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Aussies LXIII - Fear Inc


Stubby

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I had a great time too. If we want to catch up before the end of the year I've pretty much only got the 22nd of November or 6th of December free before Christmas or from the 28th to the 2nd Jan afterwards.





Had a Lovely time on Saturday. Sometimes crowds and heat get too much for me.





Yeah it was a bit too loud for me to do anything except smile and nod at people when we were upstairs. Icecream afterwards was great though even if my idiocy in not bring a jacket forced me home :p


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As always, a pleasure hanging out with you fine folks. Good choice of venue from Paxter for dinner, the food was really good. That late ice cream also hit the spot quite well. Great night all in all :)



For those wondering what happened to Stormborne/Tamara, she got a new job, is studying and is about to adopt another cat. She was glad to hear that BeeTrix and Horza have escaped the madness, and said she will try to make it to the next meet once her studies are done for the semester.



Speaking of next meet, seems like its pretty much already organised: Woolwich Pier Hotel around the 22nd or 6th. Done and done!


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Sounds like a good topic.

Yeah I was thinking that when I first read it. Immediately started thinking about structure of the argument. I'd be interested to hear what you came up with, Gears.

I'd be looking at it as something along these lines:

  • The various LRC's conducted research and identified areas of disparity
  • The LRC's recommendations contributed to making it possible for more inclusive laws to be passed
  • Issues affecting same-sex couples were then brought into the public sphere
  • Specific legislative changes would have been unlikely without the LRC enquiries
  • Such legislative changes have produced a fairer (albeit still subject to significant shortcomings) system for same-sex couples
  • Conclusion: That there is still some ground to cover but policy and law reform is getting there

The various LRC's around the Country have been doing good work over the last couple of decades.

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Yeah I was thinking that when I first read it. Immediately started thinking about structure of the argument. I'd be interested to hear what you came up with, Gears.

I'd be looking at it as something along these lines:

  • The various LRC's conducted research and identified areas of disparity

The LRC's recommendations contributed to making it possible for more inclusive laws to be passed

Issues affecting same-sex couples were then brought into the public sphere

Specific legislative changes would have been unlikely without the LRC enquiries

Such legislative changes have produced a fairer (albeit still subject to significant shortcomings) system for same-sex couples

Conclusion: That there is still some ground to cover but policy and law reform is getting there

The various LRC's around the Country have been doing good work over the last couple of decades.

Yeah this is fairly similar to what I had. The problem isn't that the topic itself is stupid or anything, it's just that it's really specific (this 1 question covered the entirety of family law) which means writing 25 mark essay (6-8 pages) is quite difficult without any prep for that specific question whatsoever (especially at the end of a 3 hour fucking legal exam).

Generally law reform in the area has been quite positive for same sex couples with the glaring exception of Howard's 2004 amendment to the Marriage Act which changed it to explicitly say that marriage is between a man and a woman ONLY and that any same sex couple married legally overseas is automatically void in Australia. Which is interesting because we don't allow polygamous marriages however we still legally recognise them if they're done legally overseas. But yeah, pretty much what you said. The Australian Human Rights Commission has also done some good work.

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If it was part of the Family Law stuff then it is a little further afield than what I would expect in a final exam. It would have been an interesting topic for a Law Reform question or Human Rights question.


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This new data retention bill is pissing me off. I don't see how there's justification for forcing companies to store metadata for 2 years - which will be totally expensive (in the midst of a BUDGET CRISIS! I guess even a BUDGET CRISIS isn't as scary as a TERRORIST THREAT!) and then allowing law enforcement to access that metadata without a warrant and whenever they mention warrants they simply say "agencies will require a warrant to access the content of communications", which is intentionally misleading because what they mean is they can access everything they class as "metadata" without a warrant but everything else they just call "content" and try to act like everything's normal.


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Don't forget that the justification is TERRORISM but the police commissioner (think that's who it was) has already openly said "oh yeah we are totes going to use this to go after pirates". And it doesn't impact the budget if you just make the companies pay for it, and they'll make their consumers pay for it, so it will functionally be a tax that the government doesn't get blamed for!!



I'm REALLY fucking uncomfortable with having the definition of "metadata" not in the legislation too - making that definition come via regulation rather than in the legislation is absurd, wide open to abuse and is because they have no fucking idea what metadata is themselves. Besides, I thought all regulation was "red tape" and this government was all about getting rid of it, not introducing it, that's why we have a minister for deregulation!


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I was listening to a panel on this new data retention bill done by EFA (great organisation btw) and in it they mentioned the current state of warrantless access to our data which got me doing some research. It's quite disturbing how much our privacy has been fucked under current legislation - in fact this new data retention bill (while still being horrible) is actually an improvement to the current situation. Basically under the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act 1979 there has been a dreadful expansion of the powers of many many agency's ability to access our data without a warrant. So the situation we have today is that all manner of agencies such as the Australian Taxation Office, The Fair Work Commission, Victorian Taxi Directorate, RSPCA and numerous local councils have the ability to access our phone and internet records without any kind of warrant. There is no actual list of all the agencies that can do this which itself is a pretty clear indication of how broken this system currently is and how grossly our fundamental right to privacy (article 12 of the UDHR and article 17 of the ICCPR) has been violated. So one of the things this new bill is proposing to do is amend the aforementioned Act so that the only agencies that can access our data are law enforcement agencies. There was a Senate inquiry into the Act that was going to be due on the 3rd of December but since this bill seeks to amend that Act I imagine they will granted more time to consider it.


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Legally the current situation is worse, but practically the data itself isn't there at the moment so it's a bit of good here, but a pile of bad there. Yes only law enforcement will be able to access it, but they'll have 2 years worth of data that we will be paying ISPs to keep for them. At least the NSA has their own data centre for all their spying!


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Just because they don't have a large database to trawl through doesn't mean that practically we're better off now, they can still access plenty of information through the records they are currently accessing. There are many documented cases of local councils accessing data (without a warrant) in order to prosecute shit like littering and graffiti and we don't even know all the agencies that could potentially be accessing our data. I'm much more concerned about the violation of privacy and while forcing telcos to store data and charging us for it is really shitty, the law itself with regards to our privacy isn't as bad. Seems to me right now we have a massive pile of shit and this new law will replace it with a slightly smaller pile of shit, to borrow from your analogy. That doesn't mean I support this legislation either, we should be removing the pile, not replacing it with a smaller one.

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