A saying that does the rounds occasionally is that if you make the law complex enough everyone becomes a criminal. The number of pages of legislation have been
constantly increasing
making it difficult, even for those deeply involved with legislation, to know what is going on.
From the Senate Comittee Hansard for
Scrutiny of Bills Committee [PDF]
. The Chair is
Robert Ray
and Ms Graham is
Irene Graham
an Executive Director of Electronic Frontiers Australia;
CHAIR: For instance, what would happen if, the moment I hand out my hard drive to
someone other than myself, all the information disappears, dissolves, off it? We have had
problems not only with the encrypted stuff on the hard drive but where the dope that put it there
has forgotten the code so we are never able to break into the files. It is not deliberate; it is just an accident.
Ms Graham: Yes, but you can be sent to jail for six months if you have forgotten the
password, if it is a crime.
CHAIR: Well, he is going out on June 30 anyway!
Ms Graham: Did you not know that?
CHAIR: No, I did not know that.
Ms Graham: It is under the Cybercrime Act 2001, and a section that provides for what are
called 'assistance order provisions' has been incorporated into the Crimes Act 1914. An
assistance order entitles a magistrate to order a person to hand over their--
CHAIR: Yes, I knew that, but I did not know that if you had accidentally forgotten it you
could be strung up.
Ms Graham: Basically, we believe absolutely that, yes, if you have forgotten it, you could
end up in jail, because there is absolutely no defence to this order. If you are ordered to provide
assistance in terms of either helping them access something on a hard drive or giving them a
password or an encryption key, if you do not comply with the order the penalty is imprisonment
for up to six months, and there is absolutely no defence to that.
CHAIR: I will check back to see whether the previous Scrutiny of Bills Committee picked
up this terrible thing.
More Reading on Scrutiny of bills committee
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Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
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Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
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Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
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Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
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Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
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