From across the ditch, the news that the Christchurch terrorist was an Australian was accompanied by a sinking feeling. The way in which our everyday public debate is steeped in concepts of white superiority made it all too predictable that such a horrendous crime should find its origins on our shores. To take up Giovanni […]
Scott Morrison has called for the G20 to regulate social media companies in the wake of the terrorist massacre in Christchurch last Friday. The knee-jerk reaction to the mass shooting proposes policy responses that won’t work, and fails to address the real challenges of combating the spread of hatred in our society. The Christchurch massacre […]
Australia will soon be relegated to the backwaters of the global digital community. We will no longer have a functioning security software industry, nor will we have faith in the safety of our telecommunications systems. Our elected representatives in Canberra have passed into law an obscene bill that will have long-lasting impacts on the infrastructure […]
We’re in the midst of a worsening democracy deficit, and you need look no further to see this on full display than within the shambolic process around the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill. This Bill will introduce unprecedented new powers for government and law enforcement, and Coalition politicians are treating the […]
A state’s capacity to spy on its citizens has grown exponentially in recent years as new technology has meant more aspects of our lives can be observed, recorded and analyzed than ever before. At the same time, much to the frustration of intelligence agencies around the world, so has the ability to keep digital information […]
The Australian Government has finally released its draft bill on encryption, which would see law enforcement granted unprecedented new powers, including the ability to crack open encrypted communication.
Last week, Singapore’s ministry of health admitted information from 1.5 million citizens had been copied in “a deliberate, targeted, and well-planned cyber attack” by hackers who were specifically going after the personal data of the country’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong. It took authorities a week to detect the breach, which, to be fair, is […]
The government says its planned anti-encryption mandate will empower law enforcement, but it will enable far more crime than it will prevent, and regular citizens will bear the cost.
It has been a tough two years for the technology industry. The 2016 US election was a turning point for what was formerly the face of upbeat, self-actualising capitalism. Today the common view is that a tiny minority has been making money by disrupting things at the expense of the majority. Technology companies are out […]
The Cambridge Analytica revelations have spawned outrage across the world, as well they should. The mass manipulation of millions of individual Facebook users, psychometric profiling to reveal potential pressure points, micro-targeted advertising and black-ops electoral interference are certainly something worthy of the headlines.
