blog A number of technology media outlets yesterday reported they had spoken to a member of the Anonymous collective of Internet activists, who stated that they had broken into a major Australian ISP and were preparing to release a vast package of internal data to prove that the Federal Government’s surveillance and data retention plans weren’t secure. You can find solid articles on this subject, for example, at SC Magazine and The Register. El Reg reports:
“Anonymous is preparing to reveal 40GB of data its members say came from an Australian internet service provider (ISP) and contains “600k+” of customer data.”
At Delimiter, we’ve been hearing rumours for a few weeks of this kind of security breach as well, but we haven’t yet seen any hard evidence of it. In general, while the antics of Anonymous can often be quite amusing, it’s hard to support this kind of behaviour in this instance. The Federal Government’s surveillance and data retention reform proposal may be a highly concerning package, but that doesn’t mean we should break the law to oppose it; Anonymous’ actions will likely only strengthen the case for the package to be passed by Federal Parliament.
In opposing this kind of draconian Internet monitoring and control legislation, rational words and reason should be enough; after all, that’s what has seen Labor’s mandatory filter package largely knocked back. There’s no reason that the same approach can’t be taken with the current package of surveillance legislation being proposed at the moment.
Image credit: Vincent Diamante, Creative Commons
