Metadata scope creep sees Border Force ask for access The federal government's promise to restrict who could access personal information collected under Australia's data retention regime lasted just six weeks. With Australia distracted by the federal budget and Johnny Depp's dogs*, it's escaped the media's notice that the government wants to add The Border Force to the list of …
Hey - there's more to the Hon Tony Abbott than just this clichéd "mad monk" persona that everyone loves to mock!
He's also smug, a liar (well, he is a politician,) a climate-change denier and a yes-man for corporate interests and US pressure (a right-wing politician).
And, so far as 'monsters' go, the only major group where we don't have a good showing in the 'kills you for the fun of it' stakes is mammals*. Reptiles - check; snakes - check, check and check; spiders - check; fish - check (the stone fish is a right bastard); jellyfish - check; cephalopods - check; and birds - check. (Anyone who thinks the idea of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs takes the threat-factor out has never seen a cassowary up close.)
I could get angry at this scope creep but it was inevitable. I am just worn down. I know that's what 'they' want - just keep pushing until those of us who are not soothed by vagueries and platitudes eventually give up - but, well, they've won.
As you once said to me - I just don't have another pass at those windmills left in me.
At times like these (and indeed most other times) I am relieved that I will not have children and so don't have to worry about the world being left for them. When I think of the future, and all that we could accomplish as a species I sometimes feel that life is far, far too short. I want to be there to see it all. But then, once the medication settles down and my BAC returns to less medically-concerning normal levels, I realise that our future will be enslavement rather than enlightenment, hegemony rather than harmony and profit rather than progress.
Time for my meds again.
* - So long as one excludes humans - we still have the very unwelcome status of producing one of the worst 'lone-gunman' killers in modern history . . .
Here's a semi serious question: Is the meta data for a non-completed call recorded?
If "Yes", is there an app that will make constant short, non-completed calls to random numbers and fill up the data base with noise? This may be easily mitigated against by a sort on call length.
Some have free unlimited call plans, is there away to set up some sort of "onion" call plan between handsets that enrol in a noise generating scheme. A calls B calls C etc each passing a random telephone number selected from those enrolled.
It will hammer the battery but a spare phone could be left connected to the mains. I suspect it will also upset the telcos so may be worthwhile even if we can't spook the spooks.
>Here's a semi serious question: Is the meta data for a non-completed call recorded?
It is now.
Telcos previously had no reason to record non-completed calls, because they didn't bill people for them. This is one of the many types of new data that Brandis et al have told the telcos to retain despite having no business reason to do so.
This is one of the many types of new data that Brandis et al have told the telcos to retain despite having no business reason to do so.
...and even though Brandis claimed the data retained will be NO MORE than currently collected by the telcos/ISPs when he talked about this before.
@Sanctimonious Prick
What's this "next" business?
This new data is available under the same regime as the existing data that has collected - and that most certainly extends to Centrelink.
It also applies to numerous other groups with even less justifiable cases, such as local councils - all without a warrant, of course. After all, someone illegally dumping rubbish on the kerbside is right up there with terrorists and pedophiles in the list of serious criminals and so requiring Bankstown council to make a case before a judge and obtain a warrant would place an utterly unmanageable burden on them and unacceptably hinder their ability to issue $1500 fines* to these truly heinous individuals.
So, when you heard Brandis and Turnbull and Abbott making their heartfelt pleas about preventing 'serious crime', I am sure you had in your mind images of Darren next door putting his old tele out on the street - a crime so 'serious' that it carries no jail time whatsoever and can be atoned for by paying 5 days' average wages.
The problem is that this isn't 'scope creep' - it's all within the scope and indeed within the pre-existing rules.
* - Not to mention a $455 'clean up notice' charge, or, if they are a business, a stiff $5000 fine. That'll show them.
@dan1980
re: What's this "next" business?
Yes. I hear you.
"The problem is that this isn't 'scope creep' - it's all within the scope and indeed within the pre-existing rules."
Again. I hear you. Did you quiver a little as you typed that sentence?
Some years ago, CentreLink questioned me about some earnings from three months prior. They got their information from the ATO (derr(:slap))!
METADATA? That's nothing compared to the data the Australian Government are collecting about it's citizens and sharing with... with...
I used to love technology...
hehe /end rant
"Did you quiver a little as you typed that sentence?"
More of a weak and impotent whimper, mate. Which is the way they like it.
My only consolation - half-imagined though it may be - is that perhaps, just maybe, deep down some of them realise how much they have betrayed their own people; how much they have contributed to making this world that bit worse.
Ha.
> some of them realise how much they have betrayed their own people
Not a chance. They are public servants that have been given supra legal powers and exist without oversight - that is not the realm of conscience but of nirvana. Like the oxymoron which is police culture, you have to be crazy or they wouldn't let you in.
A note to the other's about generating noise. The Oz plan is surveillance 2.0, the telco's pay for the data retention and pass the costs onto the end users allowing the government to keep the true cost of this treason off the books. An increase in noise represents an increase in end user costs with very little pain to the grubyment. The US is now looking at this model in order to shift the costs of NSA surveillance off the federal books while claiming a Chinese wall protects privacy. The only ways to fight this are going dark, community routing / tunnelling, encryption or the ballot box.
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