a terrifying direction

As I write this, I'm too consumed by fear of future events to coherently plan a post.

Just weeks after Senator Conroy slammed Google for an invasion of privacy for capturing unencrypted Wifi data during Street View updates, plans to capture your entire browsing history.  Let me repeat that in simpler terms:

The Government wants to require your ISP to keep a record of EVERY WEB PAGE you have visited, and retain it for five to ten years.

This all comes within days of the announcement that AusCERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team responsible for identifying and distributing information about online security threats, is to be replaced by a government-run CERT.  AusCERT is one of the most efficient organisations in the country, providing an amazing service on a shoe-string budget.  It isn't broken at all.  Why fix it?

To tie that all together with current Internet issues in Australia, the plan is:
- implement a filtering system which checks every URL entered by every Australian
- implement a data retention system for all ISP's to maintain substantial information about user internet and communication history (including browsing history and emails for many years)
- implement a single national broadband network
- remove funding for AusCERT and establish Government run CERT

All of this is being done in the name of stopping paedophiles and terrorists, but anyone who's had anything to do with network security knows this is not true; these things don't happen online and through public email.  Those affairs are conducted through encrypted peer-to-peer sessions in the backrooms of the internet.  This is the equivalent of asking every person boarding a plane, "Are you a terrorist?", and if they say no, they're allowed to get on.

It does not make sense.  I'm not that bothered by privacy issues generally.  I don't care that my information is on Facebook and Google's Wifi dumps made me laugh.  But this; this is terrifying.  We are being lied to in order to have our privacy stripped.  They are systematically putting the pieces in place to take control of the Internet in Australia, and it's being sold to us as a performance and protection upgrade.  It's the privacy equivalent of Godwin's Law that eventually the Government will be referred to as Big Brother and a 1984 reference made, but is this not a digital telescreen?

Own the infrastructure -> Record everything we do on it -> Filter what's unacceptable -> Control the threat response = Total control.

We are in trouble.  Big trouble.  And I'm scared.