The asymmetry implicit in Internet data retention As we speak, apathetic Australians are failing to lodge submissions objecting to the government’s ill-defined data retention proposals. But Anonymous thinks it represents us, and until it actually started showing the data, @Op_Australia on Twitter descended into the kind of “RSN” you can only deliver if you’re an archetypal …
Isn't that what your (attorney/solicitor/barrister, delete as appropriate) is for?
(And, sure, I'm a US citizen and therefore have the right to hold my peace and speak only through an attorney, and no doubt Australia doesn't have the precise equivalent. That said, given that their law and jurisprudence derive from the same source as ours do, I'd be astonished to learn that that fine nation doesn't offer its citizens substantially the same protections -- including the presumptive suppression of anything otherwise potentially or actually incriminating that's uttered by someone who has not been advised he has the right not to do so. A quick perusal of Wikipedia on the subject, which I grant is not always reliable but in broad strokes tends to be reasonably so, certainly seems to indicate as much.)
Of course I'll never argue that Anonymous is anything save the meanest gutter scum of the Internet -- given their 4chan origins, they could hardly be otherwise. But it does not behoove one, who is arguing against their style of anarchistic mob "justice", to misrepresent the nature of the law, or of the evidentiary requirements the law imposes on police.
Isn't that what your (attorney/solicitor/barrister, delete as appropriate) is for?
No - your ability to challenge process should never be dependent on a 3rd party (however much that has become a trend) because that restricts the ability to defend yourself to teh size of your wallet, and we have enough of that already.
He makes a couple of very good points in this article, points that add quite a bit of INSIGHT to the debate. What Anonymous does is quite simply juvenile window thrashing - which doesn't help in any way, shape or form (I like his comment about geopolitical sensitivity - that's as direct as it comes - I bet he'll be the subject of hack attacks for uttering a rather profound truth)..
Australia certainly appears from my brief research to have a tradition of the "public defender", i.e. a court-appointed lawyer for those unable to retain one on their own, which again I suspect descends from the English common law. In other words, if your wallet won't stretch to cover the cost of an attorney's services, the state will provide you one free of charge. That being the case, I continue in my failure to see why this is a problem.
We once went through four bloody releases before the Indian subcontractors managed to spell "Miscellaneous" correctly on all the screens, reports and menu options in Miscellaneous processing. I guess the use of copy 'n paste from the spec never occurred to them.
Another system I had the displeasure to be involved with aquired a CR stating that the users were not allowed to enter "various" for the job ID on a contract. A nice simple bit of validation, yes? You'd be amazed how many changes that went through before we managed to get it to cater for all the various (hah!) misspellings that subsequently cropped up.
Sometime in the latter half of the last century, I'm *sure* I was taught that government was in theory there to represent the will of the people.
And yet 'they' keep on passing more and more restrictive laws without even asking me... when did that happen? Did I not get a letter or something?
It's very simple. The vast majority of the population are largely law-abiding. If you (the government agency) have reason to believe that one of us has committed a crime, and you can convince a judge of that belief, then with a warrant you may investigate what evidence exists. That's fine. What is not fine is requiring the logging of evidence of what may one day turn out to have been a crime...
People treat others like they are themselves. Which suggests that the majority of people in government right now are sneaky, lawbreaking bastards who should not be left out on the street in the evening because they would rob everyone blind. Which, given the latest laws, QED..
David Gauke, the UK Exchequer Secretary, recently said it was morally wrong to pay traders in cash. This is a man who has claimed over ten thousand pounds in expenses to which his entitlement was suspect to say the least.
My vegetable delivery lady asked me if there was any chance I could pay in cash last Friday, she needed to get fuel for the van and it was therefore more convenient for her. All the payments have an official invoice and an official receipt. I have no doubt whatsoever that she declares all her business transactions to the tax office.
When I hear people like Guake say that paying in cash leads to tax evasion, it just sounds to me like an admission that if he were ever paid in cash, he would not declare it. It's like people who keep property or money they have found asserting that everybody would do the same - whereas in my experience almost all the valuable stuff I have ever lost (a lot, I'm forgetful!) has been handed back in.
It makes you wonder what the politicians are using the internet for.
"What is not fine is requiring the logging of evidence of what may one day turn out to have been a crime..."
Welcome to (some bureaucrats vision) the New Model Government.
You are neither a citizen nor a subject.
You are a suspect. They *know* you have/will commit a crime (because with the number of laws passed it's virtually impossible for you *not* to have done so, weather or not those laws have been enforced up to now) so it is only prudent to begin the collection of evidence now. And because they can.
Strip away the justifications and that's what it comes down to.
You get my point, I hope. You can't challenge evidence you can't understand.
Is it therefore the case that challenging evidence which cannot be understood is a wild fabrication and nonsense making a mockery and fool of the justice system, which would be a quite APT take on the law when a bumbling ass, with its absurd justice, a banana man's lament
The moral of such an Aesopian tale is that CyberSpace does not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously misfortunate, covetous fools with their toxic blunt sub-prime and primitive tools. Step into ITs Realms and you will need to lead with a great deal more intelligence than is universally shown and possessed by present pretenders to the myriad earthly thrones of media's fool tools.
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