Australian Politicians Create An Exemption From Data Retention Laws For Themselves… Or Not, Because We Got Fooled
from the not-thinking-it-through dept
Update: Or not. Turns out this was an April Fool’s joke that Glyn missed. So, congrats, Crikey, on fooling our most careful writer…
Now that the completely disproportionate data retention law has been rushed through the Australian Parliament, politicians are suddenly realizing that their metadata will be collected too. And so, as was perhaps inevitable, they have asked for an exemption, as reported here by Crikey:
An in-camera meeting of the high-powered Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security last week agreed to task the Department of Defence’s signals intelligence arm, the Australian Signals Directorate, and the new Australian Cyber Security Centre with ensuring politicians’ metadata is not captured by the government’s new data retention regime while they are at work in [the Australian capital] Canberra.
The argument was that:
given Parliament House is supposed to be the centre of Australian democracy, they shouldn’t be, you know, tracked while at work there
Well, many people would argue that they shouldn’t be tracked either, but obviously politicians are special. It seems that there were two options for achieving this carve-out. One required officials personally identifying and deleting the metadata of politicians, staffers and senior public servants — a manual process aptly dubbed “handwashing”. The other, cheaper, approach — the one chosen — was simply to remove metadata from all communications generated within Australia’s Parliament House.
Problem solved — except that some 680,000 visitors enter the building annually, and while they are there, their metadata will not be collected either. Ironically, then, the new exemption for politicians from a scheme allegedly to help the fight against terrorism and crime will turn Parliament House into the perfect location for plotting precisely those things in relative safety.
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Filed Under: australia, data retention, parliament, politicians
Comments on “Australian Politicians Create An Exemption From Data Retention Laws For Themselves… Or Not, Because We Got Fooled”
Just when you thought hypocrisy couldn’t get any more obvious…
Cleveland Steamer Act of 2015
All citizens of voting age will be required to allow daily visits from federal enforcers in which they will subject themselves to be shat upon for a period of time no less than reasonably expected for the enforcer to finish relieving their bowels on said citizen.
Amended to exclude all government officials, agencies, and employees.
given Parliament House is supposed to be the centre of Australian democracy, they shouldn’t be, you know, tracked while at work there
That has to be one of the stupidest things I have read this year.
Who didn’t see this coming?
1 law for the self perceived elites/nobles. 1 law for the serfs ie the regular citizens.
Those running the “free world” seem hellbent on returning us to the age of feudalism where only the nobles have any rights and everyone else is essentially a slave to their whims
The first law of politics is do not be caught, and this will help us obey that law.
/sarc
Uhh, did anyone read all of the linked article?
“The proposal will now go to the Prime Minister’s Office for approval in the 2015 budget process, with the “communications annulment tool (generator in flagpole)” system expected to be operational by April 1, 2016.
*April Fools!”
One set of rules
for the governed…
It's at least mostly a joke
It says April Fools in the article. It’s about a *flagpole* blocking metadata tracking.
I guess Facebook members aren’t the only ones that post links without reading the articles.
April Fool's
Just updated the post, noting that it appears to be an April Fool’s joke. Still, fooling Glyn is quite a feat. I think in all the years he’s written for us, I’ve only even seen a *single* typo.
It may have been an April fool joke but I imagine our scumbags…oops, politicians will be looking into ways to make themselves exempt from the new laws. The words “national security” spring to mind.
The best lie and/or trick is a believable one
I think the real impressive/depressing thing here is that this wasn’t immediately spotted as an april fool’s joke.
It was close enough to how people expect politicians to act, in this case proposing laws to spy on the public, claiming that there’s nothing to be concerned about with regards to said spying, and then exempting themselves from the public being able to see what the politicians are doing/saying, that people took it at face value.
Given what they’ve done and said to date, how would something like this be out of character? Politicians are infamous for their gross hypocrisy, so something like this? Completely in line with what they’ve done in the past, so it’s not surprising that people thought it was real.
Look on the bright side then. The way things are going there is a good chance this will come to pass. then your article is already written for you.