Big Brother is watching ....

or at least he will be soon in Oz.

In an article in The Australian IT News it appears a code of conduct for ISP's is about to be released .....

"Internet service providers are preparing for a new cybercrime code of conduct that will detail how much data they should keep on subscribers in order to co-operate with police and other law enforcement agencies.

The Internet Industry Association (IIA) is about to release the draft of its Cybercrime code of conduct, chairman Justin Milne said.

The draft code is the result of more than a year of collaboration between the internet industry and representatives from police and crime authorities. "

According to the article Australia will the first country to enforce, by way of legislation, a time limit for data collection on internet users by ISP's. It also stated that per capita basis, Australia is 20:1 ahead of the U.S. for data intercept warrants ..... sounds like those of us down-under are either a bunch of cyber-bandits or we have a rather nosey law enforcement agencies (govt).

Link to article: Australian IT News

So much for privacy and I wonder where it will end... will ISP's be forced to submit returns to the Govt. on a periodical basis, detailing clients internet usage, or even subjected to random audits ? :(

I hate to make a bad situation worse Phat, but guess who is guiding your government in it's search for cybersecurity. Yes, out old friends in REdmond, M$, is consulting with the Aussie government on the standards that will be adopted. I don't think your fellow citizens are very happy abput it either, as evidenced below.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-958969.html

It makes sense that all Australians are crooks on line, wasn't the continent settled by crooks? :D Just kidding.

It does seem though that often while we complain a lot in America many of the governments attempts to affect our civil liberties are stopped in court. While in many other countries it is more accepted to have less privacy and more oversite. I think the one bright spot here is that M$ is helping your cyber snoops. They should leave enough holes, undocumented features, and vulnerabilities to allow 5 year olds to cover their tracks. I would be far more worried if Novell were consulting or (worse yet) if the Australian Gov. invited the Open Source community to set up watch on their internet users. Then you wouldn't be able to send a ping without them knowing what your response return time was.

Like so many things though the road to perdition is paved with good intentions.

I think I remember hearing something about that for the US. Give it about 2-3 years, and we'll be right behind the Ozzies.

t2k2 > actually, now that I think about it, the us government probably already has that level of information, but just isint letting the public know. Now I don't know much about Echelon, but if its anything like the rumors say, then they already know a vast amount of what we do on the internet. Think about how many hops a packet makes before it reaches its destination, any one of those machines it goes through could (and probably to an extent does) record the information to a log file. Really it would only take a medium number of machines placed on high traffic parts of the net, recording information, and linked via a separate network to keep efficent tabs on the goings on of american citizens

While (They) are policing us. Who will be policing them.??Absolute power corrupts. Auntie

I will...

/me grabs a big stick

Code of conduct is a joke. ISP's are businesses out to make money not to improve the cyber security of the world. And to be perfectly honest I don't know if I want the FBI in my server room was root access.

Speaking of Open Source - from the same online paper it appears there is a push for more government agencies here to utilise Linux - it has already been deployed in two larger agencies so far and with more likely to come on board with the annoucement or Microsoft's subscription licensing.

Maybe the government has woken up to how much of the taxpayers money is being sent to Redmond and are considering doing something about it. Personally I can't see this as a bad thing and maybe it's time those at Redmond reconsidered marketing and security strategies.

Article is here: http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...E15306,00.html

Hey Soda, you are right - I am a descendant of one of those crooks ..... probably the best thing he did in his life without knowing it at the time - he got 7 years in the colonies for stealing a hat at the age of 14 in 1836 - I guess the urge to go back has never really grabbed any of us since :)

Echelon is supposed to be able to monitor all types of trafic, Telephone, cell, fax, internet, radio, etc... If I remember correctly supposedly it "listens" for key words (bomb,terrorist, allah, etc.) and records the transmision... A human being goes through later and decides if it is just folks like us talking about the war on terror or some people planning a terrorist attack... Carnivore is just as bad from what I remember but it only "listens" to the internet... I fear that Big Brother has been watching for sometime... Now what he is doing with info remins to be seen...JMO

Didn't the folks down under get hit by a law that banned guns? Looks like they lost a very large percentage of their privacy too.