Something to help the censored Austalians

[dieseltaylor]

The Aussies have some of the most drastic unprivacy regulations of any democracy. So here is the answer.

http://www.startpage.com/au/

Now you might think they know about it as it started yesterday but who knows : )

[costard]

Thanks diesel.

Of course, Australia was founded as a police state. The problem is that the police had to be increasingly hired from the local populace, really local becasue of the difficulties with distances and communications: around about now they tend to represent and behave as the majority of the populace wishes. They even employ women. Should the power structures change so that the police gain control, we might be shafted - but we rely on the old standby "She'll be right, mate." That and the fact that our army is a volunteer organisation with no great love for power mad loons. In the meantime, we can only decry the waste of taxes that is going into giving the service provider (the company that wins the tender to track our forays into teh intertens) with the means to hold and trade information about us. meh. Stupid politicians are nothing new. Stupid laws neither.

[Mace]

The Aussies have some of the most drastic unprivacy regulations of any democracy. So here is the answer.

Err you mean a lack of privacy regulations?

I'd argue that point, unless of course your using a bit of spin for your link.

[dieseltaylor]

I did mean that you have legislation to hinder your private use of the Internet. That must be unprivacy regulation : )

[costard]

I've had a little thinky about this over the last couple of days: it seems to me that if our internet use is going to be monitored in any case (as it is everywhere, and if you believe otherwise you have a happy and unjaundiced view of reality; the best of luck to you.) it might be best if a) the corporate body responsible for our society's wellbeing (to wit, the gubmint) has some say in the fashion in which the monitoring takes place, and laws ought be created that provide for penalties for the abuse or inappropriate exploitation of such information garnered in the process.

I note that most legislation dealing with mobile phones and the content carried on them omitted the requirement for a writ to be issued by a judge before "tapping": I'm reasonably sure the same is true for information on a network of computers. Law enforcement agencies worldwide happily admit to spending large amounts of taxpayers' money on bettering their capture and monitoring of this information: occasionally it so happens that the public's wish for protection (from scammers, spammers and other digital undesirables) coincides with the capabilities of systems already put in place by these same agencies, and lo, a politician is seen to be doing something to earn his daily suckle at the public tit.

It's just possible that these (proposed) laws and procedures aren't the brainchild of Fred the Stupid; I'd still put money on an incompetent, overly complex and over-budget attempt being made in the implemetation of the legislation. But then, my liver hasn't been the same since I turned thirty and woke up.

[dieseltaylor]

The wikipedia article is very interesting on the many attempts of net censorship indulged in by the Aussie government:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

Going outside of ISP's by using a third party seems acceptable where politicians are engaged in suppression.