[BLKNSLVR]

I've actually thought that some of the recent legislation, specifically the metadata retention and anti-encryption, has been the five-eyes using Australia's democratic populace of "bloody-minded sheep" as a testing ground and/or precedent for implementing the same privacy invasive legislation in the other countries that may be less 'compliant' without said precedent.

[TOMDM]

My thought has been even more pessimistic than that. Why even pass your own legislation when your intelligence agencies can just get Australia to extract that info for you.

You don't need to actually backdoor the targets device, just the platform they use. Who cares about jurisdiction as long as your friends are willing to hand over data in the interest of international security.

[discordance]

No need to be pessimistic. This actually happens, as documented in the Prism leak.

[hilbert42]

Right, one can't but helped to have noticed how remarkably quickly that legislation passed.

...And it did so without a squawk!

Edit, it sort of proves my point, doesn't it?

[techdragon]

From the standpoint of someone who did not agree with that legislation or the subsequent follow on changes that pulled on even more… and several less internationally noticed little legal things… We squawked, as loudly as we could, but it made no difference, because they went and did it anyway. So it wasn’t even a strangled squawk, but a completely ignored squawk.

It really doesn’t help that we have very few constitutional rights with which to push back with as any sort of “inalienable” baseline.

[BLKNSLVR]

And having the opposition at the time barely raise a whimper also strangles whatever squawk a minority in the public may raise.