[LINK] Trade war up in the clouds

[Frank O'Connor]

So, the bottom line is that if the US wants to attract cloud/hosting contracts from the Oz government it needs to moderate the draconian provisions of the Patriot Act, and the other ever-so-numerous and labyrinthine legislative incursions into it's own people's privacy, freedom and rights of association ...

If the Australian government sticks to its guns (an unlikely occurrence I know ... it rolls over like a puppy for pretty well every other US demand such as the laughingly entitled 'Free Trade' agreement.), I don't see a down side here.

Hey, maybe Australia could be instrumental in ensuring that US citizens regain the rights and entitlements that were previously guaranteed by the US Constitution and its Amendments before the 'War on Terror'. And yeah, I know that time and again ... at every opportunity in fact ... they have proved more a statement of good intentions, than an actual law that everyone in the US respects and abides by. I am often amused by my American friends' contentions that the Constitution is written is stone, and is the bedrock of democracy ... when history over the last 200 years indicates that it is ignored at every opportunity and only picked up by the Supreme Court many years, decades or even centuries after each egregious breach.

So, Australia could actually be doing the US and its citizens a bit of good, by putting its foot down.
---
On 30/05/2012, at 7:42 AM, Ben Elliston wrote:

> http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/trade-war-up-in-the-clouds-20120529-1zhpg.html
> 
> Ben
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link