Ask Slashdot: Best VPN Service For Australia? 138
New submitter frrrp asks, now that "Australia has proceeded on its merry way towards being an absolute nanny/surveillance state," what the best way is for Australians to avoid government snooping.
"The Australian public, and media, have been largely asleep on this issue and, by Parliament standards, the speed with which this legislation has been rushed through must be a new record — with both major political parties colluding to force it through and quash any thoughts of amendment to its draconian scope. So the time has come — VPN is no longer a luxury but a necessity. The question is, which VPN service providers are best for us poor folks on the arse end of the planet? I have more or less settled on probably going with Private Internet Access. Can any of the BigBrains on Slashdot enlighten me further on the subject of personal VPN — the kind that provides the full spectrum of service as a naked direct link does?"
Re:Paranoid much? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we have a bit of sanity here? The laws are pretty clear that your online activity can only be recorded if the police specifically ask your ISP.
Yes, can we? Why should the police be able to ask the ISP to start recording without a warrant?
Since most Australians are not under investigation by the police, a VPN is hardly a "a necessity".
Without being required warrant, the police can ask the ISP to start recording persons that are not under any investigation. I don't know... say a policeman with a personal vendetta against a neighbour? A corrupt policeman on the payroll on NewsCorp or the like? Yes, I know...once the data is recorded, theoretically it requires a warrant to be legally accessed. But I think the anonymous stunt [theaustralian.com.au] demonstrated that, once the data is recorded, it can be made accessible by illegal means.
Re:What's the best VPN that can be use _anywhere_ (Score:4, Interesting)
This can still leak a lot of information that doesn't go through the SOCKS proxy.
I prefer OpenVPN: it's easy to setup on both the client and server, and it can proxy *all* traffic, even for applications that don't otherwise support proxying.