On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftw...@benfinney.id.au> wrote: > Adrian Colomitchi <acolomit...@gmail.com> > writes: > >> On Mon, 2012-08-27 at 20:30 +1000, Astrid Nova wrote: >> >> > Please have a look at and send on the article linked to below on an >> > issue that could affect us all catastrophically. The article >> > supplies a really good argument against what the government is >> > mooting. >> >> "Could affect"? Why the past tense? > > That's not the past tense; the word “could” doesn't tell you whether > it's past, present or future. Ok. I'm not a native english speaker, my apologies.
> > Rather, “could” in this usage is the subjunctive of “can”. Astrid is > saying that it's possible, at some point in time, for the issue to > affect us all catastrophically. > Maybe some will consider the following an overreaction, but from *my* *personal *point of view,* it is already catastrophic* that the police (and, potentially, ATO and who knows which other executive branches of governance for the future) is able to request any ISP to "press the recording button" *without a judiciary oversight*. Also, in my view, the "to view the recordings, one needs a warrant" provision make little difference to the way I see the issue. Adrian _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
