Michael writes, “Watching Australia’s Attorney-General try to explain why tracking Australians’ web histories is not such a big deal resembles listening to a dirty joke told by a ten-year-old, i.e. it leaves one with the distinct impression the speaker is trying to seem like they understand something they’ve only heard about secondhand.”
Indeed the A-G, George Brandis, is rumoured not to own a computer or mobile phone, which might explain why he seems to think there’s a significant difference between tracking what web sites Australians visit and just tracking the addresses of those sites.
I suspect Mr Brandis, being a parliamentarian, is in the position of not needing the internet at all: other people distil the news for him, pay his bills, book his flights, make his appointments and so on. So perhaps, as this interview suggests, he’s never even seen it. And to be fair, there are plenty of lovely people who have never used the internet. To be even more fair though, we’d be pretty worried if any of them were making policy to govern web use, too.
(Thanks, Michael!)