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from the they-should-look-into-getting-some-artificial-intelligence dept.
One of the individuals who first brought the Internet to Australia, Geoff Huston, writes in his blog:
I recall from some years back, when we were debating in Australia some national Internet censorship proposal de jour, that if the Internet represented a new Global Village then Australia was trying very hard to position itself as the Global Village Idiot. And the current situation with Australia's new Data Retention laws may well support a case for reviving that sentiment. Between the various government agencies who pressed for this legislation, the lawyers who drafted the legislation, the politicians who advocated its adoption and the bureaucrats who are overseeing its implementation, then as far as I can tell none of them get it. They just don't understand the Internet and how it works, and they are acting on a somewhat misguided assumption that the Internet is nothing more than the telephone network for computers. And nothing could be further from the truth.
The intended aim of this legislation was to assist various law enforcement agencies to undertake forensic analysis of network transactions. As the government claims: "telecommunications companies are retaining less data and keeping it for a shorter time. This is degrading the investigative capabilities of law enforcement and security agencies and, in some cases, has prevented serious criminals from being brought to justice." ( https://www.ag.gov.au/dataretention ). So what the agencies wanted was a regulation to compel ISPs to hold a record of their address assignment details so that the question "who was using this IP address at this time" had a definitive answer based on the retention of so-called meta-data records of who had what IP address when.
[Also Covered By]: Australia the idiot in the global village, says Geoff Huston
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday September 04 2015, @05:59AM
Ah. The Aussie rejects ;-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @06:37AM
Actually, when the Australian Federation was being framed, Western Australia was rluctant to sign on, so NZ was asked if they wanted to be part of the new Australian federation.
NZ had to reject the invitation due to that it would disenfranchise NZ women who where allowed to vote.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday September 04 2015, @07:26AM
Thanks for the further proof....not that it was needed. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @10:57PM
How about "The Internet is Skynet" then? Or how one of the celebrities in New Zealand is a bloody sheep [wikipedia.org]?
I'm never particularly proud to say I'm from New Zealand with idiocy of that quality going on, and now some fuckwits want to change the flag to represent a bunch of halfwits we call the All Blacks? That's about as bad as the time that idiot sports announcer equated those nancy boys with "soldiers coming back from war" because they'd been off somewhere being overpaid to play a game.
Jesus on a fucking Harley.