Australian government doxxed citizens who criticized illegal 'Robodebt' scheme Australia's government deliberately released personal information on citizens who protested a welfare payment debt recovery scheme that was linked to multiple suicides and later found to have no legal basis. "Robodebt" – as the scheme came to be known – calculated that hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients had been …
We had to put up with nine years of this LNP government. I could go on for hours about their collective incompetence but during their time in government they developed a habit of "leaking" private citizens' personal information as a form of punishment; the example in this article isn't an isolated occurrence. A lot of current and former party members as well as the craven senior public servants who enabled them belong in gaol for this and other forms of often quite blatant corruption.
Tudge was also accused of “kicking” his mistress out of bed. The staffer was later awarded mega-bucks in a secret settlement.
Education Minister Alan Tudge stands aside amid abuse allegations, PM tells parliament
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-02/alan-tudge-stands-aside-amid-abuse-allegations/100669592
As you say, these senior public servants and politicians should all serve time for doxxing people just because they had the effrontery to complain that a government department had screwed up their calculations.
Given how often government computer projects end up going down the plughole, I expect that the real problem was that some public servant was doing the calculations in excel and thought averaging was a good way to work out how much someone earned during the year. Why the hell none of their high priced lawyers and accountants raised alarm bells about the legality and accuracy especially on the money they were being paid, is beyond me.
If it weren't for the number of people who suicided because of this scheme, I would think this would make a great episode of "Yes Minister" in that no-one brings in a consultant without defining the expected outcome in the scope document.
Why the hell none of their high priced lawyers and accountants raised alarm bells about the legality and accuracy
Very likely they did raise such concerns, and were ignored because "We're the government, we can't do anything wrong".
There are a great many examples of such known-illegal actions by governments. Rather a lot of flagship UK Home Office policy was known to be "likely illegal" when it was drafted, but the minister ignored this advice and instead wasted millions and forced charities to fight it in the courts.
This particular one looks almost identical to the Post Office Horizon scandal, except for the time taken to acknowledge the computer was flat wrong.
Unfortunately, the current playbook says to turn anything that the opposition particularly hates as a culture war issue. Then it becomes a point of tribal loyalty to support the government no matter how indefensible its actions.
This means, in practice, "always escalate, never back down". The previous Australian government was struck with a particularly virulent strain of this thinking, but fortunately they lacked the charisma to carry the voters with them.
Normally, when a person complains about some official department, the government claims "oh no, we couldn't possibly comment, because of privacy concerns". Which we all know is bullshit. But when, for once, a person complains to the press, with name, photograph and allegations about payment, the government actually responds with information about the complaint, then it's "doxing".
FWIW, the illegality of robo-debt was that it didn't include a space for lawyers. Lawyers know that any system which doesn't consist of a decision by a statutorily defined officer, is illegal. Because they've built the law that way. And there must be a space for the insertion of lawyers. Because they've built the law that way. The actual (grossly unfair, bizarrely incorrect) recovery algorithm dated from the previous government, and only became "illegal" when it was automated.
Actually it was also illegal because it wasn't generating reliably accurate information, something they were alerted to by the people building the system prior to the launch.
They alerted the dept. to the fact that only approximately 20% of debts generated would actually be in arrears (as the averaging means everybody on casual would have to have the exact same hours every fortnight for it to not detect them incorrectly). I mean the math given to the company contracted to build the software literally doesn't work, which is why the company contacted them.
The company were then told by the dept contacts each one would be checked manually prior to any notices being sent out. This was not the final form obviously as all of the false positives were sent out without any human oversight.
The further issues were that little-no investigation of incorrect notices and a brushing off of claims occurred with staff being told that all of them were just making excuses. Mid-level staff knew the issue was occurring, but a lot still refused to wipe the false debts, pursuing the false claims and garnishing payments from client bank accounts. When confronted, staff were instructed to say there was an incorrect calculation, and reduce the amount, usually clients would have to confront the staff and challenge the debt three to four times prior to it being wiped, during this process clients would be told that all payments would be stopped during the challenge process or if the client took legal action or talked to the press.
Now some of the people who went to the press hadn't actually released their details except a first name, centerlink decided then to release all of their information some of which the newspapers didn't actually include, they released information such as people's full names, addresses (see some of the daily tele articles), and financial states. Not only this, but they also released some of the misleading information that had been generated by the system making the further claim that they had accrued these debts by cheating the system. Others were not even people who had gone to the newspapers, they were legit cheats or had made mistakes on their forms.
Add in that it turns out they were informed of the issues with the debts within 6 months of the start of the program, they refused to record their conversations prior and during the program with legal council (which could indicate a foreknowledge what they were doing was illegal), and kept pushing on the lower levels of management that they were all legit.
If this were a private company they could be sued for fraud, negligence resulting in wrongful death and possibly a bunch of other charges. As they are a government department the most we can hope for is that the people in positions responsible are sacked and are never allowed to work in government again. Doubtful that will happen, but we can hope.
it wasn't generating reliably accurate information,
Yes. But it only became illegal when it was automated. As long as it was staff using the algorithm to generate bad decisions it wasn't illegal, because staff are responsible to the department head, who is responsible to the minister, who has legal immunity for decisions of his department.
The minister and the department lost this qualified immunity by implementing decisions made by a system, not by the minister on the advice of his department.
"one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile"
Why? If it's really a spy balloon, it's already done its job. If it's not a spy balloon, it was a waste of time shooting it down. Either way, the missile and flying time of a fighter jet was probably orders of magnitude more than the value of the balloon. This feels more like face saving because they didn't detect it arriving in the first place.
I really would have liked it if they had downed it over land, inspected the hell out of the wreckage, then boxed it all up and returned China's 'lost' "non-spy" balloon back to them on that now cancelled diplomatic mission. Smiles all around, yes?
What was that line? "Andrei, you've lost another submarine?"
I can guess at a few reasons for the US to shoot it down, even after it traversed the country:
- to see what it was capable of doing
- to see what the gear looks like, assuming it wasn't just consumer grade electronics
- to assess what it was actually doing
- to be in a position to report to the world what the US knows about it rather than what they think it was about
- and yes, also to demonstrate domestically that they were doing more than wringing their hands
It's also possible Biden doesn't like being toyed with.
They picked it up when it crossed the Aleutians. Difficult to shoot it down there as you risk entering Russian & Chinese airspace. The water there is also very deep. Once over US & Canada it was judged that the risk to anyone on the ground, even if very low was not worth it. It was tracked by NORAD, allowing them to gather intelligence on the balloon. It was eventually shot down where there was no risk to anyone on the ground. It is now in shallow water, so can be recovered to get more information from it.
Read the briefing transcript if you want the full details.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3288618/senior-defense-official-and-senior-military-official-hold-an-off-camera-on-back/
Sorry, you're wrong, and the Chinese must think we're stupid. From the article:
"The balloon – which Beijing maintains was simply a civilian weather monitor that went off course –..."
Its a balloon, it only has one course and that's where the wind blows it. Yes, you can raise and lower them to take advantage of different air currents, but you sure as fuck can't steer them.
I don't know why people are downvoting you. Your point seems entirely right. It's very hard to steer a balloon with any precision except maybe at low altitudes using propellers. That would seem to severely constrain what the intelligence mission (if any) might be. On top of which, the Chinese have a bunch of surveillance satellites which are surely far better suited to photographic and communications gathering than a balloon. Then there's the fact that the US spooks are more likely or not going to end up with the payload sitting on a table wherever they take foreign electronic gear to dismantle and analyze it. So the Chinese probably can't put any technology on the balloon that they'd like to keep secret. If this thing wasn't simply an errant weather balloon, it'd be interesting to know what it was doing. But I doubt we'll be told for fifty years or so.
Nope, they've been following it since launch. Just like the one that drifted over Latin America.
By shooting it down over shallow and easily accessible coastal waters, they get the wreckage and can work out its detailed capabilities.
If they'd shot it down over or near Alaska or Canada then it would have been quite difficult to retrieve (not to mention that it was very close to Russia), and most of the rest of the flightpath was over populated areas.
There's also the question of whether it's wise to let China know how the USA can shoot these down. Balloons are cheap, after all.
IIRC, there were either three or four similar balloons publicly observed during Trump. Those were all left to float and finish their mission - though we'll never know why.
A sidewinder costs around $400,000. That's peanuts for the Pentagon. A F-22 has a cannon, but it must be funnier to spend a missile.
What is weird is that quite all media repeated the "spy balloon" story, when there was no evidence it was one and not a meteorological one for instance. I guess that now it was shot down and probably retrieved from the sea we will be shown the "spying equipment".
I mean sushi as traditional as you'll find.
Any source you can find? Try Wikipedia.
The main ingredient, the thing that makes it "sushi", is rice prepared with vinegar. Commonly added elements include chicken (cooked), avocado, cucumber, capsicum, tofu, cream cheese, prawn (cooked), imitation crab (actually a kind of paste made from offcuts and rejects from decent seafood - quite definitely cooked), egg (a kind of sliced omelette) - and yes, many types of fish, some cooked, some not. Tuna and salmon may be served uncooked, but then uncooked (well, "smoked") salmon is common enough in western cuisine as well.
Government bureaucracy at work. Just wait until they all roll out their central bank digital currencies and are able to instantly and directly make "money" disappear from your account. At that point all our freedoms will vanish as they will have complete control over our finances. I'm not worried about machine overlords - I'm worried about incompetent technocrats as overlords.
"Tudge said it was not his intention that the release of personal information would be perceived as intimidating"
Of course it wasn't. He just said that person xyz is stealing money from government and knowingly lies on that. No punishment for complaining, no no, never! What a muppet.
Actually: This should be shootable offence and Tudge judged and executed.
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