[Linux-aus] Seeking feedback - EFA Citizens Not Suspects campaign

[Bret Busby]

On Sat, 8 Jun 2013, Linux Australia Secretary wrote:

> Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 09:06:21
> From: Linux Australia Secretary <secretary at linux.org.au>
> To: linux-aus at linux.org.au
> Cc: jlawrence at efa.org.au
> Subject: [Linux-aus] Seeking feedback - EFA Citizens Not Suspects campaign
> 
> Hi everyone,
>
> From time to time, Linux Australia is approached by various organisations to 
> seek support for campaigns or initiatives. Many of these fall into the 
> category of grants and sponsorship - cf. the recent work we have been doing 
> with the Australian Internet Governance Forum and GovHack. In this case, 
> we've been approached to support a political campaign being run by Electronic 
> Frontiers Australia called 'Citizens not suspects'. We warmly welcome the 
> approach from EFA, and now would like to gauge community feedback to help 
> guide our support actions.
>
> The essence of the Citizens not suspects campaign is to oppose, and bring to 
> bear political pressure, to reject a number of proposals currently before 
> parliament, including;
>
> * a proposal for *mandatory retention of data* relating to the
>   internet and telecommunications activity of all Australians for up
>   to two years. This data could include records of your phone calls,
>   your location, the websites you visit, the searches you make and who
>   you send emails to and who you receive them from.
>
> *   a proposal to make it a crime to *refuse to provide authorities
>   with passwords* for encrypted communications, which could include
>   your email, as well as your Facebook and other accounts.
>
> * a proposal to give ASIO the power to *add, modify or delete files on
>   any computer.*
>
> *http://www.citizensnotsuspects.org.au/
> *
>
> Specifically, we are seeking feedback on;
>
> 1. The level of comfort in the community in taking a specific political 
> position against the proposals
> 2. The type and level of support you believe it would be appropriate to 
> provide - such as financial, in kind through raising awareness etc, utilising 
> the #DataRetention hashtag etc
> 3. Any other feedback you may wish to provide
>
> Feedback may be sent to list - if you're comfortable with it being made 
> public, or privately to myself.
> Please indicate if you would like your feedback kept in confidence and I will 
> not disclose the source of feedback.
>
> Thanks in advance for your thoughts and advice,
>
> Kind regards,
> Kathy
>
> on behalf of Council
>
> -- 
> Kathy Reid
> Secretary
> Linux Australia
>
> secretary at linux.org.au
> http://linux.org.au
>
>
>
> Linux Australia Inc
> GPO Box 4788
> Sydney NSW 2001
> Australia
>
> ABN 56 987 117 479
>
>


Hello.

It is my uderstanding that the "proposals" above, have already been 
implemented, especially the ASIO thing; a few years ago, it was 
announced/reported that  (then) new legislation allowed ASIO to enter 
anyone's computer without permission, modify (including adding) data, 
and then denying that they had done anything to the person's computer, 
which makes all of the prosecutions where people have stuff on their 
computer, that theyu should not have, be it manuals on how to blow up 
parliament or rob banks, or sex pictures or videos of children and other 
offensive material, fraudulent prosecutions.

In all of this, we are just the plebs, with no say in what the 
unaacountable parliaments, do to us.

A significant part of all of this, is the ban that was imposed by the 
federal parliament, in conjunction (/conspiracy?) with the Roman 
Catholic Church, some years ago, to ban human rights in Australia.

As a person who took part in a local forum of, and, made a 
formal submission to, the "Australian Human Rights Consultation 
Committee", some years ago, only to find the result from the committee, 
headed by the Roman Catholic Church, and endorsed by the ALP/Greens 
federal government (not that the LNP would be any better in this 
respect), that "Australia has no need for human rights legislation", so, 
effectively, human rights are banned in Australia, which is why freedom 
of expression and freedom of political association are not rights in 
Australia, but, apparently, whilst bikie gangs can be, and, are, 
outlawed, purely for the sake of megalomania of the parliaments and 
police forces, the biggest organisation involved in the activity of 
raping children, is never banned or outlawed, being so powerful as to 
control governments, we have no reasonable hope of achieving any form of 
human rights, or, any protections of our data or of our communications 
or of our computers.

You may also remember, a few years ago, when the cheque processing 
of all cheques drawn on Australian banks, went offshore, to the USA, 
that all data associated with Australian cheques, became subject to the 
USA Patriot Act, so that the USA president and his heads of 
"intelligence" organisations, could get their jollies, reading who any 
Australian was writing a cheque to, and, in the news in the last week, 
at the order of the USA president, obama, the human rights violator, all 
communications going through Skype, Facebook, Twitty, AOL, etc, are 
being watched by the USA government agencies, and, phone calls made to 
and from the USA, and, outside the USA, are being monitored by USA 
government agencies, for the amusement of the voyeuristic USA president 
and his associate voyeurs.

As was said by the young woman in the movie "Mercury Rising" (or, if not 
explicitly said, then, indicated), if you do not want communications to 
be monitored, the only possible way around it, is to use non-electronic 
communications (a manual typewriter was used in the movie, for this 
purpose).

But, nowadays, as has been shown by what has been on offer at ThinkGeek, 
apart from the google spies patrolling the streets of every country in 
the world, everything and everyone, can be spied on, whatever they are 
doing, and whatever they are saying or doing to whoever they are saying 
or doing it. I know, because, I have a pair of video glasses that I 
bought a couple of years ago, that can be used (and were sold, but not 
bought, for the purpose), for recording people who would be unaware that 
they would be being recorded. I bought them to record what a driver 
would and would not be able to see, at a particular road intersectiuon, 
for use in a traffic offence prosecution. As it happened, the courts 
involved, were not interested in either the truth or the applicable law. 
I partly won the case, on appeal, but the truth and the law applicable 
to the particular incident, were both ignored by the courts. And, 
similarly, Dick Smith has been selling spying equipment, such as its 
video recording pen, for the purpose of spying on people. And, that is 
apart frm the spying audio recording equipment advertised for use for 
the purpose of spying on unwitting people, and, the remote control 
aircraft that are available for spying.

This is what happens, when we have no protections.

We are all at risk, and, innocence is no protection, which makes a movie 
like "V for Vendetta", all the more realistic.

So, with the message above, it does not matter how loud we raise our 
voices, the parliaments will ingore whatever we have to say, as they 
generally do, and will do whatever they want, to serve their own 
perverted interests, as they generally do, so that they can get their 
jollies ruining the lives of the common people, like they always do.

And, even if taking notice of, and, acting on, what we, the people, 
have to say, could help a political faction (be it ALP/Greens or the 
LNP) get elected to poower, they will still disregard what we have to 
say, as they prefer to get their jollies their own perverted way, like 
the recent "We don't care whether having Kevin Rudd reinstated as our 
parliamentary leader, will get us elected  to government, as our only 
possible chance of being elected to govenment - we would rather be 
eliminated than do what the people want of us".

--
Bret Busby 
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
  you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
   Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
   A Trilogy In Four Parts",
   written by Douglas Adams,
   published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................