So in the last few days while everyone was distracted by the fact that the visual feedback of there own eyes is not as reliable as they thought my thoughts are drawn to the debacle of meta data. A few things have come to light.
Our dinosaur government clearly have no idea what they are doing this monstrous piece of legislation will undoubtedly slide through the senate unopposed. though there own inability to understand the technology and though a general public apathy probably coming from the same source.
Ignorance is not consent
I doubt that people would agree to having a government geo-location device implanted in there arm tracking their daily activitys in the real world, so I don’t understand why they would ever agree to having there online movements tracked stored and collated but where is the outrage? frankly its beyond Orwellian. Last I looked we were still at least called democracy so WTF ?
Good governments follow expert advise
Of course any sane and sensible government would consult the tec industry (and actually listen) here’s what some experts say:
- gizmodo – its going to cost a bucketload
- iinet.net.au- its unconstitutional
- zdnet.com -Members of parliament don’t understand the technology they are legislating for – eg the “whaa my iphone is hacked incident”
- arstechnica.com -its useless
so in short were on an expensive journey to collect and keep the meta data of every Australian – regardless of history (yup even your grans googling of cupcake recipes) and storing this mountain of data (somehow the ISP’s responsibility.. ) Safely and responsibly (cough) for at least 2 years. Which will undoubtedly mean you will end up paying more for the same shit internet but wont help police tracking terrorists ,because the terrorists and everyone else is using virtual private network or an encrypted service like wikr (apparently our attorney general is already using said service cause -hes so transparent).
So regardless of the pointless expense what about my right to privacy? What happens if the store gets hacked and my data is redistributed to ten thousand Russian bots?
Will I be even told if there is a breach? What safeguards are in place to watch the watchers? Recent NSW police disasters and court trials prove they can’t even be trusted to tell the truth to there coworkers?
And the best thing they can do to reassure me is to tell me if I’ve done nothing wrong I have nothing to fear?
I dont think so – I fear incompetence, mismanagement & “human error” most of which my government have already proven they are perfectly capable of ..
this is a government with the innate ability to shoot itself in the foot please lets not give them a rocket launcher its not going to be pretty.