Government Secrets

[Bruce Tuncks]

I reckon secrecy is one of the worst government evil things they inflict on us. 

Here's a trivial example... for christmas, my dog got an aluminium tag which has his name and our phone number, and we recently got him returned immediately because of this. 

Now the official rego tag only has a number and the info is only available to council officials. If questioned, they would come up with "privacy " nonsense which is clearly secondary to the satisfaction they get from hiding stuff away from those who pay their wages.

There are far worse examples.

 

[red750]

The bigger problem is refusing to use the microchip records to return a lost pet to its owner.

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Now the official rego tag only has a number and the info is only available to council officials. If questioned, they would come up with "privacy " nonsense which is clearly secondary to the satisfaction they get from hiding stuff away from those who pay their wages.

There are far worse examples.

Bruce, on the other end of the spectrum, if your contact was on the dog tag, a thief could find the lost dog and use it as an excuse to come door knocking to case the place for a future robbery. Or worse.

 

These are the sort of things burglars do to get leads. They visit garage sales posing as buyers to check places out. A 'For Sale' sign on your property gives them an excuse to wander around if nobody is home. If the owner shows up unexpected, all they have to do is pretend to be a potential buyer and say they saw the for sale sign. Those sort of privacy issues are probably what council are concerned about, also bearing in mind their own liability and duty of care.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I looked the matter up and some councils do allow people to look up the info. Ours does not. It charges a bit over $200 to tell you if your dog was found.

That dogtag we got only has a mobile number, not our address. A few weeks ago, the dog got confused and ran after some kids. He finished at a local school, and they read the tag and rang us up. The dog had a great time with lots of attention.

But that is good advice about a "for sale" sign. We might be selling our house soon to retire to the farm, and my current thought is to declare it "open agency" and not have any sign.

[willedoo]

I guess the sign would be ok if the house and garage were locked up well. A few years ago, a mate got burgled in broad daylight. It happened not long after putting the place on the market and sale signs put up. It may or may not have been related. His problem was that he had a high set house on poles with an unsecured workshop area downstairs. It was on a rural residential block and the neighbours saw the burglars back their car under the house, fill the boot up with power tools and drive off. They just assumed it was some mates picking stuff up.

 

They were so bold about it that it was obvious they had been there before to case the place. Around that time, I was told that thieves were posing as buyers and getting real estate agents to show them around properties. It could have been that, or they may have been driving past and seen the sign as an excuse to stop and have a look around. Whichever way, they'd been there before as there was no hesitation. They knew what they were  after.

Edited September 21, 2020 by willedoo

[Bruce Tuncks]

Thanks willedoo. Getting back to government secrecy, how was it that I went to school in Alice Springs in the 1950's and was never told of the Coniston massacre? And I didn't know that there was more than one Japanese attack on Darwin? Or that it was Australia which declared war on Japan?

I reckon it is terrible to keep information away from those who voted you in. The only excuse I have ever heard ( but don't believe ) was that Australia was so poor after WW2 that they had to use pre-war history texts which were mainly about the english monarchs.

I also never heard about how they gave the troops at Gallipoli malnutrition diseases. Or about Breaker Morant...  well the movie told me about him.