system try to include enough checks/balances/processes so that when we do act in reasonably harmful manner towards somebody else, it can be thrashed out, and with a decent degree of certainty we sort it out fairly.
So here we have a secret group, who are incentivised to intrude on Australians privacy (what real cost to invading your personal email/web history/life? but how much reward if you do turn out to be a 'terrorist'?), and we're trashing even more of our options for calling them out, and legally reigning them in when they charge over the line.
Pragmatically, if they were catching 'terrorists' all over the show, you could argue that they should have some leeway. But even the NSA, who didn't just cross the line, but beat their citizens in the face with it, have no real success stories to justify their extensive privacy violations. So for all citizen trampling, insane $ spend, historical mistakes and incompetencies, and complete lack of significant visible success, is it really smart to encourage them to go further?
But hey, Iran will lock you up if you call out their government, China too, and their populace doesn't seem to publicly complain (more than once, anyway). So maybe it's ok we trust that Our Leaders Know Best, and hope it all works out.
We need spy agencies. We need teams to chase down terrorists. But not at all costs, not even at significant costs. Our poor diet choices and bad driving are wiping out orders of magnitudes more of us than restrictions on an arguably useless bunch of human rights violating g-men anyway.
-
Monday 29th September 2014 01:52 GMT dan1980
Re: Ya know
@silent_count
There is absolutely something inherently wrong with it and there are definitely things in there which a spy agency - any agency employed by and working for the people - shouldn't be able to do.
Any government body in a democracy exists under the umbrella of consent provided by the democratic system.
Any body able to bypass the public by quoting three letters puts itself outside the democratic process and thus is a danger to the people.
-
-
Monday 29th September 2014 00:28 GMT veti
Australian media drops ball
Film at 11?
Seriously, the entire Australian press is cartoonishly incompetent, and "having complete amnesia about anything they couldn't easily google" is par for the course. Particularly when the subject is something serious, with minimal celebrity involvement or nudity.
This is the sector that gave us Rupert Murdoch. What do we expect from it?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
