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AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?

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E

Elaugaufein

Member
Did I imagine a post about Sharri Markson's Diarist's Diary article on the Spectator (http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/australia-diary/9454182/diarists-diary/) ? Because I seem to have followed a link there and read it and been mildly horrified that apparently its now right wing orthodoxy that torture is morally correct if the person its being used on is a bad. Prohibitions against actions like torture aren't freaking there so you don't torture someone you wouldn't torture anyway, they are there so you don't torture someone you otherwise would. That is they serve to remind you of the right thing to do when you're tempted to say "The Ends Justify the Means, Have At It". But now I can't find the link and reply and am doubting my sanity (I really don't want to have a subconcious mind that thinks that I should be reading that).

ETA - Ahh, found it. Was from Ludlam's twitter account.
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
Dryk said:
Whatever ASIO can get away with I'd guess
Click to expand...

The last proposal basically boils down to absolutely everything except the content of the message (they do at least count things like email subjects as content rather than metadata*). So sender and receiver are included with the exception of internet browsing where the sites/pages visited and users visiting s a site are specifically exempted from that general requirement (though they were trying to leave room in the regulation part to put it back in at a future date), Note that sender and receiver are NOT exempted for email, which may reveal significant data about both the content and your browsing history, given that many email addresses are dedicated to a specific service.

*Legally and socially appropriate but it does demonstrate the incoherence of using a concept like metadata as some sort of wedge. The subject line is part of the email header and is thus by any reasonable technical definition metadata.
 
M

markot

Banned
Metadata is pretty vague, isn't it similar to how phone companies keep records of calls and call durations?

As long as there are strong safe guards I don't see the big deal.

My problem is that it is too easy to access, they should require warrants. But that is the current situation as well, the only difference is that the government wants mandatory retention over voluntary.
 
M

markot

Banned
The earliest date for a federal election is august next year. Can't do it earlier then that, without some shenanigans, blocking supply... Etc...
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
markot said:
Metadata is pretty vague, isn't it similar to how phone companies keep records of calls and call durations?

As long as there are strong safe guards I don't see the big deal.

My problem is that it is too easy to access, they should require warrants. But that is the current situation as well, the only difference is that the government wants mandatory retention over voluntary.
Click to expand...

Thanks to the wonders of cell tower locations and GPS in your phone phone call metadata (in the technical sense) also includes your location at the time you made the call. Since retention of intermediate receivers is also required the legal version probably includes your location (within the radius of the cell tower you used , and more precise if multiple towers were used since overlap and triangulation become possible). Theoretically every time you use cellular wi-fi to receive data , the same would also be available, though I don't believe there's a requirement for that to be stored as things are currently laid out, given standard background processes it'd basically serve as a minute to minute tracker of where you are (if you've got an Android phone and have associated it with a Google account, sign into that account and have a look here: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0 )
 
M

markot

Banned
Elaugaufein said:
Thanks to the wonders of cell tower locations and GPS in your phone phone call metadata (in the technical sense) also includes your location at the time you made the call. Since retention of intermediate receivers is also required the legal version probably includes your location (within the radius of the cell tower you used , and more precise if multiple towers were used since overlap and triangulation become possible). Theoretically every time you use cellular wi-fi to receive data , the same would also be available, though I don't believe there's a requirement for that to be stored as things are currently laid out, given standard background processes it'd basically serve as a minute to minute tracker of where you are (if you've got an Android phone and have associated it with a Google account, sign into that account and have a look here: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0 )
Click to expand...
And this info is being used by corporations now for all sorts of purposes. I don't mind government using it with proper safe guards.

And you can turn a lot of that stuff off.
 
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Elaugaufein

Member
markot said:
And this info is being used by corporations now for all sorts of purposes. I don't mind government using it with proper safe guards.

And you can turn a lot of that stuff off.
Click to expand...

How do you feel about the threshold for its use in Civil Litigation being "at the Attorney General's discretion" ? Because that's the current proposed threshold.
 
F

Fredescu

Member
Elaugaufein said:
I'll admit that made me snort, smirk & laugh at the same time but I don't think it leaves much opportunity for much else as a reply.
Click to expand...

He did say earlier "My problem is that it is too easy to access, they should require warrants." which covers your question. I tend to agree with him. In principle, standardising log keeping periods by service providers is a good idea, as long as the appropriate checks and balances are in place. Obviously they're not in this case.
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
legend166 said:
Didn't you guys listen to Serial? Cell tower location data is dodgy!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can actually see that from my location tracking page. There's times where the cell tower that's registered hasn't been near my location (eg I apparently travelled to another suburb while I was sleeping this morning) and situations where I've been using Wi-Fi instead of Cellular which bounces my location to wherever my ISPs exit IP address is registered. Its a pretty good general trace though, especially if I've been particularly mobile on a given day (really bad weather seems to make it more accurate too, I imagine both because I travel less and because the atmospheric interference means that the closest tower gets strongly preferred).

Fredescu said:
He did say earlier "My problem is that it is too easy to access, they should require warrants." which covers your question. I tend to agree with him. In principle, standardising log keeping periods by service providers is a good idea, as long as the appropriate checks and balances are in place. Obviously they're not in this case.
Click to expand...

I generally take the view that unnecessary data shouldn't be stored without a warrant issued in advanced, anything else is just an excuse for fishing trips. Likewise I'm not really fond of the privacy implications of corporate storage of data beyond the time period where it has immediate practical use. Targeted retention against specific individuals (which could include content) with a warrant is basically where I feel the line belongs (metadata/content is basically just a semantic game giving how much large quantities of it reveal in practice).
 
S

Shandy

Member
As far as I'm concerned, the idea of an online life vs. an offline life is becoming increasingly obsolete, as a concept. It's just "your life" and, in my opinion, the government shouldn't have that kind of access to "your life" without probable cause. The government shouldn't know that I stood in front of the fridge for 5 minutes at 4 in the morning, nor should they know that I went to [whatever the IP for Google is] and [whatever the IP for NeoGAF is]. Or [whatever the IP for georgebrandislickingdildos.com is].
 
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Elaugaufein

Member
Shandy said:
As far as I'm concerned, the idea of an online life vs. an offline life is becoming increasingly obsolete, as a concept. It's just "your life" and, in my opinion, the government shouldn't have that kind of access to "your life" without probable cause. The government shouldn't know that I stood in front of the fridge for 5 minutes at 4 in the morning, nor should they know that I went to [whatever the IP for Google is] and [whatever the IP for NeoGAF is]. Or [whatever the IP for georgebrandislickingdildos.com is].
Click to expand...

They aren't actually storing that under the current proposed plan (and what little credit is due to Labor should be given for making it impossible to add it via regulation).

They are storing your IP address at a particular time period currently, then if for some reason they are investigating georgebrandislickingdildos.com and get a list of visiting IP addresses (eg from the server logs, or from a warranted data retention) they can trace it back to you.

Otherwise I think our positions are pretty much identical.
 
Q

Quasar

Member
http://www.theguardian.com/australi...event-clearer-food-labelling-health-advocates

Australia’s Pacific free-trade deal could stand in the way of clear country-of-origin labelling being considered by the Abbott government in the wake of the hepatitis A outbreak linked to imported frozen berries.

Michael Moore of the Public Health Association said under the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) a foreign company may be able to sue the Australian government for loss of revenue as a result of Australian products being given an “unfair advantage”.

The agreement, which is being negotiated in secret, includes Australia, New Zealand, the US, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. The deal would bring down the trade and legal barriers between member countries as well as their foreign corporations.

One of the most contentious issues in the trade agreement has been the investor state dispute settlement provision (ISDS), which grants foreign companies the right to sue signatory governments for interfering with business. A similar clause in a Hong Kong treaty has allowed Philip Morris International to take legal action against Australia over the plain packaging tobacco laws.

In the Washington Post this week, US Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren said the ISDS clauses would undermine national sovereignty, benefit multinational corporations and she specifically mentioned Australia.

“To encourage foreign investment in countries with weak legal systems, the United States and other nations began to include ISDS in trade agreements,” writes Warren.

“Those justifications don’t make sense anymore, if they ever did. Countries in the TPP are hardly emerging economies with weak legal systems. Australia and Japan have well-developed, well-respected legal systems, and multinational corporations navigate those systems every day, but ISDS would preempt their courts too.”
Click to expand...

Isn't the TPP great.

This really is the worst international trade deal in the history of such things.

And really stuff like that explains why the EU is not involved.
 
D

Dryk

Member
I can't wait for a big ISDS case where a bunch of Australians are harmed/killed and people start getting angry and wondering how this happened.
 
S

SmartBase

Member
Quasar said:
http://www.theguardian.com/australi...event-clearer-food-labelling-health-advocates



Isn't the TPP great.

This really is the worst international trade deal in the history of such things.

And really stuff like that explains why the EU is not involved.
Click to expand...

The US and EU are already working on their own FTA. It's going to be really amusing when American companies start suing European governments for subsidising healthcare and medicine (among other things), even with the suggested exceptions in the agreement in place.

I should've studied to be a lawyer, goddamn.
 
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bobnowhere

Member
Interesting take on Abbott's poll bump from the pollsters.

The Age said:
Pollster Jessica Elgood said the mixed results reflected several apparently competing assessments by voters.

"While the Coalition share of the vote has marginally increased, the ratings for Abbott remain poor, and Turnbull receives very high ratings for his personal attributes," she said.

"Voters appear to already be factoring in Abbott's potential departure. They don't like him, prefer Turnbull and assume Abbott is not long in his job."
Click to expand...

I must admit, the recent bump had puzzled me a bit. Abbott has done nothing to deserve it and Shorten has done not much of anything really. I couldn't really see Abbott screaming bias at everything in sight or looking for terrorism in everything as an explanation, maybe everyone really is assuming Turnbull/Bishop/Morrison/Robb/Brough (lol)/A. Nother is on their way.
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
Conservatives definitely do get a bump from public panic about $Variable. So I wouldn't completely discount it for the poll bump but given that's Abbott personal rating hasn't budged much I wouldn't assume it had much of an effect either. Really I guess I'm just saying not to underestimate the effects conservatives pushing the "Panic" button can have. Abbott just seems to have bungled so badly that he's not getting a bump out of it, even with Labor legitimizing the panic he's trying to induce.
 
M

markot

Banned
bobnowhere said:
Interesting take on Abbott's poll bump from the pollsters.



I must admit, the recent bump had puzzled me a bit. Abbott has done nothing to deserve it and Shorten has done not much of anything really. I couldn't really see Abbott screaming bias at everything in sight or looking for terrorism in everything as an explanation, maybe everyone really is assuming Turnbull/Bishop/Morrison/Robb/Brough (lol)/A. Nother is on their way.
Click to expand...

He got stuck into the human rights commissioner. People love that sort of stuff. Damn academics with their brain thinking. Not to mention the terrorist crap.


Anyway, countries stuffed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-02/verrender-housing-policy-sells-out-the-fair-go/6272672
hqdefault.jpg
 
B

bomma_man

Member
markot said:
He got stuck into the human rights commissioner. People love that sort of stuff. Damn academics with their brain thinking. Not to mention the terrorist crap.


Anyway, countries stuffed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-02/verrender-housing-policy-sells-out-the-fair-go/6272672
hqdefault.jpg
Click to expand...

article said:
And while Australians generally view themselves and their society as one of the world's fairest, we have been a poor performer when it comes to wealth equality.

Since 1996, we have been consistently worse than the OECD average. And from 2004 - when the mining boom gathered pace and capital city property values soared - the situation rapidly deteriorated.

It improved from 2008 until 2011, the final year when data was collated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. But we all know what has happened to property prices since then.
Click to expand...

hmmm i wonder what happened in 1996 and late 2007
 
M

mjontrix

Member
Brandis censured - ah man libs cant catch a break!

If they seriously vote for metadata after all this (supoorted by said censured ) then I'll prepare my plans for living abroad.
 
Q

Quasar

Member
mjontrix said:
Brandis censured - ah man libs cant catch a break!

If they seriously vote for metadata after all this (supoorted by said censured ) then I'll prepare my plans for living abroad.
Click to expand...

I'll just do everything inside a VPN (that should limit the metadata collected). Not that I'm concerned about any government use for my metadata (probably more concerned about the collections being hacked and spread all over - and I guess the price spike on internet plans). Its more the principle of the thing.

What did he get censured over specifically? The whole Triggs thing?
 
M

mjontrix

Member
Breaking VPNs isnt too difficult since most will use the most simplest ones (PPTP).

The OpenVPN ones would be filtered separately for later cracking or further investigation.

The thing is that its trivial then to blackmail (asio) by for instance seeing tinder chat timestamps berween you and a known escort for instance. As a politician (religious) this coukd be fatal to your supporters.
 
Q

Quasar

Member
mjontrix said:
Breaking VPNs isnt too difficult since most will use the most simplest ones (PPTP).

The OpenVPN ones would be filtered separately for later cracking or further investigation.

The thing is that its trivial then to blackmail (asio) by for instance seeing tinder chat timestamps berween you and a known escort for instance. As a politician (religious) this could be fatal to your supporters.
Click to expand...

Though in terms of this legislation that's not a real issue if all ISPs are doing is recording IP addresses I connect to. Its not like they are capturing whole datastreams to break later.

As breaking...well not being PPTP would be a primary requirement. That would be a major filtering point in terms of what I'd use. Why would anyone even choose to use a broken standard like that?

I am kind of amused by a group organising a mass forwarding of all email into brandises email box.
 
M

Myansie

Member
Full Federal parliament sitting dates are Mar 16 - 26 and then the budget May 12 - 14 and then not until June 15 - 25.

The NSW election is 28th March.

Awkward...
 
S

Shandy

Member
Someone who knows more about trade agreements should tell me how binding they are. I.e., how easy is it for a later government to come in, call it a giant load and pull out of it? Is there a general understanding that a country can withdraw from the agreement at any point in time, even though I'm sure other parties would "highly discourage" such action? Or is it dependent on the agreement itself? What trade impacts would result from a withdrawal? Would a country be boycotted into economic oblivion?

I'm guessing the answer is something like "It's such a legal and diplomatic clusterfuck that no one would even bother trying."
 
J

Jintor

Member
it's generally expected that you don't pull out of treaties your predecessors entered into otherwise all shit would go invalid every administrative cycle
 
A

A More Normal Bird

Unconfirmed Member
Hilarious stuff from Turnbull on 7:30 (not verbatim).
"What is Tony Abbott's best quality as leader?" "He has the support of the party room."
"Tony and I actually have very similar positions on gay marriage. We both believe the party room should decide on what sort of vote is had on the issue."
 
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