Of all the things I thought I’d be talking about last week, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wasn’t one of them. And yet I did end up talking about him — ever so briefly — on ABC Radio’s national current affairs program AM.

Why? Because there was massive media interest in Hadfield’s rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. That’s the video embedded above — and if that’s not working you can watch it on YouTube.

Journalist Martin Cuddihy recorded maybe five minutes with me via phone to San Jose, but just one sentence ended up in the final report:

Commander Hadfield has really brought space alive and made it more engaging to a new audience, far more than anyone has done in recent years.

I wrote back in 2006 why I thought that the US space program is shite. In 2007, I lamented the end of the Space Age, and again in 2008 with the death of Arthur C Clarke. And it’s two years since I wrote about my own memories of the Space Age, both real and imagined.

Perhaps I should write more about Space…

Anyway, here’s the full audio of the story from AM, and over at their website you can read the transcript.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Why do politicians and their groupies always go on about the budget “sending a message”? Can’t they just use Twitter, email and the phone like we all do? But there is indeed a message in the budget: the government has no real vision for transforming Australia, and isn’t particularly interested in developing one with us.

I talked about the $240.3 million allocated to new IT systems for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS); $43.7 million for upgrades at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC); adding a further $233.7 million to the $477 million already spent on the National e-Health Initiative; $198 million for an “aged-care gateway”; $17 million to “enhance” the MySchool website; and so on. And then I concluded:

Why, in a cashed-up nation that is, or was, renowned for its eagerness to develop and adopt new technologies, is all this stuff just mouse nibblings at the edges, buried under the dull plod of business as usual? Sometimes I just want to cry.

To see how I approached the topic in previous years, check out the summary I wrote last year.

So once more I’ll be up early local time — I’m currently in San Jose — to knock out something before or perhaps in between conference sessions. Are there any particular angles you think I should look out for?

But it’s already well after midnight Sunday night in Australia, so here we are.

Articles

• You’ll love the ‘How Fast is the NBN?’ site … until you read this, Crikey, 9 May 2013. The reaction to this article, in the comments and on Twitter, astounded me. By simply pointing out some subtleties in a propaganda website and trying to present Malcolm Turnbull’s arguments fairly — which is all basic parts of a journalist’s job — I was branded a Liberal Party shill, and worse. For anyone familiar with what I personally think and believe, and for Turnbull himself, this must have come as quite a surprise. I hope to write about this soon, because I found the whole experience hilariously funny.
• Mobile broadband’s false promise, ZDNet Australia, 10 May 2013.

Media Appearances

It’s such a variable thing, this being a media whore. Four spots last week, none at all this week.

Corporate Largesse

• On Saturday I began my journey to the US for NetSuite’s SuiteWorld, as their guest. Obviously that includes air fares and accommodation, as well as plenty of food and drink. I’ll provide the full tally next week.

The Week Ahead

On Monday we head to San Jose for SuiteWorld, which runs through to Thursday. I’ll then return to San Francisco for some time to myself before flying back to Sydney on Sunday night. Obviously I’ll have to do some writing in there, but I’ll work that out as I go along.

[Photo: San Francisco sunrise, photographed a short time ago through a slightly dusty 17th floor window at the luxurious St Regis Hotel.]

I last wrote about this in January, in Five questions and no answers about my media work. Read that before proceeding if you like, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

My regular media commitments currently stand at: a weekly column for ZDNet; a twice-a-month column for CSO Online; around one column a month for Technology Spectator; and a variable number for Crikey. Add in the occasional piece elsewhere, and it looks a little like this.

The main problem is that the base level of material isn’t high enough, and in recent months it’s started getting a little wobbly. So, how can I build on what I’ve got? And how can I have a bit more fun?

Now one approach is simply to do more writing, and indeed I’m currently talking to a small handful of mastheads about that. I’d certainly get commissioned to do more stories if I pitched to editors more conscientiously, particularly those who’ve already tasted my work, like ABC The Drum and the Sydney Morning Herald. I’ll continue to explore that.

But I’ve also done audio and video programs. Sometimes regularly, like the now-defunct weekly Patch Monday podcast for ZDNet. Sometimes far from regularly, like the Stilgherrian Live video program, or The 9pm Edict podcast. I’ve had some ideas for new podcasts. And I’ve done odd little live written things too, like the Gonzo-like tweeting. I’ve enjoyed all of them, and I’ve already explained how I might get someone to pay for them.

My problem? I can’t decide which of these things to do — or rather, which to give priority to. So here’s a list of possibilities, and a poll.

1. Corrupted Nerds, which I’ve briefly described previously. I’m thinking this could be a podcast along the lines of Patch Monday, but with the main focus being an interview with security experts and other iconoclastic geeks. I’m already having interesting conversations, and it’d be easy to share them.
2. The 9pm Edict, or an evolution thereof, being a “strange talk show” including occasional interviews. I do like the idea of having a more strongly-focused theme, such as visiting places or experiencing events. The 9pm Eurovision, The 9pm Miss Pole Dancing Australia, The 9pm Dentist or The 9pm Gold Coast.
3. Stilgherrian Live, returning as a live video program, but evolved and improved somehow.
4. Smaller-scale live coverage. As I wrote before, I could “live-tweet from a random night out. Crowdsource around $300 to pay for my meals, drinks and cab fares and a modest profit. Whoever coughs up $150 gets to name the location I check out. Anyone who pays over $50 gets a signed copy of the Twitterstream printed on archival paper.” Those price points are just a suggestion. It could instead be live audio or even video.
5. Event-based media packages, such as covering a hacker conference or PonyCon AU or a road trip to Orange.
6. Get over yourself, Stilgherrian, and just do more of what you’re currently doing.
7. Something else? I’m open to suggestions.

So here’s the poll…

You may choose up to three options. Voting closes at midnight this Friday 10 May 2013 Australian Eastern Standard Time. Don’t forget to explain yourself in the comments.

Or so it felt.

Then Thursday was full of the Optus Vision 2013 conference, followed by a late train journey back to the Blue Mountains. It was tough to get into work mode on Friday, but I did, and wrote my second article. And washed more towels. And then on Saturday I did the full sloth.

But the most important part of the week, at least in the long term, was all the time I spent from Friday onwards thinking about the unexpected good news I mentioned last week. It means that I’ll soon be able to work on some projects that have been sitting on the back burner, and you’ll start to see them emerging over the next few weeks.

Articles

Both of these articles resulted from this week’s Privacy Awareness Week activities.

• Australia’s Privacy Commissioner gets serious about infosec, CSO Online, 30 April 2013.
• The fuzzy logic of Australia’s data breach draft, ZDNet Australia, 3 May 2013.

Media Appearances

• On Monday I spoke about Facebook’s possible decline, maybe, on ABC 774 Melbourne.
• On Tuesday I spoke about LulzSec and hacktivism generally in an interview for Triple J’s Hack, and I was frustrated by the result.
• On Wednesday morning I spoke about the dark web (ugh!) and the attacks on Silk Road on ABC Gold Coast.
• On Wednesday I spoke about LulzSec and more on ABC Radio National’s Download This Show.

Corporate Largesse

• On Thursday I attended Optus Vision 2013, which meant I was fed food and drink through the day at their expense.

The Week Ahead

I plan to write a story each for Technology Spectator, CSO Online and ZDNet, at the very least, as well as kick off one or more of these new projects. Stay tuned.

It’s my birthday on Thursday, but I’ll just have a quiet drink that night. I’ll head to Sydney on Friday instead and have a proper birthday dinner then, thanks to the Snarky Platypus. I’ll then stay overnight before catching United Airlines flight UA870 to San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, arriving there on Saturday morning.

Saturday night and Sunday day should be free time in San Francisco before, I’m guessing, a social function on Sunday evening serves as prelude to NetSuite’s SuiteWorld. The event proper starts on Monday in San Jose.

[Photo: Changing alphabets, a photograph taken at Optus Vision 2013 once the staffing level of the registration desk had been reduced during the afternoon, and then the desks themselves removed.]

I was interviewed for half an hour or more. Also interviewed were independent journalist and “chaos magnet” Asher Wolf, and Nigel Phair from the Centre for Internet Safety. Snippets of all that were used in the package that introduced the live studio debate. Fairly standard stuff. But…

When I listened to the program go to air, I was frustrated. Very frustrated. The discussion didn’t really go beyond “Is hacktivism good or what? Yep it is!” “No it’s not.” “Oh it is!” And with the benefit of hindsight, I think that’s because the discusion was framed the wrong way.

“Do you think that some targets are legitimate? Are groups like Anonymous a force for good? Or do you reckon that it’s a slippery slope to say that one kind of hacking is acceptable, but others are cyberterrorism?” asked presenter Sophie McNeill as she introduced the segment. Those positioning questions were repeated several times, and they kinda miss the point.

This framing pre-supposes that there’s a single, clearly-identifiable activity that we can point to and call “hacktivism”. It positions hacktivism as a neutral tool, and whether it’s legitimate to use this tool or not depends on the legitimacy of the target as an object to attack.

I guess that in this framing, hacktivism is like a baseball bat. It’s OK to hit baseballs with it, but not the fragile skulls of newborn infants. But it’s not.

Hacktivism is just the application of hacker techniques to political activism and, as the Wikipedia article points out, it covers a lot of territory.

There’s using “neat hacks” like encryption and tools to preserve anonymity to help protect the organisers of the activism. There’s the provision of alternative internet access when the government cuts off the official methods, as happened in Egypt. There’s the mirroring of otherwise censored websites to protect free speech, or setting up parody sites to mock the opponents, or spreading disinformation.

Then there’s denial of service (DoS) attacks to disrupt the opponents’ communications. And, yes, there’s the break-and-enter kind of hacking, the results of which can range from relatively harmless website defacements to the theft and “liberation” of large slabs of information — which can of course make collateral-damage victims of any individuals caught up in that process.

There’s a spectrum of behaviour there, from straightforward and long-established ways of supporting freedom of speech to edgier activities that in any other context would simply be labelled vandalism, criminal damage or worse.

If you lump all that together as a single activity, “hacktivism”, and then ask whether it’s legitimate to direct that activity in support of a particular political objective, well, the answer will depend on whether you agree with that objective or not.

“Stilgherrian says there’s a few examples where hacktivism has been really legit, like during the Arab Spring,” said journalist Julia Holman. Sure — apart from the phrase “really legit” — but not because having a disagreeable government justifies vandalism.

The hackerish acts I meant were those directed to keeping the communications channels open and organising a fairly traditional street uprising. The rest of the planet has agreed that freedom of speech is pretty fundamental stuff. They also seemed to agree that this conflict had turned hot. People were being killed, and when that starts happening it’s gloves-off all round.

I’ve included the audio of the entire discussion here, so you can listen for yourself. I’d be interested to know what you think, and whether this discussion frustrates you as much as it frustrated me.

A shout-out to Paris

First, though, I must give a special shout-out to Paris, whose hilariously out of touch comment was read on air: “This is the only form of activism our generation has… Our petitions are ignored. Anonymous is able to do justice to people who have lost a voice.”

No, Paris, all the traditional methods of political lobbying and activism still work just fine — well, in their creaky, democratic way.

It was good ol’ political lobbying of the government, and associated PR efforts in the media, that brought the controversial mandatory data retention proposals to a halt in this election year, not the vandalism of completely unrelated Queensland government websites. It was Senator Scott Ludlam asking intelligent questions of the Attorney-General’s Department in parliamentary committees, not stupidly confusing the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) with the Queensland Department of State Development (DSD).

The trick, Paris, is to put down the hacker DoS hammer every now and then, because not everything is a nail. Choose one of the other, more appropriate, tools of democracy from the shelf when circumstances require.

Note: Dr Suelette Dreyfus from the University of Melbourne, a long-time observer of hacktivism, provided a significantly narrower definition of hacktivism in the program: “Hacking, in the terminology that is used in everyday reporting, which is not necessarily what the original term was, is about unauthorised access to computers and computer systems. Hacktivism is really about engaging in that, but with a political or social message.”

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I’ve extracted the hacktivism segment to present here, but you can go to the ABC website for the full 30-minute episode (MP3).

I was at their first SuiteWorld event two years ago, where we had dinner at Larry Ellison’s house overlooking San Francisco Bay and came to the conclusion that not every business has to “go social”.

I’ve had lunch and other events with NetSuite’s people a few time since, and written a couple of articles:

• E-commerce sales channels proliferating? Relax, it’s just a display issue: NetSuite, ZDNet Australia, 11 October 2012.
• NetSuite big fish push to cut mid-sized Oz? ZDNet Australia, 12 May 2011.

NetSuite is an interesting company. They just seem to get on with the job of making good software and expanding into new markets. So I’m looking forward to catching up with them again — particularly as I’ve been writing a lot more about security that this sort of enterprise software lately.

I’ll arrive in San Francisco on Saturday 11 May, and then on Monday we head to San Jose for the conference proper. That kicks off Monday night with a welcome reception and NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson’s opening keynote first thing Tuesday morning, and runs until Thursday 16.

I’ll be hanging around in the Bay area until Sunday night — which is a hint, yes — and then I arrive back in Sydney very early on Tuesday 21 May local time. Unless someone decides to extend my stay in the US, of course — and that’s also a hint.

Can you imagine being able to control a crematorium, a powerstation or traffic lights somewhere out the world from your laptop? Welcome to the mysterious search engine Shodan. If Google is the search engine for web pages than Shodan is the Google of “things”. Also in this episode we examine the state of Lulzsec in Australia and experiment with the new crowdsourcing app SeeSaw.

My fellow panellist was Claire Porter, technology editor for News.com.au. And here’s the full audio.

The audio is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and it’s served here directly from the ABC website.

The presenter was Bern Young, who I’ve spoken to before on the Drive program, but it seems she’s doing the Breakfast shift now.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

The reason was actually this story in The Australian about “Facebook fatigue”. While I’m not sure that Facebook fatigue is a thing, I had a pleasant chat with journalist and presenter Raf Epstein — and here’s the audio.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

That’s part of the reason I’m only getting around to posting this today. Another part is that I simply couldn’t be arsed. But here it is.

I didn’t write anything about Anzac Day, because I’ve written it all before in Anzac Day Rememberings and Anzac Day 2009: Sacrifice. Instead, I had a relaxing holiday — that turned out to be a tad too indulgent, but then I do have a working liver. For now.

The next day, Friday, I received some unexpected good news that has the potential to Change Everything. Well, maybe not everything, but it certainly changes one of the fundamental assumptions that had framed my thinking about my life for the next year. All the thoughts this stirred caused the psychological exhaustion — and there’s still plenty more to think through. No, I can’t tell you what it is.

Articles

• Verizon DBIR confirms we’re rubbish, so let’s do something about it, CSO Online, 23 April 2013.
• LulzSec? Bah, cybercrime ain’t no joke, ZDNet Australia, 26 April 2013.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday I spoke about YouTube’s eighth birthday on ABC Radio 105.7 Darwin.
• On Wednesday afternoon I spoke about the allegedly-LulzSec arrest on ABC TV News24, but I don’t have a recording.
• On Wednesday night I spoke about that arrest and Twitter’s new advertising deal on ABC Local Radio in NSW.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

Well, Monday and Tuesday have already happened. Ho hum. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I’m taking an early train to Sydney to record Marc Fennell’s Download This Show at 1000, and then there’s a lunchtime briefing. On Thursday there’s the Optus Vision 2013 event. Whether I stay in Sydney overnight between the two remains to be seen. Friday onwards is unplanned.

[Photo: Eastern Yellow Robin, again, one of the fast-moving Eopsaltria australis photographed at Bunjaree Cottages near Wentworth Falls, 100km west of Sydney.]

This conversation was broadcast on ABC Local Radio around NSW, the presenter was the redoubtable Dom Knight. We begin with Twitter, and then move on to the alleged-hacker’s arrest at around 12 minutes 50 seconds in.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

I ended up having a light-hearted chat about it this afternoon with Richard Margetson on ABC 105.7 Darwin, and here’s the full audio of our conversation.

The audio is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it isn’t published anywhere else and I don’t get paid so here it is.

Here’s what Dreyfus (pictured) said on Channel TEN’s Meet the Press on Sunday, part of an interview which pondered whether the Boston bombing was a “wake-up call” for Australia:

[T]his goes to your question about what is sometimes referred to as lone-wolf, or people who are disconnected from any organised group — we’ve got a very large program that’s directed at countering violent extremism.

And that’s about working with communities. That’s about working with community leaders; it’s about getting young men out on the sporting field, getting them out playing soccer, playing footy, playing rugby, because that’s where we want them — not sitting at computer screens looking at videos about jihad.

None of this faggoty basketball or tennis for Freedom, no Sir! It’s all proper, manly and not-at-all-homoerotic football!

What about swimming, one of Australia’s most successful sports? No, that’s obviously out because beards and turbans and water resistance. And rowing? Hell no! They had a boat in Boston, and you saw what happened!

Sigh. Is this 1954 again?

“Sitting at computer screens” — always portrayed as a passive, dull-minded activity because, presumably, politicians never use their own computers for creating or interacting, so they never see them as anything more than TVs with dangly bits — versus the traditional, healthy outdoor and above all Australian pastime of blokes group-kicking an inflated pig.

Do politicians not understand that for a significant proportion of us, the mere idea of government-encouraged team sportsball with a bunch of boofheads makes it more likely that we’ll wash the curry out of the pressure cooker and fill it with nails?

Do politicians not understand that if young Mohammed has an interest in physics and chemistry, and is used to researching stuff on the internet, that he might have the potential to be a useful part of — oh, what’s that phrase again? — oh yeah, the “digital economy”, rather than being just another suburban also-ran with his nose shoved up some hairy bloke’s arse in a scrum?

Maybe he could even become part of this cyber thing we keep hearing about — the good part, not the part involving kindergarten kids and trousers around the ankles.

Deep breath.

I’m sure — or at least I’m hoping — that our nation’s programs to deal with violent extremism are just a tad more sophisticated that the Attorney-General makes out. He’s new in the job, and maybe he hasn’t been properly briefed yet. I might ask around. If it’s OK with you, Attorney-General, I might sit in front of a computer screen while doing that.

But I’d have thought that when you’re reassuring the public after a high-profile terrorism incident overseas that your message could be a bit better crafted than “Yeah, we’ll get ’em playing footy, that’ll sort ’em out.”

And before you ask, girls don’t do terrorism. What even are you thinking?

So a solid week of writing was turned into a week not noted for solidity (sorry), and just one article emerged. I’m told it’s not all that good.

Articles

• WordPress attack highlights 30 million targets, ZDNet Australia, 19 April 2013.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

• On Monday I had lunch at Wildfire Restaurant at Circular Quay, Sydney, which was a media briefing by Adaptive Planning. So I assume they paid. I know I didn’t. I can’t afford to eat at places like that. I took a photograph of the menu.
• Later on Monday I had coffee with some folks from Bitdefender. They also gave me a gift pack containing a t-shirt, a novelty USB stick and a hip flask containing something that I suspect has alcohol in it. Very practical. I approve.

The Week Ahead

I’ll figure it out on Monday morning. I know I have lots of writing to catch up on, and there’s a bunch of email asking me to do things I’m sure. But it’s also a public holiday on Thursday for Anzac Day, and I feel quite strongly that public holidays are there for a reason — especially given that Easter failed to be a long weekend for me.

[Photo: Danger, at Sydney's Central railway station, photographed on 15 April 2013. I asked the workers, and there wasn't really any danger.]