Displaying items by tag: Australian greens

If the initial reaction to Facebook's sudden decision to cut Australians off from the site on Thursday was idiotic, it became even more ludicrous on Friday, with reactions from politicians and the media competing to be dubbed the silliest of the lot.

The news media code will be considered in Parliament in the week beginning 15 February after the Senate Economics Legislation Committee submitted its report on the bill to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Friday evening.

A Senate panel chaired by Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley has said it considers the proposed authorisation of coercive search powers for the Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission in a current bill — the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 — could unduly trespass on personal rights and liberties.

The Australian Greens have accused the Federal Government of dropping the ball in response to the ACCC’s digital platforms inquiry, and say the government must implement urgent media reforms if Australian media is to ”play on” after the COVID-19 crisis.

Ever since the Department of Human Services started its robo-debt campaign to get back money which it has allegedly overpaid to welfare recipients, it has often been accused of having scant regard for the privacy of people. On Monday, I had a first-hand demonstration of exactly how much the DHS cares for privacy.

NOTE: The Department of Human Services has responded to this article vigorously refuting the author's contentions of a personal privacy breach and the response is appended to the end of the story.

The Australian Greens have called on the Federal Government to immediately halt the recovery of money claimed to be owed to Centrelink and calculated through the use of data, after the Department of Human Services wiped a $4000 debt that was at the heart of a Federal Court challenge to the recovery scheme.

The Australian Greens have called on the Federal government to ensure that WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange is not extradited to the US after his arrest in London overnight.

The Australian Greens have taken aim at the government's encryption law again, calling for its repeal and claiming that it will have "significant, unintended consequences" as Australian-based encrypted messaging services are dumped in favour of other means of communication.

Australian Greens leader Senator Richard di Natale has laid into the Labor Party for letting the encryption law pass Parliament last year, saying this had taken place despite Labor standing with the Greens and making it clear they believed the law was bad legislation.

The Australian Greens have asked Prime Minister Scott Morrison to provide data on the potential security threats that were identified and foiled over the Christmas break as a result of rushing the government's encryption law through Parliament.

Breaking a long silence on the encryption bill, the Australian Greens have called on the government to reveal the details of the deal it sturck with Labor to agree on passing the bill.

Barely one week of parliamentary sitting days after the date for comment ended, the Federal Government's party room has endorsed the contentious encryption bill and it could be introduced into the House of Representatives as early as Thursday.

Australian Greens' Digital Rights spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John says he is thrilled that some of the world's big technology firms have put the privacy of their users ahead of their own profits by condemning the Federal Government's Assistance and Access Bill.

The Australian Greens appear to be unimpressed with the Federal Government's new cyber law, saying that it would "completely undermine the point of end-to-end encryption and the privacy of every single Australian’s personal information online".

The Australian Greens say they are "bewildered" at the way the Australian Signals Directorate has handled Microsoft's application for Protected cloud certification and the subsequent departure of a top female officer from the agency's ranks.

The Australian Labor Party's plans for a service guarantee for those who use Australia's national broadband network, the NBN, is of little use as it does not tackle the systemic issues dogging the network or improve the customer experience, the Australian Greens claim.

Telstra's announcement that its plan to cut 8000 jobs by 2022 will improve customer service has been labelled as "nonsense" by the Australian Greens.

The Australian Greens have asked Cyber Security Minister Angus Taylor to outline how the government plans to draft laws to bypass end-to-end encryption without compromising the security of the encrypted data.

One-third of the appeals made by those who were slugged with debts by Centrelink, over what has come to be known as the Federal Government's robo-debt scheme, have been upheld by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Microsoft staff based overseas will have access to servers in Australia where top-secret government data is stored on the company's Azure cloud service.