This week, the Australian government has introduced a new app for one's phone. The purpose oft the app is to keep track of your contacts should you test positive for covid19 .
The government promises the app will not be used for any other purpose. AT THIS POINT it is voluntary to have the app on your phone.
So far Over 2 million people I have downloaded the app.
I have not and do not intend to. I don't trust my government. They were caught on the back foot with the outbreak but refuse to admit it . Although they seem to have done a god job once they began.
My opinion is that a government, any government , will grab more power at any opportunity. The most egregious example in a democratic country I can think of is the US government while America was having its collective nervous break down after 9/11.
So no phone tracking app for Cranky. They want to keep tabs on me they already have more than enough ways to do so.
I have made this thread because it has occurred that I might be teesny bit paranoid in this matter. .
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Cranky...if “they” really want to know .... lol. Just joking, because I think they want to do the same in Canada now that we’re looking at a soft opening. Google was already giving “stats” through our phones (percentages of people staying home, grocery stores, etc)...and of course Snowden blew open our “privacy” - so you are not being paranoid.
I can’t say I’d download it...but then again, I don’t have to really make the decision yet. It sucks, really - our privacy is for shit anyway :(
You are not being paranoid. Not at all. Don't trust those fuckers any further than you can throw your house. And that is the extent of what I am willing to say on the matter.
@ Cranky
This is the government that introduced compulsory storing of meta data without understanding what it is
They promised that only the police would be allowed access to that data. They lied. So far more than 100 government agencies (including some headed by members of the LNP) have accessed that data for unknown reasons.
They promised our online Medicare data would be sacrosanct, it since transpired they have been selling our identifiable personal data to BUPA and other insurers.
Never mind their sheer technical incompetence, the data from our "covid 19" app will be stored on Amazon Servers in the US....and look at their track record.
They can fuck off sideways twice if they want me download a fucking tracking app.
@Old Man
Do you remember when the govmint decided to block illegal sites?
Not that I would know personally ,of course. BUT I was told by a nerd I know that the work around takes about 3 minutes. 30 seconds if you know what you're doing.
These days I use a VPN but am aware of its shortcomings. Not sure if the company I use is based on Oz, but it claims it doesn't store data. DO I believe them? That depends on if doing so is to their advantage.
Well I've downloaded it and it's running right now on my phone. If I'm near someone who's later found to have COVID-19, I want to know PDQ so I can be tested/treated. There are privacy issues of course, but privacy goes out the window anyway when you're in the ICU with tubes in holes you didn't know you had. COVID-19 and the treatment thereof are pretty damn invasive.
I'm inclined to trust the Australia government on this one, though I have my doubts about their ability to administer the scheme efficiently. The only arm of government that I really fear is the tax office, because their powers far exceed those even of the police.
@Algebe
"I'm inclined to trust the Australia government on this one, though I have my doubts about their ability to administer the scheme efficiently."
My distrust is not because I think our government is especially malicious. It's because when it comes to things technical, they have shown themselves repeatedly to be both stupid and incompetent .
--among the more expensive incompetencies in recent years is the NBN and fibre to the node. (I'm one of the lucky ones, with fibre to my house) AND Australia's broadband speeds remain embarrassingly low.
---my BANDWIDTH is 49 mbps down, 20 mbps up. Singapore has had 1GB a second for a decade.
@cranky47
NBN is an expensive national embarrassment and is likely to be made redundant by 5G. We've got fiber to the node here, but we generally get 80mpbs up and 30 down. Those speeds are reasonable, but reliability is well below par.
@Algebe
"NBN is an expensive national embarrassment and is likely to be made redundant by 5G. We've got fiber to the node here, but we generally get 80mpbs up and 30 down. Those speeds are reasonable, but reliability is well below par."
Yair. How much is is your ISP? I use Aussie; 500Gb a month 50/20. ($74) Had "Mate' for awhile and it was cheaper, but I experienced lag with Netflix. No problems with Aussie, and few outages.
You pretty much get what you pay for with ISPs .The cheaper companies tend not to buy enough data, so speeds are unreliable. My nerd mate explained it to me. I understood at the time, but have forgotten since.
Besides, there are some names/words in companies which turn me right off, "Mate' is one.
Other red flags include: Honest, integrity, and ethical. Another turn off is a company which uses testimonials instead of actual evidence to sell their product. My fav was "Best Friend Magnetic Products" ", who sold blanket underlays with magnets in them to reduce the pain from arthritis. Lots of wonderful testimonials from lots of gullible geriatrics. .
I complained the Therapeutic Goods Administration (a paper tiger) and to the ACCC. Haven't seen them around for a few years.
@Cranky47
We've got the Telstra "Large Bundle", which includes a landline and all the full-speed data you can eat for $132. One thing to watch out for with Telstra is "free" stuff. My modem broke down and they said they'd give me a free replacement. The next month it popped up on my invoice on a 2-year payment plan. It took four months to get that sorted out.
Magnetic products in are big in Japan. There were a lot of prime-time ads on TV for magnetic plasters, bracelets, necklaces, etc. It looks like snake-oil to me, but people swear by it. The theory is that magnets somehow influence the iron in our blood, but if that were true our bodies would explode in the intense magnetic field of an MRI.
https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/treatment/complementary-therap...
Algebe... would we go “splat” or “BOOM”. That’d be cool re: mri
Hey. Magnets work on water. I use to (when the kids were little) hold a strong magnet to the running water tap and the water flow would bend. I don’t know what it means but it was cool.
I was going to say...maybe it works (the bracelets) because we’re “water”. Jesus fuckin Christ we’d still blow up in the mri....never mind
Magnets are used in meters to measure the flow of water for costing purposes. The magnets align the molecules as it passes through the meter conferring a standard conformity to ensure consistent measures. Apparently flow water can get as messy as a 13 year old's bedroom...why do I remember shit like this?
I actually did blow up during an MRI scan once...awesome...don't ask...assume it was messy...
I am not downloading that app either.
This current government has no credibility at all. Queries concerning personal data integrity have been waved off with a casual "Oh we wouldn't compromise any information..once C19 has been overcome all records will be destroyed." And who will determine when that will be? And who will monitor the destruction of that information? My guess it will be outsourced to a private concern that happens to belong to a party contributor for an undisclosed sum.
Apart from anything else this government's integrity, honesty, reliability and competence have flat lined a long time ago.
You aren't being paranoid Cranky, you are just an aware informed citizen in a country governed by liars, shonks, real estate jockeys and corporate cowboys who don't give a toss about anyone but themselves and their rich mates. History shows the LNP's professional disregard for the working class, socially disadvantaged, elderly and infirmed. The recent automated and highly illegal Robodebt fiasco is a glaring example. Another Government initiative outsourced to private industry who fucked the entire process up as no-one thought possible. The claim has been made several people committed suicide over this issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/27/robodebt-governme...
I guarantee one of the next great scandals of this government will concern the sale, to global corporate interests, of private data garnered from the Covidsafe app which will somehow be overlooked in the government's inept tendering of its destruction; and typically blame will be cast over a wide area and no culpability will be confessed and by that time it will all be too late. A few unimportant public servants will be vilified and punished and sacked with assurances nothing like it will happen again...until the next time.
Keep your physical distance but be socially engaged.
Pardon my political rant. I'll go away now.
@Grinseed
"Pardon my political rant. I'll go away now'
Awww, I was enjoying that----
Unionist and member of the ALP all of my working life. I only resigned from the ALP when they made that thug Latham party leader. Watched the cretin help Labor snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. History has shown that I underestimated Latham if anything.
To be fair, I wasn't too keen on the idea of Billy Bunter for PM either.
Since resigning from the Labor Party I have always voted for the least offensive bunch of venal incompetents on offer. So far that has always been Labor in the lower house, but never for the Senate. I don't trust any party having control of both houses.---even voted for Nick Xenophon once. Don't know what came over me. I remember Nick as a nasty smell in student politics when I was at Adelaide. He hasn't changed a bit. .
doesn't sound paranoid to me at all.
I always have a VPN on, and I don't really trust mainstream VPN providers either tbh. So I just set up my own on a $5/month VPS. this is as good as I can get.... without going the super slow TOR route at least....
@ Cranky
It appears we share political viewpoints, comrade amigo.
I don't consider myself any more left than right these days. Politics has made me a cynic.
The Labor of the Left I grew up admiring does not exist anymore. What remains of them and the detested Liberals has all merged into a mud fight, right of centre.
There are few with statesmen potential, just careerists, obsessed more with following opinion polls and photo-ops than actually leading or honestly representing non-contributing constituents. Few appear capable of expressing an original thought or idea that don't come directly from approved party talking points which is why their speeches all sound the same.
None appear able to answer the simplest questions without that fear in their eyes of later censure. Which all means we are being governed by faceless persons operating within organisations never subject to public scrutiny or culpability.
Old Fred Daly, that affable larrikin parliamentarian, lamented that real Aussie politics died the day Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser implemented unprecedented security restrictions in the Federal Parliament Building because he was terrified someone might kill him, as he was so unpopular. The Parliament that had always been open to the public became an armed bunker. The public was now the enemy. Malcolm might have been right actually. Daly said something like "All the fun has now gone out of politics."
And somewhere along the way Dignity and Truth went bush as well.
You need not apologise for who you vote for these days, old man. I live in a safe blue ribbon Liberal seat because I choose to live near a beach in the northern area of Sydney. This place is full of commies and socialists and miscreants like myself, but we are firmly outnumbered by retired merchant bankers and investment consultants. I always consider my Labor vote wasted. I would rather vote for any euthanasia party if there were one running. It currently has more meaning for me than anything Scottie from Marketing has come up with. But as a protest I usually vote for some marginal "Save the Bilby" party or "Larger Libraries for Life" movement.
Udachi comrade
@Privacy
I’m waiting (impatiently) for the chip or tattoo :)
THIS is what I’m signing up for just to scare/piss off the rapture crowd ;)
NO. NOT REALLY...
This is how ridiculous our data privacy laws are in Australia: Every mobile phone is registered, by law, in Australia. We do not have those anonymous throw away phones you get in the UK and the USA.
The Police both federal and state can access your data, location, and history at will. They can bring charges against you for a crime.
YOU cannot request access to your own data from your own provider to prove that your phone (and by inference YOU) were nowhere near the scene(s) of any alleged offence.
If charged with ANY offence the police (and other 'authorised' agencies) can, and will seize ANY electronic devices such as phones, laptops, tablets etc and cart them off to their "labs" for "testing". Without access to the metadata storage that the prosecution can access by request ( it takes a court order for you to access it) your defence is hamstrung.
NO WAY will I sign up for anything this lot offer regarding data mining apps.
Well done Old man.
I was a "first adopter" for many years, the first with a calculator, cell phone, computer, and all the newest toys. And that include updating to the newest cool cell phone. Three years ago i gave a hard look at my cell usage, and realized that 99% of the time all I did was use the phone or send a text.
So I decided to downgrade, to get the very basic cell phone that just did phone calls and text. So as I went into my provider and explained to the salesperson that I did not want to upgrade but instead downgrade, her eyes got big as she informed me she did not know how to do it, it just was not done. But since my contract had expired, she was persuade by the simple act that she would either provide me with what I requested or I would go down the street and buy one from the competitors.
I have a Ubuntu Touch phone. It is a great excuse to not download whatever app someone is trying to push on me; since it is sure to not exist on my platform. I just tell them that I can't because they don't support my smart phone, to which they always claim they do. Then I show it to them and it shuts them up.
@Nyarlathotep
wait, Ubuntu touch is still a thing? I thought it was dead!
It is still around, although not run by Canonical anymore. I don't know the details, but it is discussed in the Wikipedia article I linked.
@Old Man
"This is how ridiculous our data privacy laws are in Australia:"
Indeed.
At one point of my public service career I was the FOI officer for my office, dealing with all claims under the FOI Act.
People seemed unaware that I actually had FOUR options , not two: (1) Grant full access , and charge for photocopying any documents. (I never charged anyone) (2) Reject outright (3) Grant , with sentences/ passages redacted. (4) Neither deny nor admit that you have such documents, which I actually did once. (yes, I had the document)
The FOI Act may not be used to discover personal information about a third person.
As with all legislation, there is the law and then there is policy, which invariably takes up many times the wordage of the law.
One of my FAVOURITE songs that pretty much
sums up ...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WSIUf2hD6Io
I have a new favorite song.
Well --- this one is pretty good too...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQPMCVz5fM
@Grinseed.
At one point I lived at Port Adelaide.(where the communist party never lost its deposit) My member was Mick Young. Life long party members ,my parents had Clive Cameron.
At uni, I did best with papers in which I argued a Marxist perspective, yet I've never ben a communist nor a socialist.
I worked with a wild eyed Trot. He lived in a communal house and one year spent his holidays at a communist camp in the Philippines.On Mindanao I think-----One day ,we were discussing politics. He dismissed me by saying "--Oh, you're just a pluralist". I was flattered although the comment wasn't meant as such.
I have been deeply suspicious of any kind of true believer for many years. In my experience ,such people tend to be dogmatic and rigid in their thinking generally. I think they are naive at best, dangerous worst. I guess depending on how much power they have.
These days my attitude is pragmatic ; whatever works for the greater good , minus ideological baggage if possible.
I have no time for what I see as the moral bankruptcy of Ayn Rand and Libertarians. I think she objected to Libertarianism as a movement rather than as a concept. Same theoretically basis I think "'Fuck you Jack, I'm Ok"
Of course I could have simply misunderstood.---I am often appalled by the depth of my own ignorance when compared to what scraps of knowledge I may have.
@ Cranky
I hear "Fuck you Jack I'm OK" in the Liberal mantra "those who have a go, will get a go" which seems to imply "if you succeed we will share in your success; if you fail expect nothing."
Hence major corporations and bank have evaded any taxes or scrutiny in Oz.
But if Robodebt mistakenly declared you owed the least amount of legitimate social service payments from the time long past when you were unemployed or in genuine need, you are delivered to professional debt collectors and the courts. ( I make the point I was never a victim to Robodebt; my criticism is as a shocked witness to such immoral Orwellian cruelty)
I've always avoided joining groups or '-isms'. Much for the same reasons you have stated, that it promotes dogmatic and rigid thinking and I add, intolerant, attitudes. Even as a youngster I never joined the neighbourhood protestant "mobs" in retaliatory rock throwing at local Catholic kids. The 'herd mentality for mindless action regardless of outcomes' has always shocked me. I only ever saw other children in the street getting injured. I learned to dodge effectively.
Tellingly, religion was the only 'ism' I followed for any length of time, but then I was assured by all my adult guardians there really was a god, with exception of my atheist grandmother whose quietly posed questions still give me pause for thought and have long outlasted the emotional overt and implied threats of hell and damnation I eventually learned to ridicule and ignore.
The only thing missing here Cranky is a bottle of red to share. Make that several bottles should Old Man, Algebe, Ilovechloe or Mutorc join us. Anyone else I failed to mention Downunder?
@Algebe
"The only thing missing here Cranky is a bottle of red to share. Make that several bottles should Old Man, Algebe, Ilovechloe or Mutorc join us. Anyone else I failed to mention Downunder?"
A great sentiment, I LOVE a decent red, but sadly cannot enjoy the reality.
The first club I refused to join from principle was the boys scouts. I thought those grown men wearing shorts were creepy. History has shown my instincts were correct. Baden Powell did actually like little boys and today the scouts remains homophobic as far as I know. They should be stripped of their woggles.
Over here in the US, it is not the federal government you have to fear, (well dRumpf aside, he is just showing further how inept the federal level is.) It is all the mega corporations, that use the government as their personal wish list genie. The gigantic military spending, etc. etc.
US government has not been for the people by the people, in quite some time.
@LogicFTW
"US government has not been for the people by the people, in quite some time."
If you haven't seen it, I recommend The United Sates of Amnesia" a documentary about Gore Vidal featuring many of his opinions and ideas.
I think the US has the most corrupt political system of any democracy. BUT I also think there is no such thing as democracy in the sense of what people seem to think it means. IE Rule by the majority.
Athenian democracy was rule by referendum. All eligible citizens voted on every important issue. Of course that excluded in excess of 2/3 of the population because neither women nor slaves could vote.
In Republics and Parliamentary democracy, we first have to vote for some dickhead decided by a major party. We have no realistic say in who allegedly represents us. Once elected, at least in my country, members are obliged to vote with their party. It's irrelevant if the vote is not in the best interest of a specific electorate.
As I wrote the above, I was put in mind of my sister's job. She is cabin crew fora major airline. Part of her job is to tell passengers, with a straight face, that they will survive a plane crash. Seems to me our democratic system has similarities . Those in control have the onerous task of telling voters, with a straight a face, that their needs and opinions matter.
I say "onerous;' because it would be for John Q Sixpack . However, professional politicians are consummate liars and masters of obfuscation, so no problem.
Australia has the same kinds of problems as the US .But we're a small country, so it's a matter of degree. Here the school yard bully is the mining industry, Australia has vast reserves of iron and coal, to mention only two things. So naturally we export quillions of tons of coal and fuck climate change. We also burn coal for most of our energy .So fuck climate change and future generations for whom being able to breathe out of doors will be a luxury.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Link: United States of Amnesia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbOQcHZSY_Q
Reminds me of Orwell:
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