[xasop]

Yesterday, Federal Parliament passed new draconian data retention laws for Australian ISPs, with bipartisan support from both of our major parties. As I alluded to in a previous thread, I intend to set up a private VPN server (probably hosted by Linode in Japan, but I'm still considering my options) to tunnel traffic through in order to avoid being bitten by this new legislation; I'll quite happily allow my ISP to keep detailed records of my encrypted traffic out of the country.

Also as I mentioned in that thread, anyone here (in Australia or elsewhere) who would like a free VPN is welcome to use mine once I get it set up.

[Vindictus]

But won't a VPN slow my wonderful NBN connection down?

[Rushy]

But the gubmint has super quantum photonic resonance computers that can undo all the encryption.

[Fortuna]

I started using a VPN a few months before the Snowden leaks came. I told everyone I knew that Google was an NSA botnet (before the leaks happened) and they all told me to get out my tinfoil hat. And now every average joe is coming out of the woodwork to say they knew all along that the gubmint is tracking people. I haven't renewed my VPN lease recently, though. Now that you've mentioned it, I'll probably start it up again.

[xasop]

But won't a VPN slow my wonderful NBN connection down?

There's always a trade-off. I've ended up going with Softlayer rather than Linode, because they have a more direct network link between Sydney and Tokyo so the latency is significantly lower, but there's still a penalty of around 100 ms round-trip. It's worth it to avoid the metadata retention and soon-to-be-passed mandatory filtering, for me.

The VPS I'm going to use for this VPN is up and running, I just need to get around to configuring it, which I'll do this afternoon after I vote.

[mister bickles]

But the gubmint has super quantum photonic resonance computers that can undo all the encryption.

only the NSA has that sort of hardware/tech'
...and.....i doubt if they'd be too keen to share it with the Aussie government....too 'low rent' for them! 

[mister bickles]

assume:
i/the tech' that the gov' really has is @ least twenty years more advanced than you and i got!
ii/they know every-thing abt every-one and have for quite some time;

that said, they simply don't have the man-power to analyse that Himalayan Mountain Range of data in 'real time';

they just "bide their time" until yr nº comes up and, then, if they want to set you up, they'll concoct some-thing from the data.....
....or not....
they might just make every-thing up any-way...who's going to know the difference except for you....and...who's going to believe little ol' you any-way, eh? 

i saw a good analogy on a YouTube a while back.....the presenter fellow said that you can't really hide any-thing on the i/net any-way because its like yodelling....so....all the encryption in the world ain't gunna help....
the old-fashioned mailed letter is probably yr best security......
or....what they did in the old, "Cold War" days.....
a hand-written note encrypted with One Time Pad (the only uncrackable encryption) and left in a "dead drop"   

[Lord Dave]

I don't understand the fear of such data collection.  I know the government doesn't care about me specifically and I also know that the massive data isn't being analyzed by humans.  Not unless they focus on a specific person.

I also have no fear of my online activities being discovered.

And considering how freely people allow private entities to collect data (and how happy people are at posting information publicly) it seems weird.