Thread by @trentyarwood

The discourse around data is fundamentally broken.

My parents are scared to use internet banking "cause we'll get hacked" despite it generally being fairly safe (Westpac's efforts this week not withstanding) while generally trusting the government.

In the meantime, the government have directed the military signals intelligence squad to spy on Australians (in addition to foreign governments spying on us for them), raided the journo who reported it to catch the whistle-blower who leaked it, so they can put them in jail

For 150 years like they're trying to do to the other whistleblower this week.

While prosecuting yet another whistleblower who reported on the government bugging a developing world backwater so we could steal their oil wealth.

Westpac demonstrably obfuscated the privacy implications of the leak this week - which they were specifically warned about by technologists and privacy advocates.

And nobody has asked ANU the question of why tax file info and other financial and social details were stored in a database which was linked to people's academic records.

Meanwhile, the government simultaneously expects us to believe that there is no risk from a) data retention; b) my Health Record; c) centralising government contact through myGov

And people go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when people point out to them that Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple are nakedly aggregating data about them for marketing purposes, hidden behind incomprehensible terms and conditions and selling it to data brokers and shonks

Digital civil society (of which I am a part) have miserably, abjectly, dismally failed in raising the public profile of the complete and utter elimination of citizens privacy, accompanied by the near total shut down of government transparency.

The government has played a masterful game playing on fear of terrorism and the "other" while exploiting ignorance of technology, sound bite media and public apathy.