Getting real about refugees
Marilyn Shepherd writes: Re. “Parties prevaricate on asylum seekers … and boats keep coming” (yesterday). As DIAC employees babble again about prevarication on asylum policy they forget that it is not about us or our policy, it is about us breaching the law to destroy the human rights of others.
Regional co-operation is code for “not here, thank you”, because all the nations in our region are not signatory to the refugee convention but they have millions of refugees in their countries while we still whinge about a small number here. We are the laughing stock of the region and quite rightly they are sending more refugees our way.
Electoral games
David Doe writes: Re. “From nuts to Bolt (lovers), the small parties seeking your vote” (yesterday). It should be pointed out that the treasurer and registered officer of the Liberal Democratic Party is also the registered officer of the currently awaiting registration Outdoor Recreation Party. There are no rules against this, but it does bring into question the likelihood that the “Stop the Greens” party is simply a front group for the LDP and are actually unlikely to have the requisite 500 members for registration.
Further: is this the only article we’ll see on the micro parties this election? I would like to think not.
Civil action
Roy Bray writes: Re. “Surveillance, secrecy and the cost of intelligence outsourcing” (yesterday). Bomb, al-Qaeda, fuse, USA.
Might I suggest that the good old technique of civil disobedience is the way to “fix” the spying on citizens. As you can see this missive is prefaced with a few nasty intelligence words that would be picked up on any internet filter. As in “s-x” when written out in full. If everyone prefaced and ended all emails and Google inquires, etc, with a string of no-no words, the poor old filters would clog up and the data be useles. More or less.
I’m sure an app designer could build an app that transmits a short list of randon no-no words at the beginning and of end of each transmission. Cleverly the words need not appear on the screen but would be picked up by filters. Go to it, kids.
Ammoniun Nitrate, anfo, c4.
Roy Bray, along similar lines? I’ve wondered if the perfect crime could be couched in a trip to the bins of various hair dressers and barbers, to litter/corrupt a crime scene with endless costly DNA “red-herrings”?
Roy Bray, this is an appealing idea, except for two problems:
1. It’s not individuals that monitor these algorithms – it’s machines. Machines have an infinite patience for churning through data using algorithms to sort out what they’re interested in. As we get better at Information Retrieval (a specialist field of study) it’s even possible to get algorithms more finely tuned. More data = better tuned algorithms.
2. The budgets for most of the data analysis are in “black books” not accounted for by the usual mechanisms used by Government. If you double the cost of analysing this data by increasing the amount of noise in the system, you’ll increase the cost to the taxpayer, because there are no readily visible line-items in goverment budgets that are directly attributable. Since no first-world government wants to be seen to be soft on security, this means the money either has to come from increased deficits (the George Bush/John Howard solution) or reduced social welfare (the Barack Obama/Julia Gillard solution). Thus, your increase in the noise in the system is likely hurting the economy or hurting single parents who’ve had their benefits cut.
Either way, it’s not going to work.