Harry Evans, the Senate’s most senior official, warns that John Howard‘s proposed changes to the parliamentary voting system would deliver absolute power
to the Prime Minister
Bruce Sterling refers to the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness plan as Poindexter’s nutty scheme
: You have more privacy if everyone’s illiterate, but you wouldn’t really call that privacy. That’s ignorance
Some cities and counties are banning or considering banning geocaching in their parks — via Slashdot
Fears that the UK government may not have a finger on the pulse of modern technology were exposed in the House of Lords, as some Lords debated unsolicited spam email, while others discussed the tinned meat of the same name. Lord Renton asked: Will the Minister explain how it is that an inedible tinned food can become an unsolicited email, bearing in mind that some of us wish to be protected from having an email?
Invasions of privacy on the Internet are less likely to happen in Europe because laws are generally stricter than in the United States about what can be published about individuals. When balancing freedom of speech against personal privacy rights, the default in Europe is more toward privacy rights. And that default is not just legal but deeply cultural
The Council of Europe has called on countries to refrain from censoring information transmitted via the internet, promote ease of access for all their citizens to the internet, and to ensure that service providers were not systematically held responsible for material transmitted over their servers without their knowledge
The world’s most powerful leaders converged on the tightly-guarded French resort of Evian yesterday, aiming to heal rifts over Iraq as thousands of anti-capitalist activists tried to disrupt the meeting
Former governor-general Sir William Deane has criticised the federal government’s human rights record, labelling the Liberal leadership intolerant and untruthful
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance claims that Communications Minister Richard Alston had abused his position by criticising the ABC’s coverage of the Iraq war
A Pentagon project called LifeLog seeks to record every bit of information that can be had, index it by name, or SSN or even location, and make the database searchable. While locally, a national ID number for students and a new computer system to track them has been compared with the failed Australia card bid in the 1980s
They are the information and research staff of the Parliamentary Library are fuming at the prospect of having access to net nasties cut off by a new filtering system
Legalised cannabis will be prescribed to people suffering from chronic pain or wasting illnesses under a four-year trial to be run by the NSW Health Department. The State Government aims to introduce draft legislation to govern the trial during the current parliamentary sitting, with the trial to begin next year
According to a Shadow G8
report by former top world officials, the Group of Eight world economic summits have become discredited because members preach to other countries while failing to put their own houses in order
The BBC have attacked the spin doctored reports on the story of Jessica Lynch — having her labelled a hero and dramatically rescued is more newsworthy than saying she was an unfortunate kid who screwed up and got taken to hospital. Hollywood must be beside themselves with her amnesia, they can make up anything they like for the big screen.
Air travellers in the United States could soon find a monkey sitting in the seat next to them after a report by the US Department of Transportation said that passengers who rely on their pets for ‘emotional support‘ may be able to bring them on to flights.
The ACT has proposed law reforms to remove discrimination in the Adoption Act and will enable gay and lesbian couples to adopt children
The liberal enclave of West Hollywood, which has long championed the rights of gay men and women, this week became the first city in the United States to ban pet owners from removing the claws of their cats
The age of consent for homosexual men will be lowered to 16 but will be buffered by tough new penalties for child sexual assault by adults in positions of trust, under an overhaul of NSW sex crime laws
New technology can mean an end to old liberties and there’s little we can do to stop the surveillance state. But maybe we can turn the cameras on the watchers
If two upcoming trade pacts get signed by the retarded monkey boy, the US government could paradoxically find itself accused of breaking the very copyright law it nowadays uses to prosecute others
In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial email, Virginia enacted a law imposing harsh new felony penalties, including prison time
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