Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours (opens in new tab)

I would say it depends. If it takes 80 hours to get approval and it turns out that the warrant was, well, warranted, then I don't consider it to be a big problem.

If it takes 80 hours and it turns out to be abuse, then heads would probably roll.

However, in most cases these things are legitimate. I've worked in government and most people have good intentions. We don't have to protect ourselves, as a society, against the legitimate cases, we have to protect ourselves against the abuse.

  13  Nominated AAT members
    (1)  The Minister may, by writing, nominate a person who holds one of the following appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue warrants under this Part:
      (a)  Deputy President;
      (b)  senior member (of any level);
      (c)  member (of any level).
  
    (2)  Despite subsection (1), the Minister must not nominate a person who holds an appointment as a part‑time senior member or a member of the Tribunal unless the person:
      (a)  is enrolled as a legal practitioner of the High Court, of another federal court or of the Supreme Court of a State or of the Australian Capital Territory; and
      (b)  has been so enrolled for not less than 5 years.
  
    (3)  A nomination ceases to have effect if:
      (a)  the nominated AAT member ceases to hold an appointment described in subsection (1); or
      (b)  the Minister, by writing, withdraws the nomination.
  
    (4)  A nominated AAT member has, in relation to the performance or exercise of a function or power conferred on a nominated AAT member by this Act, the same protection and immunity as a Justice of the High Court has in relation to proceedings in the High Court.

Source: Section 13 of the law https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2017C00193

In many jurisdictions, a police officer is allowed to search your apartment under special, urgent circumstances. I'm sure you can think of cases where immediately issued warrants make sense, whether its for apartments or documents.

It set off the flamewar detector.

Comment ranking doesn't depend on account age.

i recommend using hckrnews.com as your front page for many reasons, including this one

I responded to the child comment, but I do have to say that this kind of dismissive aerial view of all world history and the progress made toward freedom in liberal democracies in the last 200 years really irks me, and has a decidedly millennial / tweet-like ring to it. It's all nice and great to have theories about how everything is fucked and all government is corrupt, from the relative security of a permissive western country where you've never lived under anything resembling totalitarian oppression. Worse is to believe you actually are a victim suffering under it and have no choice but revolution. A more rational and educated stance, undertaken by generations of civil rights activists before you, is not to dismiss the entire premise of government as a pure ugly display of power, and instead to fight tooth and nail against the individual attempts that culminate in its going out of control (in contrast to saying they'll get away with everything up until there's a revolution - which again, is defeatist posturing).

A contract is consent in both ways. Most people have not consented neither explicitly nor tacitly to any of this. I understand what the term means, but most people seem to stick with the enlightenment-age definition while in reality what we currently have in most states (eastern or western) is not a social contract, but a hostage situation.

Back then they didn't really have a choice. Now it's all on them - they elected those people.

Also live here. Cant leave my house without a valid excuse and even then mostly only 5km. You can easily find videos of people being arrested for doing yoga in parks. Probs get arrested even if I have a valid excuse because its 5km from your registered address and they froze address changes before I moved.

You might not be as restricted but large parts of your own country are off limits to you, oh and also the rest of the entire planet.

This is probably what they are referring to. Some areas are limiting outdoor time and fining people who are "outside without a reasonable excuse".

"From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be given new freedoms.

Residents of hotspots can leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour, while people in other areas can meet five others outdoors."

https://twitter.com/9NewsSyd/status/1430707532134236163

So this report, touting additional hour of outside time (within the limits of curfew and for fully vaccinated families of course, we're not savages!) is a complete fabrication?

https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-nsw-restrictio...

It's only a matter of time before the other states have rising case levels and lockdowns, vaccinations rise high enough that case levels are not important, or the states realise that it's not sustainable to be on eternal lockdown.

This virus is with humanity forever now.

Let's hope the right choice is made with the least amount of time. The only proactive thing a government can do is vaccinate and increase medical capacity.

I assumed they meant this https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Republic_of_Gilea...

Yep, as per the other comment. Reference to the Handmaid's Tale.

Really appreciate the detailed answer @sjy! That makes sense, so it seems odd to me that this article is claiming this is effectively "warrantless". Functionally, it sounds like law enforcement still have to present their case to a judge and then there is a path for recourse on behalf of the citizen.

Leaving Australia is currently very difficult for Australians in Australia even if they reside abroad. But if one could leave, where should they go to?

Wouldn’t a brain drain lead to even dumber laws?

Or vote with your… vote. The relative benefit is that it can actually work, in theory at least.

> Divest out of Australia.

Time to sell AAAU etf, you can't trust a bank if the gov't is corrupt.

Voting is how this mess started... how is voting harder going to fix what voting created? Nothing short of a common national ethos of trust in an almost unremovable leader can solve this problem. A leader who can listen to experts and make a choice, even if unpopular, without fear of next election and without the need to aggrandize more power and wealth.

and if that doesn't work wait 4 or 5 more years and vote again, hope for the better!

Voting is mandatory and it has bi-partisan support.

Voting is already mandatory in Australia.

Too late.

What does this mean, and how does one take it? Googling it comes up with misogny and a documentary of the same name.

What do you mean by this?

Stop allowing email providers to control the domain of your email. Buy a $10/year domain and point it at GitHub pages (so it gains some trustworthiness). Send your email to that domain, and point the MX records at a mail provider (Fastmail or GMail or ProtonMail, doesn't matter).

Update 2:

```

I have heard back from our privacy team and I’d love to share their responce to your query:

Thanks for reaching out to us about the recent bill in Australia. We love that our customers care about their digital rights and want to find out more about how companies are looking after their information.

Your data is held in datacentres in the US, but we require all requests for access to customer content to be served through Australia where our company is headquartered.

The police can't intercept, access or modify your messages without us receiving a warrant, and we take our duty of care seriously. Fastmail responds to well formed warrants only and challenges requests for access that are inappropriate, either in scope (not adequately targeted), or depth (asking for information that seems out of proportion to what's being investigated). We will continue to do so, for any legislation that applies to us both now and in the future.

The new bill still doesn't allow 'trawling' for suspicious data: they can't request access to a wide variety of accounts hoping they'll come across something of interest. They need to have a particular account under suspicion and something that gives them grounds for that suspicion, and the offence in question needs to be suitably severe to be worth the intrusion.

Where we are permitted under a warrant, we will notify the accountholder of the access request, and due to our existing measures to help customers stay aware of any hackers compromising their account, police can't also enter your account without leaving evidence you can see.

What this means for you: Fastmail remains a privacy-first provider. We will comply with our legislated duties, while taking care to ensure that we do not act unless compelled by law and that all legislated preconditions have been properly satisfied. Your data remains under your control and you can rest comfortably knowing that your account won't get caught up in a surveillance net.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. Sincerely,

```

Update:

``` Hi,

Thank you for contacting Fastmail support.

I’ve escalated your ticket to our privacy team, who is best suited to assist with this issue. You can expect to receive an update in approximately two business days.

I thank you for your patience as we work to get this addressed for you.

Sincerely, ** ```

Interested in that too. I checked their blog, they seem to be talking about everything privacy except for this.

thanks! an update would be much appreciated when you get it

I use Mailbox.org. My only regret is not buying my own domain name for it ahead of time in case Germany started doing things I wasn’t cool with.

I’ve been sufficiently satisfied with their service. Sometimes emails take a bit of time to receive, like 10 or so minutes. That’s about it.

Same, I paid for 3 years upfront. I love FastMail UI and nothing comes close to it. :-(

Tutanota and Mailbox.org are 2 good alternatives.

I've been using Mailbox.org for a few years.

protonmail?

As far as I know, Fastmail has been backdoored for a few years now by Australian government (and hence I assume the USA, too). It is Fastmail’s biggest disadvantage, in my opinion.

They don't seem to mention any special treatment for international clients: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/law-enforcement.htm...

> There is still ...

You're probably right. Although seeing it in context, those news coming from Australia suggest a very slippery slope where "There is still ..." might not be true sometime soon. On the one hand it could be negativity bias, on the other hand there's also the fear Australia is being used as an experiment and the rest of the Five Eyes will follow suit.

Doesn’t it pass that quickly because it got enough votes? In other words there wasn’t enough dissent to require further readings and debate because enough people were happy with it.

Democracy is rule by the media. This has been a criticism of it for hundreds of years.

Agreed. My expectation from a community like HN would be total rebellious culture from the mainstream attitude, full of interesting perspectives, data-backed arguments, anti-mob pro-objectivity discussions, and no shortage of nutjobs posting crazy theories - the good ol' hacker culture.

What terrifies me is that HN community continues to double-down anything but mainstream and conformity. This is in direct relation to larger societal trends that you're highliting. Even the slightest neutral stance will get you downvoted.

If no one on HN is doing the legwork for raising concerns, who will?

Trillions of dollars wasted in the war but it should also be mentioned that the US lost over a trillion dollars shorty before the attacks on the world trade center. The war swept that topic from the table but the money has to be somewhere.

One advantage of ProtonMail is that they are not easy to tamper with, as the data is encrypted with the password you provide at login which is (hopefully) not being stored.

That might be a different discussion but the mentioned police surveillance law was voted in a national referendum.

I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country, people start new companies all the time to solve problems, I think it’s time we start a new country for the first time in how many years? Maybe a government that actually does respect privacy and doesn’t just throw it out the window because of “terrorism” or whatever the thing of the moment might be. Also would be nice to live somewhere that doesn’t have atrocious wars on its historical record or hundreds of years of exploitation of other peoples.

Maybe, but that should be their right. We need fixes but as long as you can buy a Senator for 4 or 6 years for $100K, we have no chance. Things get a lot harder if that same voting power for 1 vote costs $5M. The problem is that the people in power want to stay there and keep feeding at the trough. What we really need is the ability for public resolutions to put directly into law. Then we could have a chance for reform, unfortunately most states don't have provisions for this path.

Well, it's interesting, then, that Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe. This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it.

If we are on topic of exchanging opinions of famous men, I think Machiavelli said that the people can be misled and go astray but are not prevented by pride from correcting themselves, like rulers would.

This was covered by Plato 2,500 years ago. But we don’t learn about that ancient outdated stuff anymore, as it isn’t beneficial for the economy.

I'm reading this book "You have the right to remain innocent" [1]

And it brings up amazing cases where the system is definitely not limiting it's powers and it's leading to false convictions.

Here's a youtube of more or less the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FENubmZGj8

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30532856-you-have-the-ri...

EDIT: errm actually that YT video is actually a little scant on details. The TLDR is say nothing except make an absolute demand for your 6th amendment rights (a lawyer). And don't be soft about it like "maybe I can get a lawyer?" ... say "I have a right to a lawyer and will not answer anything without first speaking to my lawyer"

People might be thinking "I thought it was the 5th ?" Ironically , the same conservatives that have been trumpeting the 2nd have concurrently been undermining the 5th and now can be used against you as evidence of guilt.

They've limited themselves because people wanted it (often violently). Now the majority of people are complacent and that's when the "leaders" accumulate power.

In Europe for example, complacent with the police taking away the homeless, complacent with the laws slowly eroding everyone's freedoms, complacent with the healthcare systems they pay for believing it helps people.

It's the same old tired trope of "first they came for X, and I didn't speak out". In the end there will be no one to speak for the majority, either.

We have it coming and we'll get it.

Indeed. To say it another way, state power is total by default. Every individual right is carved out of that default total power.

>There is no defense against a legal power that does not limit itself.

Correction: there is no legal defense.

There are other defenses, historically.

Tyrants are going to tyrant.

> Well, the police can also temper with any other evidence all the time anyway

Yeah, they do, but that's illegal and NOT encoded in law

So Aus has just made police tampering legal

Democratic != righteous, no matter we wish they coincide.

Nothing special??? It has some of the most diverse and crazy flora and fauna in the world...

As an American's American (Guns and Liberty for everyone!) I really appreciate the French people's intolerance of government overreach. They say no, and they don't sit down.

Regarding Australia's limits on protest during the Sydney covid lockdown, one official basically said "people can exercise their freedom of speech other ways, like writing a letter to the newpaper or sending an angry email" (paraphrased). I think he seriously thought these circular-filed complaints carry the same weight as a protesters in front of government buildings.

As an American with staunch opinion about civil liberties, I love France for this matter. I recall Charlie-hedbo and their stance towards freedom of speech/press during the shooting that killed several cartoonists a few years ago. The entire world mourned that moment. It was sad and beautiful to see everyone raise their voices against supression of speech.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oVOE5Hsl8E

I don't know about the French. For the most part, they protest for the wrong reason.

> If the police have a warrant to watch you, then, no. But that is as it should be.

Is it? Any government could make $thing illegal tomorrow. Anyone associated with $thing could then be watched and imprisoned. With judicial oversight.

Some possible values from $thing taken from history: being gay, (not) being christian, being a pacifist, being poor/homeless

The above have all been persecuted in the past. Sometimes in the present. All quite legally. With judicial oversight. With political (and often popular) support.

Edit: formatting, HN doesn't seem to like lists

Would this philosophy extend to phones then, too? Assuming a phone is being used for criminal business. A Ring camera, assuming the house is being used for criminal conduct?

I’m playing devil’s advocate, and am interested in a stance arrived at reasonably.

You confuse legality with morality. Privacy is, in part, the right to act on our own convictions. Breaking the law is a critical part of protest ("civil disobedience").

Besides which, the state has done just fine without such invasive measures before. Even with perfect oversight, the goals themselves can still be horribly corrupt, and no one should consider it "correct" to go about enforcing clearly immoral laws.

I have been reading message boards where Aussies are saying they are no longer allowed to leave the country for any reason. Isn't that like the old Soviet Union and North Korea?