Andrew McGlashan wrote:
If you needed a reason NOT to support any referendum giving local councils full governmental recognition, you cannot ignore this shocking news story!
This link avoids the pay wall of The Australian newspaper and has more information than the summary below the link:
http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/councils-snooping-on-phone-use/story-e6fr...
Well referendums are usually to change the constitution; so I am interpreting "governmental recognition" as 'constitutional recognition'. Whether constitutional recognition of local government would necessarily increase their power, would seem to depend on the proposed change. The above story seems more to do with 'privacy of telecommunication meta-data'. Whilst I was surprised that the term 'meta-data' included names and identifying information; my thoughts on 'right to privacy' is that it needs to be replaced by a reversal of onus; that is all private information is only available on a need to know basis. So requesting authority would need to be able to demonstrate that the particular information sort, is necessary to the task being asked of them . regards Rohan McLeod