[ninesnines]

Like already said Dubai is doing this; additionally Australia has you take a photo at home and load it into an app and then additionally upload your passport to get a visa. My general sense of Australia as a foreigner is that they are very comfortable with watching their citizens and foreigners

[ilrwbwrkhv]

That's a shame as some of my favorite products and services such as sublime text and campaign monitor are from Australia.

The stuff that does break out to international scenes is very high quality but politically then somehow have sold themselves to Chinese and Indian businesses and they don't seem to mind being under surveillance.

Wonder if the fact that Australia was a prison island has anything to do with that.

[zakary]

I’ve lived in Sydney most of my life. I suspect that it genuinely is partly because Australia, particularly NSW, did start off as a prison colony, and as a consequence our police force and legislature has always tended towards the conservative and oppressive. NSW is known is Aus as almost always having the most draconian rules for a given thing, compared to other states. NSW is the most populous state and has an outsized influence on federal politics.

Given that we’ve had a conservative (it was the “Liberal” party, but they’re basically like the US republicans) government for most of the last 25 years, it’s not surprising that these factors have come together to make Australia much more of a surveillance state than many of our neighbours.