Australian Interactive Gambling Act 2001<\/a> bans (with many exceptions) online casinos from advertising or providing services to Australians. <\/p>\nIt bans foreign web-sites from targeting Australians, but as you might imagine, there is a limit to how effective that can be.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, what it doesn’t<\/em> ban is Australian web-sites targeting non-Australians. I consider that to be immoral.<\/p>\nYou can debate whether or not gambling is a legitimate pastime. You can debate whether or not it has a damaging effect on society. You can debate whether it is appropriate for the government to restrict people’s liberties. (Actually, you can go and do it in another forum; it isn’t the point of this article, today.)<\/p>\n
The point is, whatever the outcome of that debate, the answer is the same whether or not the gamblers are Australian citizens. <\/p>\n
The idea that “gambling is evil, so we should protect our citizens, but gambling is profitable, so we should make money targeting the citizens of other countries” is hypocritical and morally irresponsible.<\/p>\n
\nThe people of the USA – like the people of Australia – are suspicious of their government infringing on their privacy. They are suspicious of government databases collecting unnecessary information. They are suspicious of giving up essential liberties to purchase a little temporary safety.<\/p>\n
The balance here has clearly swung away from liberty over the past five years, but even still, the US government would find it very difficult to push a campaign to collect biometric information from every citizen in the country. I do not believe the people would stand for it. I do not believe that the political parties would dare suggest it.<\/p>\n
I concede that the US government has already overstepped further than I would have predicted (e.g. phone-tapping scandal) so I need to tread carefully in my predictions.<\/div>\n
Given this position, I find the current policy of collecting fingerprints and photographs from every non-citizen entering the USA to be hypocritical and morally irresponsible in the same manner as the Australian Interactive Gambling Act.<\/p>\n
I find it especially affronting that there is little attempt to limit the level of privacy intrusion – for example, as a bare minimum, disposing of the data when the traveller leaves the country. <\/p>\n
Researching the topic, I found their privacy impact statement to be toothless. I was not reassured that only hundreds or thousands of US government employees would have access to the data. I was not reassured that the data would only be used according to the law of the US government. I can confidently predict that, between now and my death, there will be US governments who pass laws that I cannot agree with. I am handing over my valuables to an organisation that I don’t trust, with big blank spaces on the contract.<\/p>\n
Strangely, I object more to the fingerprinting than the photograph. I suspect it is because my visual appearance is already being public. If that was the reason, I should object to being forced to remove my hat, dark glasses, wig and false nose by customs officials. I am not sure of my position here.<\/div>\n
I had secretly hoped that I would not feel the need to travel to the USA before they dropped this requirement. I don’t feel strongly enough over this issue to refuse to travel via the USA, but it is making me a bit grumpy about the travel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I will be travelling to the United States soon, for the first time in many years. I am surprised at the strength of my objections to one small inconvenience being foisted upon me during my journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cathartic-rant","category-influencing-others"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}