In Australia many new laws include an exemption to allow Governments and their minions to break these rules without penalty.
The recent highly publicized persecution of Australia’s Rupert Murdoch (probably the single most influential man in the world) is based on one or several of his News Corp. Ltd.’s 54,000 employees ‘hacking’ into phone calls in pursuit of a hot story in the U.K.
It is also illegal to ‘hack’ phone calls and invade the privacy of individuals here in Australia, so it was a revelation, in 1993, when the introduction of a 2G ‘digital’ mobile phone system was delayed by over 12 months for the reason that our Government agencies, proficient at ‘hacking’ the previous ‘analog’ system, needed more time to perfect their ‘hacking’ of the digital system that the phone providers had standing by to offer the public.
So, we know that it’s illegal for individuals (and reporters) to ‘hack’ our phone calls but our Government makes no secret of the fact that they are ‘listening in’ to our private calls and reading our emails.
Their excuse?
“But we only listen-in on the murderers, drug dealers and terrorists.”
However, you and I know that there just aren’t enough murderers, drug dealers and terrorists phoning each other to keep those thousands of Government phone ‘hackers’ busy.
Of course, they pretend to be busy by listening into you enquiring about ‘Aunt Millie’s health’ and the other, even more personal aspects of your lives.
They almost appear to be proud of breaking their own rules.
In Perth alone there are 150 ‘hackers’ listening into our 5% of Australia’s population (extrapolating this; means 3,000 full time ‘privacy invaders’ nationwide).
Perhaps this also explains the difficulty that industry is having in finding skilled people to employ? Perhaps they are all too busy listening to our phone calls.
We should never be surprised at the occasional ‘click and pop’ on the line.
No, it doesn’t worry them that they are breaking the law that they force you and me to follow.
The question they should be asking is, “Why do Australians have so little respect for Government?” When they consider the answer to this question, they might even decide to set about earning our respect.
I welcome that day.