2016 census. One step closer to the police state

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

[QUOTE=julianh72;1263134]You can argue that governments don't always do a great job of getting these things right, but imagine how bad it would be if they didn't have regular, reliable Census data?!

QUOTE]

I think this is the problem, we are now likely to have less reliable census data because people who do have privacy concerns (raised by now having to provide their name) won't be giving truthful responses.

[clive milne]

Originally Posted by julianh72

How do you think they work out population trends for planning where to build schools, hospitals, power transmission lines, water supplies, sewage treatment systems, ...

You can argue that governments don't always do a great job of getting these things right, but imagine how bad it would be if they didn't have regular, reliable Census data?!

Take a look at this page http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demograph...ensusdates.htm and check out the countries which don't take a Census, and ask yourself if you would want to live in any of them!

Three letters for you..

NBN <-- complete snafu

ergo, it has nothing to do with supplying a service to the public.

[Allan_L (Allan)]

Originally Posted by rustigsmed

any idea on what the fine is?

$180 per day until the form is completed.

Penalties can also include a criminal conviction for failure to complete and return a form when directed

[clive milne]

Reality:

https://debamboozled.files.wordpress...r-pensions.jpg

[Allan_L (Allan)]

I got my letter today.
It came with a paper copy of the census included.

They must have some demographic information that suggests people in this area are older or don't have computers.

Now I wonder how they got that information???

Oh, yeah, probably from a previous Census !!

BTW, the questions are not that intrusive.
And some are optional.

[AndrewJ]

How do you think they work out population trends for planning where to build schools, .....

If that were true, why in Victoria did we sell off a whole bunch of schools ( and their playing grounds ) recently???
Now we find we dont have enough schools, and have nowhere to build new ones???
How did that happen if they had good data???????
Greed and incompetence makes a lot of this data relatively useless these days.

Andrew

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Marc
True enough, but its much easier if some clown makes it all available on an unprotected plate.
And i'm not so much concerned re a central repository, just the stated aims of using this data so it can be shared with other depts at a "person level", which wasnt allowed before.

Point taken.

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Whilst slack processe by humans is always bad, I always think of the recent debacles on how it was the links between systems that allow the hack, vs the repository. ( Tho that is the fault of the programmer )
eg "Smart lightbulbs" that allowed hackers to simply read out the password of the controlling wifi system, and hence gain backdoor access.
or better still the attack on the BOM, that exposed the interlinks into aviation, defence etc

Andrew

And lets face it, the statistics arent used to do any "useful" planning
as projects are now done based on how close the seat is held
by those in power.

Well designed distributed systems work very well. The problem is that in large organisations the right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. It comes down to middle management (or insert pollies here) accountability and there are indeed a lot of clowns in that layer. Low level developers don't usually get too "creative" about security. They know what they're doing given the parameters to work with. Or just told what to do. The problem is communication between dpt. I've seen it times and times again. It makes you want to

As far as the use of the data collected, of course, it usually goes to the highest bidder but let's not kid ourselves here, that's the name of the game. Transacting with people data is and has always been big business. The ATO, Councils do it freely. The internet just allowed for larger volume of people to get sucked in and much faster than ever before, but nothing's really new on that front.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Marc

Well designed distributed systems work very well.

Until someone wants to do something you havent thought of
ie Stuxnet is the best one so far, but im sure there's lots more we havent been told about.

Low level developers don't usually get too "creative" about security. They know what they're doing given the parameters to work with. Or just told what to do. The problem is communication between dpt.

I think its actually worse than that. The designers specify what they want, but dont/cant specify what its not allowed to do, esp when being transmitted "between" departments that arent part of a self contained organisation.
After writing and testing systems for many years, i always learnt that doing what the spec said is only 10% of the work.
Preventing it being "deliberately" abused is a far bigger problem and costs a lot more money. I dont trust our pollies to get the first bit right yet, and hold no hope of them making it secure from deliberate attacks, as they will baulk at the cost alone.
ie in one place i worked, wireless and thumb drives were banned
All comms cables had to be laid in clear plastic tubes so a clear visual inspection could be done at any time, etc etc.
Thats not cheap.

Andrew

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

I have a house sitter while I'm in Europe.
I'm simply not there during the census. But I do live in Australia and am an Australian.
It's going to appear one person is living in a big house that doesn't belong to them.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Marc... Frogs do taste like a cross between chicken and tuna

I do totally agree that privacy is a complete illusion. People worry about Big Brother... He's been around for a couple of decades now The ATO know how much I earn, they have my mobile number, email address, home address. The credit card companies know where I spend my money and when. Google knows my search history and Facebook must use that information. Facebook is able to guess people that I may know, people that it shouldn't!!!

Do I care if I give all of my information to the government? Nope. Between Google and Facebook, they know more than I could ever tell the government.

[Allan_L (Allan)]

Originally Posted by jenchris

I have a house sitter while I'm in Europe.
I'm simply not there during the census. But I do live in Australia and am an Australian.
It's going to appear one person is living in a big house that doesn't belong to them.

Question 53: Name of each person who usually lives in this dwelling but was away on August 9. (plus sex, DOB, Indigenous?, Student?).

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

Do I care if I give all of my information to the government? Nope. Between Google and Facebook, they know more than I could ever tell the government.

Of course. They know you better than you do yourself. If you didn't disseminate your personal info over the past 10 years online then you're a recluse or have a level of control that I can't even begin to contemplate. And if it's the case, one of you many friends is talking about you right now anyway about some shared experiences or "tagging " you and feeding the machine so you're done either way . Resistance is futile.

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

If you didn't disseminate your personal info over the past 10 years online then you're a recluse or have a level of control that I can't even begin to contemplate. And if it's the case, one of you many friends is talking about you right now anyway about some shared experiences or "tagging " you and feeding the machine so you're done either way . Resistance is futile.

Laugh it up. The more you abdicate responsibility for maintaining your privacy, the more "they" will take it from you. I don't tell anyone, anything they don't need to know and they better justify it when they ask for anything from me. I delight in giving database administrators "junk in" issues.

The bast*ards know where I am, because I fight back, but they generally leave me alone now because they know I come out swinging as the first response.

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

How do you think they work out population trends for planning where to build schools, hospitals, power transmission lines, water supplies, sewage treatment systems, ...

You can argue that governments don't always do a great job of getting these things right, but imagine how bad it would be if they didn't have regular, reliable Census data?!

They are propping up a demonstrably failing system. If "they" analysed the data accurately and combined it accurately with other data-sets out there, the inevitable conclusion they would have to face is that we are heading for a high speed train wreck. Vested self interest trumps hard data any day of the week!

[glend (Glen)]

Marc once you throw up your hands and say "resistance is futile" you play into the hands of big government, population wide monitoring, and turning over your civil liberties to faceless people analysing tertabytes of intercept data every hour. Be they the Borg, or many of the other historical and fictional societies, like Farenheit 454, they carry warning about abdication of our responsibilities to society in return for apparent order and security.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Matt

I bet those white Holden's parked at the top of your street

Not for long
Census says we no longer need to make stuff, so next year it will be beemers ( mercs break down too much these days )
Also, a very interesting comment on radio yesterday indicates that the system probably already leaks like a sieve.
A chap who uses the trusted means of using slightly different names and data across different sites noted that (IIRC) an insurance company was contacting him using data that he ( reckons ) he only used for census answers.
Wonder how much "detailed" Census data is really being sold off already????
I know councils and telcoms etc already sell stuff, but its not illegal for them. The ABS is not supposed to be able to sell anything other than high level statistical summaries.

Andrew

[bojan]

Originally Posted by glend

Marc once you throw up your hands and say "resistance is futile" you play into the hands of big government, population wide monitoring, and turning over your civil liberties to faceless people analysing tertabytes of intercept data every hour. Be they the Borg, or many of the other historical and fictional societies, like Farenheit 454, they carry warning about abdication of our responsibilities to society in return for apparent order and security.

Guys.. be sensible.

And, what really & practically you can do to resist anyway? And what you will achieve with resistance? Apart from that warm feeling in your guts that you are "succesfully resisting"

[AndrewJ]

Gday Bojan

And, what really & practically you can do to resist anyway?

You can always answer it in a way that its useless to them.
A bit of good old Aussie civil disobedience would at least show em the people are getting annoyed at the liberties they are taking.
It almost worked for the last election

Andrew

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Kunama

Your file probably has an orange tag attached by now, I bet those white Holden's parked at the top of your street have untraceable number plates too....

That would assume I am either paranoid, which I am not, or an imminent threat, which I am also not.

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by bojan

Guys.. be sensible.

And, what really & practically you can do to resist anyway? And what you will achieve with resistance? Apart from that warm feeling in your guts that you are "succesfully resisting"

A future in which our children have privacy immediately jumps to mind.