"The laws are pretty clear that your online activity can only be recorded if the police specifically ask your ISP."

@Zouden since the legislation was signed yesterday have you personally looked at it?

I haven't but I've scanned through the discussion paper [0], "The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has commenced an inquiry into potential reforms of national security legislation." from the 'Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security'. [1] This legislation is simply a rubber stamp to update the Telecommunications act 79, 97, the ASIO act 97 and the Intelligence services act 2001. The outcome of the specific changes are not clear at the moment but the big picture is clear. Lets make it easier to collect and gather intelligence and share it between stakeholders - a nasty word that means intelligence, law enforcement and revenue collection at state & federal level.

    ''There is a big risk that we will in the future not be able to undertake even basic investigations...
      from our perspective data retention is a must. We seriously would not be able to do the majority
      of investigations without it' AFP, High Tech Crime Centre, Neil Gaughan. [2]

Future changes to the legislation make the ideas in the discussion paper and potentially the legislation (which I have yet to read) passed dangerous because an objective of the report is to identify & store information of online of all Australian individuals.

Reference
[0] http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=pjcis/nsl2012/additional/discussion%20paper.pdf
[1] http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=pjcis/nsl2012/index.htm
[2] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/data-trail-easy-to-follow-for-big-brother-20120720-22ffm.html#ixzz24N57ILoN

"... What's amazing to me isn't that /. has carried on this long, but rather that the comment quality on here hasn't gone the way of most social new sites. ..."

I am surprised /. has survived. The place pretty much as it was back when it started in '97.

This is my first post for a couple of years. But there was a time when I lived here. I remember when /. was sold & CmdrTaco said all he wanted to do was run it I'm sure I for one didn't believe he'd still be at it now. The sig/noise is still bad if you trawl below the +2 level. But at +5 it's readable. I think the combination of moderation, ability to filter comments (text, best comments at top), culture and relationships have helped shape the site into something *still* readable. HackerNews [0], where I sort of trawl now exhibits all of the same sorts of growing pains /. had to go through.

[0] HN is to Startups what /. is (was) to Linux.