On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, 2012-08-27 at 20:30 +1000, Astrid Nova wrote:
Please have a look at and send on the article linked to below on an issue that could affect us all catastrophically. The article supplies a really good argument against what the government is mooting.
"Could affect"? Why the past tense?
That's not the past tense; the word “could” doesn't tell you whether it's past, present or future. Ok. I'm not a native english speaker, my apologies.
Rather, “could” in this usage is the subjunctive of “can”. Astrid is saying that it's possible, at some point in time, for the issue to affect us all catastrophically.
Maybe some will consider the following an overreaction, but from *my* *personal *point of view,* it is already catastrophic* that the police (and, potentially, ATO and who knows which other executive branches of governance for the future) is able to request any ISP to "press the recording button" *without a judiciary oversight*. Also, in my view, the "to view the recordings, one needs a warrant" provision make little difference to the way I see the issue. Adrian