Personally I am of the opinion that regardless of the submissions/opposition it is going to eventually get passed one way or another, so we should embrace it to underscore that all unsecured private communications in Australia are not really private, and can and will be used against you, and use it to highlight that we should all be using encryption and other privacy tools anyway. Not sure if PPAU would want to roll with that.
Another angle is that by making unsecured private communications freely available just by starting civil proceedings against someone - without as much as even needing to make an accusation of a crime being committed, it will force encryption to become the norm, which would really undermines the value of metadata collection for serious criminal cases like ones involving terrorism & child sexual abuse, so they should really be more selective about how the metadata is used. But that kind of validates collecting metadata at all in my opinion, when itâs already a lost cause to stop it completely.
We are working on a submission, notes are going in a pad here:
https://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/inquiry-access-to-telcom-data-in-civil-proceedings
Not the embracing it bit, no. We are going to do what we do, oppose it in as strongly as possible, make all the points as to why it is an awful idea and why data retention is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. We are here to fight precisely these battles and fight them we will. Data retention has been overturned in Europe repeatedly, most recently just two days ago, so âembracing itâ would be defeatist, we need to keep working to get it overturned here too.
Getting people to take privacy more seriously is the sort of thing we do, and should do more. We have a handy guide that we put together when data retention was passed in the first place. What we do is dependent on people volunteering so please put your hand up to help!
Yeah I agree. But what I meant was if we âsupported itâ in a tongue in cheek way, imagine the headlines it would generate âPirate Party welcomes proposal for metadata free for all, because it highlights how you should really be protecting yourself by nowâ, without actually supporting it going though.
Personally I am appalled but literally playing the devilâs advocate:
Anybody want to open a book on just how long after this is enacted it will be before metadata evidence proving innocence in a case will be disallowed; either by court or legislation?
Wasnât really sure where to put thisâŚ
WarOnChristmas.jpg
