Very Stupid (Secretly and legally read my email) Legislation
So, you assume your email is reasonably private, right? I do. You’d expect nobody could read your email without a warrant, right? Seems reasonable.
Very Stupid Legislation now before parliament, would allow a whole swag of agencies and individuals secret, legal access to any of your emails, voicemails or SMS messages that are stored awaiting delivery without a warrant in most cases.
Thank goodness we have a sensible Senate that has twice rejected similar silly stuff from the conservative coalition.
This new bill is called the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment (Stored Communications) Bill 2004
Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) is onto it, as usual. They have written a briefing paper laying out the problems with this legislation. From reading this, you’d think this whole bill was a joke. It removes so much protection already in place and grants unprecedented secret access to our email, voicemail and SMS messages.
Here’s how EFA sums it up:
The Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment (Stored Communications) Bill 2004 should be abandoned. The Bill is an utter disgrace. It is the type of legislation one might expect to see in a police state, not in a democracy.
And I agree with them. It would be funny if some folk in the coalition weren’t so serious about passing this bill.
Attorney-General Ruddock: please withdraw this and start again.
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