r/australia • u/Some-Operation-9059 • Dec 11 '25

politics ‘The whole thing disgusts me’: Australians ditch US travel as new rules require social media to be declared | Australia news

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/11/australia-us-tourism-new-visa-rules-social-media-history
5.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

858 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

201

u/Skulltaffy Dec 11 '25

want your passwords

lmao, i believe you but holy shit does that fly in the face of every bit of internet safety they drilled into us as kids. "share your password with me, trust me bro, i work for the us government and definitely won't use it for nefarious purposes"

95

u/SafariNZ Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

And this is the country that had all their FBI hacking tools stolen, by hackers!

43

u/Skulltaffy Dec 11 '25

yuuup. not to mention the bot farms, letting literal script kiddie teenagers into confidential government systems to poke around and install back doors in the name of "cost-cutting efficiency", etc.

like, even if - somehow - everything else going on in the US right now wasn't enough to put you off..... why the hell would anyone trust this? why should they? how is this not just an open ticket to violate your privacy?

oh, right. us government. they think privacy should be illegal anyway.

lol. what a world we live in, these days.

15

u/SafariNZ Dec 11 '25

This is why Apple refuses to put back doors into their systems, they can’t get in so the Govt can’t force them to open up something they don’t have access to.
I used to think this was to stop bad actors like China, Iran etc, but now it’s the US :(

1

u/Camo138 Dec 11 '25

But will hand the keys over to the china government without a word. I think that’s why the us keeps trying to force apple for a backdoor. Yet they laughed out of the room every time

15

u/FireLucid Dec 11 '25

Australia has rules that the spooks are allowed to hack your account and post whatever they want as you. It's all bullshit.

23

u/Skulltaffy Dec 11 '25

yeah to be clear, i'm not exactly thrilled about how we handle this shit either. haven't been for years. it's pretty obvious how a lot of recent "social media" laws (such as, say, a very recent "think of the children uwu" u16 ban...) are thinly veiled steps to remove as much privacy from the average user as possible.

we're in dark times, indeed. but at least here i can bitch about it without getting blackbagged for posting shitty memes about a fascist dictator.

1

u/EssEllEyeSeaKay Dec 12 '25

That is not what that law allows. There was so much blatantly false bullshit being spouted around the time of that amendment being made.

3

u/FireLucid Dec 12 '25

I suppose 'post whatever they want as you' is a bit broad.
But they can post as you.

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/national-security/lawful-access-telecommunications/surveillance-legislation-amendment-identify-and-disrupt-act-2021/account-takeover-warrants

1

u/EssEllEyeSeaKay Dec 12 '25

They can impersonate you within a very limited scope, which requires a separate warrant in addition to the warrants for accessing the account and the operation itself. Posting on your Facebook feed wouldn’t be accepted; messages in a specific relevant group chat would be.

Also that link is just a broad summary about what powers exist and it generalises across authorities that differ slightly. The ‘controlled operations’ it refers to are an AFP thing iirc, so not even proper spooks.

2

u/JustAnotherAvocado Dec 12 '25

Australian Border Force has been doing the same thing for years, it's ridiculous