Australia Spying On Its Own 474
AVIDLY INTERESTED writes: "Well well, the Australian government has been caught out spying on its own citizens, despite denying for years that they do this type of thing. This story at The Age shows that the Defence Signals Directorate listens to just about every bit of communications in Australia. The interesting thing about this story is the background to it. In this case the govt spied because they were trying to win an election, and needed evidence to demonise a ship that was docking in Australia carrying a bunch of refugees. National security be damned, this is echelon for political gain. Is it happening anywhere else?"
Re:Australia: The new France? (Score:2, Informative)
>Do some research and you will see that Australia is run by the right -- Conservatives not liberals.
Just to be more confusing - the Conservatives are called the Liberals. http://liberal.org.au [liberal.org.au]
AU Liberal party actually deeply conservative (Score:5, Informative)
As for you libertarians who seem to think liberals are the greatest threat to freedom, who are the ones currently taking away US freedoms in the old excuse of national security? It ain't the liberals anyway.
Re:Sovereignty (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm an Australian, and I don't mind... (Score:3, Informative)
Liberalism? (Score:3, Informative)
Liberalism is seldom associated with increased surveilance and invasions of personal liberties: Quite the opposite in fact. Most "soccer moms" who call for greater and greater restraints and government controls are conservatives. A liberal approach to things is live and let live. A conservative approach to things is "live the way we see as the best way to live".
Re:Australia confuses me (Score:1, Informative)
And our media has a good habit of being politically biased, and beating up stories, because after all, we are a small country and earth shattering events rarely take place here.
They've taken an allegation on monitoring conversations between the tampa (a ship). But the media likes to turn it into "big brother is watching".
It will be big news in parliament for about two days, and like always, the treasurer of the country will give the opposition a big smarmy grin, and make innuendo about their political oponents lack of ticker, and move on to the next witty remark and mini-drama.
Come and spend some time in Australia and travel around, and make up your own mind
Re:Liberalism? (Score:1, Informative)
Sorry to disagree, but I feel the need to make a point here. Liberalism (at least here in the USA) calls for the creation of a socialist state "for the good of the citizen". Socialism, to work as intended, requires absolute knowledge about the citizens by the government. How can you know how much welfare, SS, or healthcare to give them if you don't know all about them?
Conservatives call for an end to most government regulations and controls of business. This allows (to some extent) business to invade privacy "for the good of the consumer". After all, how can you decide what to sell people if you don't know all about them?
I tend to run on the conservative side, because I think that government should not be allowed to invade privacy on a whim. Business can be managed differently (I hope). This is purely a political/idealogical choice that many will disagree with, But I think the definitions are fairly unbiased and true. (I'm sure many will disagree with that, too)
Re:A government represents its voters (Score:2, Informative)
This is a view I hear time and time again from fellow Australians. Perhaps you might like to consider why Australia's "sordid past" comes up again and again.
It's because that past has never been satisfactorily rectified. Australia really does have an abhorrent history, which most people know about and I wont rehash. But the attitude of most Australians is to try and forget about it, to sweep it under the carpet and look the other way as if it never happened. This attitude is reflected in the current government, in fact it's the reason they're currently in power.
The liberal government in Australia won the unwinnable election by going to the lowest common denominator and playing up to people's inherent xenophobia. They welcomed every right wing loony (the ones who were voting for one nation only a year or two ago, about 10% of the population) back into the political mainstream. They've made it socially acceptable to be racist again, but hidden it under the rhetoric of "queue jumpers" and "economic refugees." They've basically sent the country back 20 years to the days of the white australia policy and shattered forever the myth of giving everyone a "fair go."
Regarding your point (b), I'm an Australian now living in the UK. The UK takes on far more refugees on a per capita basis than Australia, and while it certainly is a problem, people aren't automatically singled out as being fraudulent and locked away for years when they try and claim refugee status.
The politicians here are just as back-stabbing as they are anywhere but both sides have agreements not to bring race into political debate. Why? Because they're mature and responsible enough to recognise that stirring up racism for short term political gain is in noones interest and makes the country a much worse place overall.
From a distance the country I call home looks like a selfish spoiled brat that doesn't know how to face its responsibilities and grow up.
Completely false. (Score:4, Informative)
Liberalism has a meaning. It is a political philosophy that puts individual liberty and freedom as the natural and desired state of human beings, and dictates that burden of proof must always fall on any person or law that infringes on individual liberty in any way (that is, speed limits are ok even though the limit freedom, as long as we can show that they do great good to make up for it.)
Liberalism should be contrasted to a conservative political philosophy, which means that the burden of proof always falls on people and laws that change the current situation. That is if there is currently a law that infringes on peoples freedom, the liberal will say, "Show me why we need this law, or I will get rid of it," while the conservative says, "Show me why we would be better off without this law, or it stays."
It makes my skin crawl every time I hear an American attacking liberals as wanting less freedom and more laws. If somebody wants that then they are BY DEFENITION not liberal, regardless of what they, the media, their opponents, or anybody else says. Nor does liberalism have anything to do with socialism, which is a political system (not really a philosophy) that tries to even out social injustices. There are people who combine the two under the argument that people without money are having their basic freedoms infringed by the economic system, but that is neither universally held nor in any way inherent to being a liberal.
If you think that, all things equal, people should be as free to do whatever they want as is possible, then you are liberal. It doesn't matter if you find that hard to swallow because you are American and don't like the people who call themselves liberals around you, or whether you despise Al Gore, or whatever. Get over it, and learn the meaning of term before you attack it.
3 definitions of "liberal" (Score:4, Informative)
19th Century: Best expressed by J.S. Mills. Sort of what Americans now call "moderate libertarian":
- Capitalist, free-market economics.
- Mills probably never heard of labor unions, and certainly wouldn't have approved of them.
- Distrust of government balanced against recognition that some government is necessary. Mills: "That government is best which governs least."
- Representative democracy with quite limited governmental powers. (In the US, this depends largely on the Supreme Court, the legislature and executive both being notably lacking in self-restraint and respect for the Constitution... British liberalism substituted the hereditary House of Lords for the Court, and tradition for a written Constitution, and so far it seems to have worked out no worse than over here...)
- Heavy emphasis on individual rights, except where they conflict with the free market.
- Some public works projects are acceptable (like roads), but gov't should stay out of anything that can be done by competitive commercial concerns, or by private charities.
Late 20th & 21st century American "liberals": Moderate socialists. Sometimes not so moderate. Example: Ralph Nader
- Regulated capitalist economy with many socialist trimmings.
- Pro union
- Distrust of big business. Also tends to regulate small business to death...
- Schizoid attitude towards government -- when it comes to arresting criminals or the national defense, gov't is bad, but when it comes to welfare, business regulations, zoning, public schools, or social agencies checking up on how you raise your children, gov't magically becomes good.
-Representative democracy with some limits on governmental powers.
- Heavy emphasis on individual rights, except where they conflict with the "liberals" favorite gov't regulations.
- Almost everything should be a public work. If the regulated and heavily taxed economy can't employ everyone, the gov't should hire them. If necessary, to dig holes and fill them up again...
- Does not believe that honest citizens can or should defend themselves.
(Don't let my ridicule of 21st century liberals fool you -- conservatives are even more schizoid. But that would get too long and too far off topic...)
British or Australian late 20th - 21st century liberals: What we call "conservatives" in America
Re:NSA admitted as much after 9/11 (Score:3, Informative)
[snip]
There is _plenty_ of RF Scanning gear that was sold commercially before the EPCA came into effect that is still in private and corporate hands that can listen to the cellular portions of the 800MHz band.
You're talking about old-style cellular, which most people are moving away from except as a fallback. The rules have changed now.
I use GSM on the 1900 MHz band. I know that my conversations have several layers of encryption and are transmitted over a spread-spectrum link with the cell. I know that breaking the encryption is difficult, and intercepting the transmission has never been accomplished even under laboratory conditions. I have *every* expectation of privacy for the radio leg of my call.
OTOH I know they can tap my call at the cellular company's switch. The cell company is not supposed to allow this without a court order. So, I damn well expect a well-behaved law enforcement agency to go to an ordinary judge and talk the judge into issuing a clear warrant ordering my phone to be tapped before it can happen.
If the NSA were to be going around recording my calls randomly, I would want them crucified for it.
Liberal, libertarian, Conservative, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, the poster declared himself to be a 'libertarian', a libertarian, in the US is someone who believes in little government interference and that type of thing, it's a term only really used in the US, as far as I know. And he called what the Australian government's actions "liberal", now I'm guessing he means "liberal" in the US sense, rather then say, the British sense. Now, to make things extra-confusing "Liberal" in the US and "Liberal" outside the US mean opposite things. In the US the Democratic party is called "Liberal" and the republican party is called "Conservative". In the rest of the world, the republican party would be called "Liberal". Liberals out side favor liberty and the like. In the US, liberals are liberal with government money: P.
The term 'libertarian' thus came about here, because people who favored liberty but didn't think the republican party was any good needed something to call themselves. They couldn't use "liberal" because it was already in use by people who they even more strongly disagreed with, thus "libertarian" was minted.
To make things extra confusing partisans, people who identify strongly with a particular labeled viewpoint (like liberal, conservative, fascist, communist, whatever) tend to label things they don't like as being in the opposite camp. This libertarian here called the AU's listening "liberal" in the US sense (I think), because he didn't like it.
Personally I don't think listening to almost everyone in the AU has any particular political slant other then "Sleazy", and of course "Very, very disturbing", (although you might be able to say its "reactionary").
Anyway, let me know of any mistakes I've made. Personally I think we should choose new names in the US for these terms to make intercontinental communication easier.
Re:Completely false. (Score:2, Informative)
The original terms come from Britain - the Liberals (Whigs) and the Conservatives (Tories) duked it out for most of the 19th century. (The British Liberal Party still exists today but it is really minor as the main contest now is between the Conservative and Labour Parties). In fact, the Liberals were famous for promoting a "laissez faire" philosophy of letting market forces rule the economy. The stuff about government regulation and welfare came from the Labour Party, which grew out of the trade union movement.
Of course, things have changed since then but the basic rule is that liberals believe in small government and individual freedom.
The Australian Liberal Party is "liberal" in the sense that they ostensibly believe in small government (although their actions belie this) and they belive in the rights of the states (Australia like the US is a federation). But in the main they are quite socially conservative, so their name is commonly regarded as a misnomer.
The main alternative in Australian politics is the Australian Labor Party, which is more democratic socialist or what you Yanks incorrectly call "liberal". It is not really "liberal" because it's about big government and welfare but it does tend to be more "liberal" when talking about individual rights. They are more socially progressive, for example letting gay couples adopt children or single women seek IVF treatment.
I guess the same is generally true of the US Democratic and Republican parties.
Today when you talk about economics, "liberalism" or "neo-liberalism" refers to free trade - lowering tariffs etc. This is now such a mainstream doctrine that it is a fairly conservative one, in the sense of maintaining the status quo.
I personally do not feel these terms are particularly useful. This discussion shows what a lot of disagreement there is about their meanings. It also depends on what axis you measure things. Liberal vs Conservative is not the same as Left-wing vs Right-wing, which is not the same as Communist vs Fascist or Anarchist vs Libertarians.
The interesting thing is that - at the extremes each political philosophy starts to resemble each other. Eg. Communists are left-wing and Fascists are right-wing but in practice they are both about authoritarianism. Another Eg., Libertarians are regarded as right-wing and Anarchists as left-wing. However, they come to largely the same conclusions (but for quite different reasons).
The truth is that every political party mixes political philosophies in different ways.