Co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, isn’t too happy with the Australian government monitoring and retaining our data.
He spoke out at the World Business Forum in Sydney about Australia’s new data retention laws, saying that we are heading the same way as the US:
“Pretty much Australia has gone the same way as the United States, which I kind of disagree with, which is that they can monitor everything you do. I’m against that. When I was brought up, our constitution gave us a place called a home and your home could not be violated without court orders, warrants. You know, they had to really suspect something to come into your home. It was your private area. And to me, I think my communication with my friends should be part of my private area that I own. That’s been twisted in the United States but Australia’s following suit in exactly the same ways.”
Wozniak is of course referring to the data retention laws passed by the Federal government in March, which allow phone companies to keep phone and internet metadata for two years, and can be accessed by security agencies without a warrant.
Old mate Woz has experienced some backlash about this in social media comment threads, with people being quite verbose about the fact that our laws do not affect him as an American. However, the Apple founder has been living in Sydney after becoming a professor at UTS late last year, and is an Aussie citizen – so if ya even think about it underneath this article, we will text message you that code that makes your iPhone shut down, ooookay?
via ABC
Image: Hannes Magerstaedt via Getty Images
