Adventure Ausrama Blog

While some countries have embraced general camera surveillance others are still cautious. The problem is that in national constitutions people have a right to privacy. Cameras placed in public streets clearly trample over this right. Nowra, a town in New South Wales, has come face-to-face with this issue. An Australian rights campaigner, Adam Bonner, took the local council to a tribunal and a decision was made to order the council to desist from breaching the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act. It was not an instruction to turn the cameras off but it had the same result. The Administrative Decisions Tribunal New South Wales decision has thrown a spanner into the works nationwide. State bodies set precedents for national courts. It has shown, however, that people can act locally to stop camera surveillance at local government level. One person has stopped a council in its tracks. The Nowra Council did not help itself by telling the tribunal that the cameras were n

Ned Kelly has been made into a folk hero yet his exploits were very bad indeed. He killed policemen and believed he was hard done by and above the law. Like Jesse James in the US it is surprising how an evil person can be made larger than life. While there was possible police corruption affecting the lives of both, it was not a prime factor in their behavior. From the start they had the belief in the their own superiority, that they could live above the law. Even today many strongly support the "heroism" of Ned Kelly. He was recently laid to rest in a Requiem mass. His skeleton, minus the head, were cremated. It has been 132 years since his execution. There is something to be said about his fight against British rule in the colonies. Police control over the population was strong and brutal. Carrying the fight from Ireland to Australia is seen as a virtuous act. The problem is Ned Kelly was not really acting on this premise. He wanted to declare a region of Austra

Mediums can be right - some of the time. An Aboriginal female elder in NSW told police she saw a girl dead in a dream. A six year old girl had been missing. The problem was the body found by police was of an adult, a woman. She had been dismembered wrapped in plastic and left at an Aboriginal burial site. A Sydney woman was last seen in June. Post-mortem tests will probably confirm that the body was missing 31 year old Kristi Mc Dougall. The Aboriginal woman strongly believes that she has psychic talents.  It is odd that the Aboriginal knew about a murdered adult before police suspected it. The odds of finding bones of dead people in an Aboriginal burial site are extremely high. Though having a premonition that a recently dead person are there is not strong. The seer has helped police with their enquiries, but not in the way she had "imagined". http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com/atom

Flee from the fleas! A police station has been evacuated in Darwin because a prisoner brought fleas into the jail house. The fleas spread all through the watch house and even to a police van. Police had to wear gloves and tuck their pants into their socks to keep out the menace. They were also ordered to take a shower when they finished each shift. But all this was in vain. After a week of scratching in agony they abandoned the station. The place has now been thoroughly fumigated. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Society

Don't throw wildlife around! You may be punished for it. A New Zealand man has to attend court for throwing a hedgehog at a teenager. Mr Singhalargh threw the poor animal five meters at a 15 year old in the eastern North Island town of Whakatane. The teenager was injured. He got a large red welt and several puncture wounds. The man was arrested shortly afterwards for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog. The police did not say whether the hedgehog was alive before the ordeal, but did say that the animal was definitely dead afterwards. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Society

Despite calls by some countries for Internet companies to had over information on citizens' searches and email, the knowledge superhighway is moving in the other direction. Information stored in the cloud are out of reach of national police forces. Gone are the days when just about everything that a suspect has done is available recorded somewhere at sometime. Data is there but it cannot be accessed. The ordinary person will not have much sympathy for police trying to "background" a suspect. They see authorities as being too intrusive anyway. For years Australian social security sent out "demand" forms for aged pensioners to provide up-to-date information about what they had in the bank. A court found that social security did not have the legal right to demand honest answers. The forms are still being sent out. Legally they are still suspect. Such is the quagmire authorities are in. Anyway, back to the case in hand. Police are saying even getting data

Criminals had better watch out. Plans are afoot to mark them with a number. Mal Hyde, South Australia's police commissioner, wants microchips to be implanted into habitual criminals. Not only criminals could be "numbered". He said other sections of society could also be monitored by such technology. CCTV was once considered far too 'way out" to even be considered a possibility. Now it is commonplace. With mobile alcohol and drug testing devices widely used by police and registration/car insurance scanning systems automatically finding offenders just about anything is possible. If bombing at international airports continues to increase, airline travelers may have to be considered for microchipping. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com ~~~~~ Society ~~~~~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The world of iPhones can be quite exciting. A 68 year old man beat up a youth who would not turn his iPhone off when a plane they were on was about to land. A phone thief was tracked down by a police helicopter in Melbourne, Australia. A victim watched a thief in the process of taking her phone on the phone's webcam. He was caught. Cooks at a Connecticut restaurant thought the gun a thief was toting looked unusual - it was an iPhone. A cyclist grabbed a woman's communication's device from her hand. He was tracked down by GPS software she was testing on the machine. As iPhones become part of everyone's life many people want one for free - human nature I suppose. They are useful devices if you want to communicate with someone. But you see people walking into electric poles on the street with a phone "glued" to their ear. Many are seriously injured every year by drivers of motor vehicles blatantly using them while driving. They are really a toy. High t

Australia goes "politically correct" mad! The Federal Police has set up a new division that will monitor Australians telling jokes about cyclists, fat people, sex, Jews and Blacks. If you snigger at a fat person in a street you will be locked up. What is ridiculous is the punishment - a year in detention at the home of a member of the Australian Family Association. If someone gives the finger in response to this, what will police do? It is hard to believe that this is true. But it is in fact taking place. We will see stages raided when an actor makes a racist remark. He will be be cuffed and taken away. Magda Szubanski (a fat comedienne) will be arrested for making jokes about Jews, or even Germans: she is of Polish descent after all. Another joke artist will be arrested for making fun of her. In short, Australia has banned satire. Anything with a dual meaning will now be a prime target for police. It was the skit on Hey Hey Its Saturday that did it. A man with white make up