You may have heard of Google Chrome, Google’s attempt to take on Internet Explorer and Firefox by releasing a stand alone web browser (no doubt part of Google’s secret plan to gradually take over the world).  As with most Google services, it looks interesting and well designed.
However, as this article suggests, as is also the [...]

The War on Terror is over, says Secretary of State Hillary.  Or, more accurately, the expression is “just not being used”.
It’s often tempting to think that politicians are all the same and that the Obama administration in reality represents only a miniscule shift towards the centre.  In reality, this seems to be another sign that [...]

Following on from the recent bikie-gang violence at Sydney airport, there has been a chorus of praise for South Australia’s abhorrent anti-association laws (summarised here at Larvatus Prodeo, who rightly point out the idiocy of presuming guilt based on a person’s mode of transportation, but overlook the fact that in fact the SA laws are [...]

Happy news from NSW, where the police are now going to have the power to secretly search homes and computers continuously for up to three years before any notification is given to the subject of the searches.  This will apply even though the subject has committed no actual offence, and will be based solely on [...]

Further to the previous post, there are national protests on 13 December 2008 in relation to Labor’s mandatory Internet filtering scheme. Details here. Attend, if you don’t want the federal government to decide what you can and cannot see on the net.

No doubt stung by the fact that no-one in the electorate actually pays them any attention at all (or maybe just because they don’t have to pal up to right wingnuts like Steve Fielding any more), the Liberal Party appear to have had some sort of cathartic experience about the role government should play in [...]

This is probably the most significant issue for Australian democracy since the amendments to the ASIO Act by the Howard government: link.
More on it later.  If you already know about it, get a move on and write to your state’s senators.

This kind of thing makes grim but not at all surprising reading. Just as they did in the 1950s and 1960s, the powers that be are making it their business to infiltrate groups of citizens attempting to exercise their legitimate democratic rights. Not surprisingly, the targets seem to be progressive and human rights [...]

This has to be less than ideal as a precedent for civil liberties in schools.  Another sign of a fundamental shift in our attitude to the presumption of innocence in the 21st Century, perhaps?

In a recent interview, everyone’s favourite extreme right wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remarked that he found it ‘absurd’ to think that authorities couldn’t torture an individual who had information about an imminent terrorist attack (another take).  Picking up on the widespread belief that terrorists will hand themselves in for interrogation minutes before [...]

I just became aware of this piece of legislation, recently introduced into the South Australian Parliament: the Serious Crime (Control) Bill 2007 (SA). You can see the bill here in Rich Text Format or here in PDF.
This legislation is ostensibly aimed at bikie gangs, but it goes a lot further than that, and doesn’t [...]

This is an interesting little example of the current attitude to anonymity in some sections of the community: a type of jacket with a hood and integrated face-mask has apparently become popular amongst “young people” in Britain (more).
Admittedly looking quite intimidating (see link), the jacket does not in fact come with a mind control device [...]

The South Australian Government has gone ahead with legislation to ban David Hicks from selling his story.  He’s still allowed to tell his story, but he’s not allowed to sell it.  Lucky him.  Presumably he’ll be able to find a job with no problems – after all, he was never convicted of anything by a [...]

Confirming that the United States still regards the phrase “war on terror” to mean “license for continuing and willful insanity”, a lawyer representing the U.S. in a high profile case in England has indicated that the U.S. view is that the covert abduction of foreign nationals in order to bring them to America to face [...]