Pirate Party Australia condemns the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Procedure) Bill 2012, the second reading of which was today debated in the Senate[1].

The particular parts the Pirate Party objects to are the amendments to paragraph 170(3)(a) and 170(3)(b) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, which would double the cost of fielding Senate and House of Representatives candidates. If the bill passes, Senate candidates will cost $2,000, while House of Representatives candidates will cost $1,000.

The purpose of the price increase is to “discourage…those candidates and groups whose chances are very slim, thereby avoiding unwieldy ballot papers that tend to be difficult to read and are likely to give rise to higher levels of informality,” according to a Parliamentary Library document[2].

“The two particular amendments, masterfully hidden among fairly reasonable amendments, are devastating to the ability of minority parties such as ourselves to compete in fair and democratic elections,”commented Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer, Deputy Secretary of Pirate Party Australia. “The justification for increasing the cost of candidates is laughable — democracy is not about discouraging candidates from competing elections, and it is not about the convenience of being able to print smaller ballot papers.”

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Pirate Party Australia is alarmed at reports that Telstra plans to slow the speed of peer-to-peer traffic which may involve the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) to determine data prioritisation[1].

Peer-to-peer networks are decentralised methods of distributing content, making them robust against server outages, and spreads the responsibility of serving content across the network rather than being limited by a single provider.

Many different applications rely on peer-to-peer connections, such as the telephone software Skype, and the updating software for popular games such as World of Warcraft. Deep packet inspection (DPI) involves examining each segment of data that is downloaded and uploaded by a computer connected to the Internet, effectively wiretapping your Internet connection.

Pirate Party Australia objects to the plans on the grounds that an Internet service provider (ISP) should remain as impartial as possible to the types of traffic flowing through their network, and the potential privacy concerns that DPI raises.

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Pirate Party Australia is appalled by reports that should the Coalition form Government following the next federal election, they would provide ASIO with what was described by the Age’s Daniel Flitton as “unfettered powers to brand refugees a security risk to Australia”[1].

The Coalition would remove any form of appeal process to challenge ASIO’s determinations, flying in the face of fundamental human rights that a nation like Australia should strive to uphold. Warren Entsch, chief opposition whip, expressed that in his opinion ASIO rulings should not be reviewable, stating that “we rely on them absolutely”.

“Both major Parties seem intent on assaulting human and civil rights by granting draconian new powers to ASIO,” said Simon Frew, Deputy President of Pirate Party Australia.

“The ALP have the National Security Inquiry, where they want to give ASIO the power to dig through personal communication records without a warrant, hack computers of people suspected of no crime and demand passwords off anyone on a mere suspicion. The Liberal Party want to place ASIO above the Law by granting them absolute power over refugees. There is nothing liberal about abandoning the rule of law to set secret police onto people fleeing persecution.”

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In this episode Sam continues the new season of the webcast which is now also broadcast live as a Google Hangout. Subscribe to the feed, or view past episodes.

Topics:
What happened to episode 5?
This week in Pirate Party Australia:

Policy Development Meetings are held in IRC channel #ppau-pdc (click “Communicate” at the top of the page for more info on IRC)

WTO authorises Antigua to suspend U.S. Copyright

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Pirate Party Australia applauds comments made by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, warning of the potential pitfalls of data retention.

This week Berners-Lee raised concerns that data retention would needlessly compromise Internet users’ privacy while failing to actually assist in reducing serious crime.[1] His comments come as a result of proposals contained within the Attorney-General’s National Security Inquiry discussion paper which has been met with widespread criticism.

“Data retention is a serious threat to personal privacy,” said Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer, Deputy Secretary of Pirate Party Australia. “While the Attorney-General, other parliamentarians, law enforcement and intelligence agencies champion its necessity to protect the community, they consistently fail to acknowledge the potential ramifications of placing an entire nation under constant surveillance.”

“As Mr Berners-Lee rightly points out: people often feel more comfortable seeking help anonymously online than from friends and family. Compromising the ability for people to maintain anonymity is a slippery slope away from protecting the community.”

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