A new bill before parliament will significantly increase ASIO’s powers to conduct offshore surveillance and extend surveillance to organisations such as WikiLeaks, just months after legislation widened ASIO’s power to share the results of its spying — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The ongoing debate over the supposed dangers posed by mobile phone usage and wireless signals has exploded once again. An influential European committee has called for a ban on mobile phones and Wi-Fi networks in schools – but industry body the GSM Association (GSMA) has denounced the report as an unbalanced political assessment, not a scientific report
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Watching a report on asylum seekers on 7.30 tonight, one of our daughters spoke up unexpectedly: I don’t understand. Shouldn’t we help them? Why do they keep talking about how they should stop the boats?
Yes, we should help them,
I said.
Then why do they want to stop the boats? What’s wrong with the boat people?
We tried to explain that there was nothing wrong with asylum seekers, that they were scared people who couldn’t live in their home countries any longer because of war or not being allowed to practise their religion. That sometimes they needed to leave so urgently that they made a risky trip in a boat halfway across the world to look for a country that would let them live there.
So we should help them, but why don’t people want them to come here?
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Police must avoid the temptation
to abuse anti-terrorism laws by using them as a net to round up innocent people — particularly in the run-up to next year’s Olympics, the Government’s terrorism watchdog has warned — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Enter the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union, that on Friday called for all monies going to ACCESS Ministries to be withdrawn. Citing ACCESS volunteers who taught their young charges gems like, Buddha is Satan’s friend
, the union said that Paddison’s comments were an affront to students in a our secular government schools and a clear breach of the federal guidelines for the national school chaplaincy program [that prohibit proselytising]
.
The AEU’s stance follows that take by Professor Gary Bouma, an Anglican Priest and the UNESCO chairman of Interreligious and Intercultural Relations. Denouncing the ACCESS curriculum as crap
, Bouma bemoaned an education department ill equipped to stand up to religious bullies
like ACCESS. Several days later, he signed an open letter with a handful of other religious and social inclusion experts. Addressed to Federal and State decision-makers, including the Prime Minister, it called for the replacement of scripture with general religious education taught by trained teachers, not evangelical Christian volunteers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Facebook revolution has retreated from this dusty Jordanian town on the Syrian border.
In a bid to quash a rebellion now entering its third month, the Syrian government, perhaps one of the world’s most Internet-unfriendly, has shut down pretty much all electronic communications inside the country and to overseas. Cut off from the World Wide Web, protestors, journalists and human rights activists have resorted to communications networks from another era.
And for that, Ramtha, a Jordanian town of about 100,000 people 80 kilometres north of the capital of Amman, has become a virtual switchboard for news coming out of Syria, not to mention a swarm of refugees seeking to flee the carnage that has taken some 800 lives across the country, according to a United Nations estimate released last Friday — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The private company entrusted to carry out file-sharing network monitoring for the French government has been hacked. Trident Media Guard, which is responsible for gathering data for so-called 3 strikes warnings, now has some of its scripts and secrets out in the wild, an event which has the potential to upset the smooth of Hadopi — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Christian group that provides religious education and chaplains in Victorian government schools will be investigated after its chief executive told a conference: We need to go and make disciples
.
The remarks appear to breach guidelines governing school religious programs, which ban trying to convert students to any one religion — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Almost half of Zimbabwe’s civil servants are either not qualified or are not working, according to a leaked World Bank report obtained by the BBC — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australian telcos will soon be required to retain customer traffic data under a new law proposed to allow Australia to accede to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Members of the digital communications technology industry are concerned that the government’s set-top box scheme will see a flood of shonky, unqualified operators contracted by the federal government to install digital aerials and antennas.
Technicians are currently expected to complete a certificate 2 and 3 diploma in digital reception technology. But this is not compulsory, and there is no mandatory standard — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Surprise! After months in the oven, the soon-to-be-released new version of a major US Internet censorship bill didn’t shrink in scope — it got much broader. Under the new proposal, search engines, Internet providers, credit card companies, and ad networks would all have cut off access to foreign rogue sites
— and such court orders would not be limited to the government. Private rightsholders could go to court and target foreign domains, too.
As for sites which simply change their domain name slightly after being targeted, the new bill will let the government and private parties bring quick action against each new variation.
Get ready for the PROTECT IP Act
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Everyone agrees. The unemployed should get a job. But should the unemployed have the right to refuse a bad job?
Currently, refusing a job results in eight weeks without Newstart allowance. Tony Abbott wants to go further than this, suspending all payments for people who just happen to live in areas where unskilled work, like cleaning and fruit picking, is available — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Whenever Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott or anyone else in a position to influence and shape public views conjures the notion of their being an orderly queue which asylum seekers must join, they know that they are triggering a strong emotional response in many people. They also know that they are practicing the dark art of the big lie
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
One of Premier Ted Baillieu’s newly elected MPs, Geoff Shaw, has deeply offended a young gay man by suggesting that his desire to love who he wanted was as illegitimate as a dangerous driver wanting to speed or a child molester wanting to molest — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The FBI might be asking your permission soon to reach into your computer and rip something out. And you don’t know it’s there.
In a first for US law enforcement efforts to make the Internet more secure, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized control of a Russian cybercrime enterprise that has enslaved millions of personal computers and may have gained access to US diplomatic, military, and law enforcement computer systems — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Brazil’s Supreme Court has voted overwhelmingly in favour of allowing same-sex couples the same legal rights as married heterosexuals — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In Australia, immigration detention is becoming a legal twilight zone; a place where the normal rules of fairness do not apply.
Both Mohammed Sagar and Muhammad Faisal left Iraq to seek asylum in Australia around 2001. Both were sent to Nauru. Both were recognised by Australia as refugees in 2005 — via redwolf.newsvine.com
An outspoken New Zealand Maori politician has apologised for praising slain Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden as a freedom fighter who stood up for his people.
In remarks that prime minister John Key slammed as ridiculous
, independent MP Hone Harawira said this week that positive aspects of bin Laden’s life should be acknowledged and urged people not to damn him — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australia secretly worked with the United States to weaken a key international treaty to ban cluster bombs, leaked US diplomatic cables show.
Despite taking a high-profile stance against cluster munitions – condemned as the cause of large numbers of civilian casualties – Australia was privately prepared to pull out of international negotiations on a global ban of the weapons if this threatened ties with US forces.
The US continues to use cluster munitions as a legitimate and useful weapon
, including in Afghanistan, and has affirmed that it will not sign the treaty to ban them. The disclosure comes as Federal Parliament prepares to consider a bill to ratify Australia’s signature of the Convention on Cluster Munitions — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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