I'm pretty sure this used to be a punchline to a joke, but it's now happened for real.

News: Almost 1000 (Chinese-made) cameras and other recording devices were found to have been installed across 250 different Australian government building sites.

A number of those are in defence and military associated spaces.

Opposition’s spokesman for cyber security James Paterson said the Hikvision and Dahua cameras (are) both companies (which) are part-owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

The companies were complicit in the ongoing persecution of Uyghurs, being the provider of facial recognition technology.

Further, the companies are subject to the Chinese National Intelligence Law which requires them to hand over data if requested by Chinese intelligence agencies.

Man, the level of stupidity within the the Aussie government & it's deep-state bureaucracies is frightening. That's if it is just stupidity. Corruption is probably more likely.

Paterson: There has been a number of vulnerabilities identified in these products in the past where remote users could gain full control of them, switch on the cameras or switch on the audio, for example

Great. These are the (highly-paid) geniuses that are in charge of Australia's defense - installing Chinese spy-tech in their own buildings!!!

Don't forget that the public is paying for these morons as well as all the CCCP-controlled devices they installed.

Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister/Defence Minister: We’re doing an assessment within defence into where those cameras exist. We are acting. We do need to be thinking about our defence estate, so we’re going through the process in a sober, calm way. We’ve got to do the assessment (first). I don’t think we should overreact, but we should deal with it.

You fuckwit. You're going through the process in a sober, calm way? Was that the same sober, calm process that decided to install Chinese spy-tech inside our most sensitive military sites in the first place?

So to recap our fearless leaders, we have got a PM & Foreign Minister cravenly kow-towing to a fascist regime & a Deputy PM/Defense Minister who's busily installing the same regime's surveillance devices throughout all government facilities.

I remember back in the day when spies would have to cunningly infiltrate an organization then snap photos of a few secret docs with the pen-camera. Now you simply make them an economically dependent vassal-state then tell them to install whatever surveillance devices you want.

By any sensible-measure these officials must be fired & ordered to give back all the public-money they took whilst committing this breath-taking blunder. Then an outside investigation to determine whether it really was just mind-boggling stupidity, or was it corruption/treason?

Of course, it will never happen. They will all carry on with their snouts in the public-purse and continue making their corrupt deals. With no accountability.

This is another reason why we need way more transparency within State-Security orgs. I'm not convinced that they serve any useful function, but under cover of non-accountability, they are actually acting against the public's interest in favour of totalitarian regimes - the very regimes they're meant to be protecting us against.

Why? Because ideologically they're all on the same page - centralizing power & revenue control from a base of secret opaqueness - to benefit themselves.