Articles

There are no easy fixes for the live streaming of real-life hate

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.

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One giant step backwards for cyber security in encryption bill fiasco

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 of the digital economy, and they don’t even seem to care.

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Sleepwalking into a digital dystopia

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 public, and our concerns about it, with utter contempt. The Liberal/National strain of ’tough on crime’ has mutated during the never-ending war on terror, the most recent result being yet another trampling of democratic accountability.

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Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

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 secret, thanks to encryption.

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The internet holds society together and the government is setting out to break it

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.

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The positives and perils of My Health Record

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 relatively fast given the average organisation takes more than six months.

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