See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.

This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.

• “I have never used Twitter” — Are Politicians ill-advised to let their Advisors do the Tweeting? | media140.org: Paul Farrell looks at politicians and their tweets following Malcolm Turnbull’s revelation at Media Sydney that his staffer Thomas Tudehope sometimes tweeted on his behalf, and Barack Obama’s admission that he’s never used Twitter at all.
• Samasource: How African refugees are scoring Silicon Valley Internet jobs | Boing Boing: If you have working knowledge of English, basic computer skills and an Internet connection, then you can get a job anywhere in the world.
• cufón — fonts for the people: A JavaScript-based tool for using any typeface you like in web pages. I haven’t explored it myself, but I do know Crikey‘s website uses it.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted Because Only 0.027% of Iranians Are on Twitter | Gawker: Some reality-check commentary on the “Twitter revolutionised Iran” meme.
• Sources of subsidy in the production of news: a list | Quote and Comment: How can we pay for journalism? Here’s Jay Rosen’s list of possibilities, assembled for the conference “Journalism & The New Media Ecology: Who Will Pay The Messenger?”
• Someday You’ll Remember I Said This | Daily Patricia: Entrepreneur Patricia Handschiegel says Twitter isn’t microblogging. She differentiates between “publishing” and “person-to-person communications” and reckons Twitter’s in the second category, not the first. That, she reckons, is leading people to over-value Twitter monetarily.
• How to play piano like Philip Glass | YouTube: Torley explains in just 10 minutes how to compose and play music like Philip Glass.
• The Naked Truth About Social v Broadcast Media | newmatilda.com: Jason Wilson, lecturer in Digital Communications at the University of Wollongong, looks at the #PwnedNudieRun interaction between ABC TV’s Media Watch and folks on Twitter. I particularly like his “lesson for the low-rent McLuhans who see social media succeeding broadcast media in some simple transition”. Many insights.
• Declassified Blog | Newsweek.com: A new blog by investigative correspondents Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball with contributions from other Newsweek journalists. It will focus on national security, intelligence and law enforcement issues.
• Judge Bans Twitter From Court | CBS News: While in some jurisdictions journalists have been permitted to tweet form courtrooms, US District Judge Clay Land in Georgia has ruled that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibit “broadcasting” and that Twitter is a broadcast medium. This decision will doubtless annoy som of the social media evangelists who see “broadcast” as a swear word.
• Journalists are the audience formerly known as the media | bronwen clune: Bronwen Clune’s presentation from Media140 Sydney.
• The Future Of Journalism Needs Journalists | newmatilda.com: Marni Cordell, editor of newmatilda.com, expresses some concerns about the ABC’s vision of community-based media, as outlined by managing director Mark Scott at Media140 Sydney.
• Media140 Sydney: Future Of Journalism In The Social Media Age | jjprojects: John Johnston’s take on Media140 Sydney.
• Twitter as a Journalistic Tool: Drilling Beneath the Rhetoric | J-scribe: The second half of Julie Posetti’s presentation to Media140 Sydney.
• It’s a Revolution, Not a War | J-scribe: The first half of Julie Posetti’s presentation to Media140 Sydney.
• Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository: Al Jazeera has put all their raw camera footage from the War on Gaza online under a Creative Commons license, “Attribution”, which allows for commercial and non-commercial use. “This means that news outlets, filmmakers and bloggers will be able to easily share, remix, subtitle or reuse our footage.” They so get it.
• Sky News – Interview with Rupert Murdoch | YouTube: The full 37-minute interview with Rupert Murdoch, in which he suggests he’ll block Google from indexing News Corporation news sites.
• Media140 Sydney | Public Opinion: Gary Sauer-Thompson’s take on Media140 Sydney.
• No Strings Attached: Public Broadcaster Seeks Relationships for Collaboration, Conversation and New Ideas: The Media140 Sydney keynote speech from ABC managing director Mark Scott. This is the PDF of his slides with his speaking notes. It includes a look at some of the ABC’s plans for pro-am media creation.
• Claiming to be unbiased is a patronising fairytale, so let’s just own up to our agendas | mUmBRELLA: In this guest post about Media140 Sydney, Cathie McGinn argues there’s no such thing as total objectivity, so better to disclose your agenda.
• My Two Francs Worth: Media 140 | LinenSuave: A parable of sorts about Media140 Sydney, and the pointlessness of the whole bloggers versus journalists debate.
• Journalism and blogging at Media140 | Barry Saunders: “Investigative journalism — while a very valuable form of journalism, and one we need more of — is a very minor part of journalism as it exists, and an over-focus on investigative journalism as the dominant form of journalism obscures vast bodies of journalistic output.”
• Media140 handouts | Claire’s posterous: The BBC’s Claire Wardle presents a beginners guide to using Twitter (including links to other good introductions to Twitter sites), and a general basic handout which covers some of the other social media tools she discussed in her Media140 Sydney workshop.
• Media140 | Flickr: Wolf Cocklin’s photos from Media140 Sydney.
• Call Recorder for Skype | Ecamm Network: This is the OS X tool I mentioned at Media140 Sydney for recording your Skype conversations, both audio and video. Cheap and extremely useful.
• Too tired to tweet | ABC News: ABC political correspondent Lyndal Curtis has been following Media140 Sydney but doesn’t know where people get the time to participate. I really should write a response to this, as I reckon there’s a very clear counter-argument.
• Journalists on Twitter need to ‘be human’ | Renai LeMay: The Media140 Sydney presentation from Renai LeMay, News Editor at ZDNet Australia.
• Congratulations to the ABC | Telstra Exchange: A post on Telstra’s new Exchange corporate blog about the ABC’s new social media policy from Telstra’s Group Managing Director, Public Policy & Communications, David Quilty. Includes links to Telstra’s own social media policies.
• The ABC of social media use | ABC News: The ABC News story that includes the announcement of the ABC’s new social media policy for staff, presented at Media140 Sydney by Managing Director Mark Scott.
• Alex Hawke Liberal Party Downfall | YouTube: The video which supposedly caused Thomas Tudehope to resign from Malcolm Turnbull’s staff.
• YouTube video sinks Turnbull minder | ABC News: Malcolm Turnbull’s staffer Thomas Tudehope has been forced to resign after reports of his involvement in the distribution of a satirical video about the Liberal Party’s factional battles.
• “How would history have recorded the holocaust if there had been I-phones in the concentration camps?” | Paul Farrell: SBS’s head of news and current affairs Paul Cutler asked this provocative question at Media140 Sydney, pointing out that despite the supposed breakthroughs of social media, the genocide in Sri Lanka is failing to get much media coverage.
• Riyaad Minty: Sydney’s Speaker Pash (International Social Media Case Studies) | Media140: Paul Farrell’s commentary on the Media140 Sydney presentation by Al Jazeera’s head of social media, Riyaad Minty. Minty was one of the event’s highlights, in my opinion.
• Malcolm Turnbull | Twitter: The tweet when Australia’s opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull announced that he’d start identifying whether it was he tweeting personally, or a staffer. This came less than three hours after he was asked at Media140 whether there wasn’t an ethical issue with lack of disclosure, especially since Prime MInister Kevin Rudd made the distinction clear in his own tweets.
• The Spin Fails Here: Day One At #Media140 Sydney | The Inquisitr: The Inquisitor‘s editor Duncan Riley wasn’t happy with what he heard at Media140 Sydney, especially that Problogger creator Darren Rowse is the only Australian making money online. There is much bitterness here.
• Initial Thoughts on Media140: Memories of blogging | Woolly Days: Thoughts on Media140 Sydney from Brisbane-based journalist, blogger and QUT researcher Derek Barry.
• Why the future of African journalism lies in mobile social networks | Slideshare: More solid support for the idea that the future of the African internet is mobile. Plenty of stats and some important observations from Jude Mathurine, who heads up the New Media lab at South Africa’s Rhodes University.
• Apparently editors nurture their journalists by telling them it’s okay to get stuff wrong | mUmBRELLA: One section of Laurel Papworth’s presentation at Media140 Sydney didn’t go down so well at mUmBRELLA…
• Media140 today | Visible Procrastinations: A collection of links to commentary about Media140 Sydney’s first day. I have yet to go though them, but when I do I’ll add the relevant ones to my own Delicious feed.
• Media140 Sydney: Social Media Twitter & Journalism | Laurel Papworth: Laurel Papworth’s presentation to Media140 Sydney, in which she positions social media as the people taking back control and ownership of their stories. Word and video available.
• Media140 Sydney 2009 | Flickr: Neerav Bhatt’s photos of Media140 Sydney. He seems to have captured every speaker.
• Malcolm Turnbull on the (social) media. With Fran Kelly | SlowTV: Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is interviews by the ABC’s Fran Kelly about his use of social media in the political context, including a little bit of point-scoring.
• How social media is changing political reporting | SlowTV: The full Media140 Sydney session “How Social Media is Changing Political Reporting” with Annabel Crabb, Bernard Keane (Crikey), Chris Uhlmann (ABC), John Kerrison (Nine) and Caroline Overington (The Australian).
• Caroline Overington takes on Mark Scott and the free digital news proponents | YouTube: A 4-minute extract from Overington’s presentation to Media140 Sydney, which turned into a massive anti-ABC pro-Murdoch rant.
• Conceptual Confusion and Journalistic Process — My Highlights and Lowlights of Media 140 | The Content Makers: “The low lights came from conceptual confusions, it seemed to me. Namely the several highly respected and competent journalists who, quite apart from being clearly terrified by the arrival of the audience in the news making process, also can’t tell the difference between… a platform, and a process… [and] objectivity and integrity.”
• So what’s the “cool new toy”? | The Content Makers: Speculation about News Corporation’s plans for some digital news device. Is Apple involved? An iRupert? A RuPod? The SunKindle?
• Caroline Overington Gives Some Hints on Rupert’s Plans (and tangles with Annabel Crabb) | The Content Makers: Margaret Simons’ original report on the rather strange Media140 Sydney presentation by News Limited journalist Caroline Overington and her stoush with Annabel Crabb, who’s moving from Fairfax to the ABC.
• The ABC Springs Leaks in the Porous Digital Age. Mark Scott AGAIN. | The Content Makers: Meta-journalist Margaret Simons covers some of the announcements made my Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, at Media140 Sydney.
• Can Social Media Save Iran? | newmatilda.com: A Media140 presentation by Dr Jason Wilson, lecturer in Digital Communications at the University of Wollongong. A nice debunking of some of the social media over-hype.
• John Bergin’s Media 140 Speech | The Content Makers: John runs “digital online stuff” for Sky News Australia, on the pay TV networks. This is his presentation from Media140 Sydney. Some good points about listening as well as speaking.
• Off Air: Iran, Twitter and the new media world. | Off Air: The presentation to Media140 Sydney by the highly-respected journalist Mark Colvin, presenter of ABC Radio National’s PM program.
• Rebooting the News System in the Age of Social Media | Quote and Comment: Jay Rosen’s presentation at Media140 covered 10 key sound-bites and what they mean for the future of journalism. Here are those ten points, with links to further material on each one.
• freesound: “The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs.” I’ve used this to source sound effects myself, and it’s wonderful.
• “I Can’t Believe We Still Have to Protest This Crap.” | Flickr: A photo taken in Washington, DC during the 27 January 2007 anti-war march. This was used by Barry Saunders in his Media140 presentation.
• Journalism — a defence | Corporate Engagement: Trevor Cook took exception to my Media140 presentation and spend a few hundred words saying so. I added a little to the discussion, and will add more later when I get time.
• Ushahidi :: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information (FOSS): This is the software which Al Jazeera and friends developed for that “War on Gaza” experiment in crowdsourced crisis information mapping. Yes, it’s free open-source software.
• War on Gaza – Experimental Beta | Al Jazeera Labs: An intriguing experiment from Al Jazeera. Anyone can post reports such as casualty counts directly to the site. all of them are then mapped categorised.
• Media140: I am the bastard child of old & new media…| The Digital Wing: The Media140 presentation from Valerio Veo, who’s been in charge of SBS News& Current Affairs Online since 2006.
• Bleating innocents or matted satans: the goat in art | guardian.co.uk: “Jonathan Jones shepherds us through goat art,” it says. Maybe that should be “goatherds us”.
• Sunday Thoughts about Journalism | Stilgherrian: Another long essay from me in September 2008 which is perhaps a prelude to my Media140 Sydney presentation.
• “Trouble at t’paper” | Stilgherrian: My essay from September 2008 which formed some of the background to my Media140 Sydney presentation.
• Changing spaces in media | Aide-Memoire: Kate Carruthers’ observations form Media140 Sydney. “The first thing that struck me was the level of fear and fear-mongering by some of the print journalists on day one… There seemed to be little idea amongst these panellists that changing media platforms might reinvigorate media and create new revenue or career opportunities.”
• Get with the times, Jay Rosen tells journos | ABC News: A report on Jay Rosen’s keynote from Media140 Sydney. “He says journalists should stop expecting ‘open’ platforms like blogging and Twitter to behave like traditional production systems. Instead, he emphasised the value of listening to the public and being transparent about journalistic processes.”
• Sydney Media140 sessions: The program for Media140 Sydney, held 5 to 6 November 2009, with brief speaker bios, photos and links to their Twitter profiles.

• A Cyber-Attack on an American City | Bruce Perens: On 9 April, people unknown decided to cut the eight fibre optic cables serving the northern Californian city of Morgan Hill. This essay outlines the risks.
• Upbeat office culture fake and creepy, says Alain de Botton | News.com.au: While I’m perhaps jealous of Alain de Botton’s ability to make a living out of this kind of pop philosophy, but he’s got a point.
• Australia’s top 100 Journalists and news media people on Twitter | the earley edition: At least Dave Earley says, “That post title is utter bollocks and mere linkbait. This list does not in any way rank influence, importance or interest, and it contains far more than 100 people. It is also not ‘exhaustive’, since there’s no way I could find and list everyone, just exhausting.”
• Home ownership: real estate dream ‘becoming a complicated nightmare’ | theage.com.au: Hear hear! “For the record, rent money is not dead money. Renters are paying for a service — shelter and protection from the cold. Hardly wasted money. Worse, the deriding of rent as ‘dead money’ incorrectly implies that money spent on mortgage interest payments is somehow ‘alive money’, or a useful investment. Last time I checked, a mortgage holder with a $300,000 mortgage pays $1400 a month in interest payments straight to the pockets of those same banking chiefs we all say we despise.”

• Conroy’s clean feed | Background Briefing: ABC Radio’s 45-minute exploration. “In the name of protecting children, the government will decree we’ll be forbidden to see ‘unwanted’ and ‘inappropriate’ things on the web. But exactly what that means is a secret, and the thin end of the censorship wedge. Reporter, Wendy Carlisle.”
• The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time | What’s My Pass?: Humans are remarkably predictable. Even when they think they’re being obscure.
• One Laptop per Child trial | Centre for Learning Innovation: ’Pong’s video about the first Australian trial of the OLPC, showing kids using the XOs in a primary school in rural New South Wales. Interviews with Pia Waugh and the educators involved. For soem reason, DET have cut the credits off the end, which seems a bit rude.
• The real facts about Telstra and the Fake Stephen Conroy | nowwearetalking: Telstra’s first official response comes via their blog.
• Telstra man behind Fake Stephen Conroy | smh.com.au: Leslia Nassar has revealed himself as the man behind Fake Stephen Conroy. And now the shitfight begins…
• Social networking & social norms | Aide-Memoire: My friend Kate Carruthers links to some interesting discussions about how we’re creating and negotiating new social norms for online social networks. A good a starting point as any.
• File Sharing Has Become the “New Normal” for Most Online Canadians | Daily Exchange: New Canadian research on attitudes to “file sharing”. 45% say people who use peer-to-peer file sharing services to download music and movies are regular Internet users doing what people should be able to do on the Internet. Only 3% believe file-sharers are criminals who should be punished by law.
• Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day | smh.com.au: Websites linking to Wikipedia and an anti-abortion website have been threatened with fines.
• ABC Mobile Web Site Failed Accessibility Test | Link: “Currently I am teaching mobile and accessible web design to second year and postgraduate students at The Australian National University in the course ‘Networked Information Systems’ (COMP2410). The ABC
  [Mobile] home page would not be of an acceptable standard for student work on this course.”
• You can’t spell Lowest Common Denominator without “ABC Mobile” | Department of Internets: A less-than-complimentary review of the ABC Mobile website.
• ABC Mobile: The new supposedly-mobile-friendly website from Australia’s ABC. But…
• We Have Lasers!!!!!!!!!!: Just like “Sexy People” but… with lasers! Lasers improve everything, right?
• Sexy People: Billed as “a celebration of the perfect portrait”, this collection of over-produced and overly-sentimental portrait photography reminds us just how bad the 1970s and 1980s really were.
• A gentle introduction to video encoding | dive into mark: A set of six articles providing an orientation to to issues involved in video encoding, written with a suitably cynical tone given the dog’s breakfast of formats available.
• Happy 20th Birthday WWW | Link: 13 March 2009 marked the 20th anniversary of the CERN paper outlining what would become the World Wide Web.
• Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Amendment (Search Powers) Bill 2009 | NSW Parliament: This Bill proposes giving far more extensive search powers to NSW Police, including the ability to secretly enter premises next to the suspect without notifying the owner or tenant, and to secretly install monitoring software on third-party computers.
• Unicorns and Cupcakes: Two of the worst styles of kitsch collide in an explosion of… kitsch.
• An interview with an anonymous blog commenter | Joanna Geary: A regular commenter on the Birmingham Post‘s website, “Clifford” chats about his experience.
• australian screen: Australia’s audiovisual heritage online. “Explore over 1,000 Australian film and television titles produced over the last 100 years, with clips, curator notes and other information.”
• Gary Hayes Emerging Media Diagrams | Flickr: “A range of charts created by Gary Hayes across games, social networks, cross-media, broadband services, virtual worlds. Used in various presentations already and all marked as creative commons – attribution, non-derivative, non-commercial.”

• VPNOut: “VPNOut provides secure and anonymous VPN access that can break through firewalls.” And past censorship.
• Apple’s 1987 Knowledge Navigator Video | YouTube: A remarkable “concept video” looking at how we might use computers and the Internet in “the future”, i.e. now.
• EGovernment nets most callers: survey | PS News: A Department of Finance and Deregulation survey has found more Australians now contact the Government via the internet than they do by phone or in person.
• Cursebird: What the f#@! is everyone swearing about?: Apparently on Twitter I swear “like a George Carlin Wannabe”. I’m ranked 355th in the world, putting me in the very top percentile. I wonder what the stats would look like for Australians only?
• 7 Steps To Build A Startup From Scratch With No Money | YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog: What it says.
• Dark Dungeons | Chick Publications: This book from a well-established evangelistic Christian publisher, points out the evils of role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
• Obituary: Sir John Mortimer | guardian.co.uk: Geoffrey Robertson’s obituary of Sir John Mortimer, creator of fictional lawyer Rumpole of the Bailey and a decent lawyer in his own right. Apparently in his youth Mortimer “encountered with interest the bookshop-owning lesbians who had taken opium with Cocteau, and a prim, elderly lady who had, in her youth, urinated regularly upon pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis.” Goodness me.
• Schapelle Corby Tour: “My name is Eddie Hutauruk and I have been running tours in Bali for over 8 years. Schapelle Corby Tours is our latest venture, and is fully respectful of Schapelle and her situation… Schapelle Corby is a convicted Australian drug runner, and my tours allow people to see Schapelle in her cage at Kerobokan Prison in Bali. Tours can be arranged for most days of the week and pick-up is possible from most Bali hotels.” Very clever.
• Folk Devils and Internet Safety | Daithí mac Sithigh’s blog on cyberlaw & media law: Another view on the report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force which said, amongst other things, that the risks of bullying online are far more important that worrying about the rare instances of adults soliciting for sex.
• A chat with Fake Stephen Conroy | ZDNet Australia: What is says. Rather amusing, I reckon. And no, I am not Fake Stephen Conroy. But I have my suspicions about who it really is…

This is the full text via Crikey:

Direction

Today I have directed that there be no further proceedings on all charges against 11 persons involved in The Chasers War on Everything entry into a restricted area during the APEC Meeting in Sydney in September 2007: Julian Morrow, Charles (“Chas”) Licciardello, Nathan Earl, Giles Hardie, Lauren Howard, Geoffrey Lye, Alexander Morrow, Benson Simpson, Esteban Alegria, Mark Kordi and Rodrigo Pena.

The matters are listed for mention in the Local Court tomorrow, 29 April 2008, when the charges will be withdrawn.

In the unusual circumstances of this case I consider it appropriate to give some explanation for this course.

Background

On Thursday 6 September 2007, during the APEC Meeting in Sydney, two presenting members of The Chasers War on Everything ABC comedy/satire team were charged, along with six Chasers crew and production team members and three hire car drivers, with entering a restricted area without special justification, contrary to section 19(1) of the APEC Meeting (Police Powers) Act 2007.

The legislation (which was in force from 4 July 2007 to 13 September 2007) provided for “declared areas” (setting in effect an outer perimeter of affected space) and “restricted areas” inside declared areas established around APEC Meeting venues and accommodation. The relevant areas for present purposes were along Macquarie Street, Sydney, north of King Street where a declared area was in place and north of a gate approximately 30 metres south of Bridge Street where a restricted area commenced.

Short Facts

The Chasers created a fake “motorcade” consisting of, in order: two motorcycle outriders, a black 4WD vehicle, a black sedan and another black 4WD. Five male members of the team (including Morrow who was directing operations) walked alongside the motorcade. After reaching Bent Street the motorcyclists dropped to the rear.

The three vehicles had obviously bogus APEC identification stickers and Canada identification stickers on their windscreens. The sedan had Australian and Canadian national flags on its bonnet. All had tinted windows. The five runners also wore obviously bogus identification. One of the motorcyclists wore jeans.

Nine cameras were in operation, some fixed, some handheld and worn and some with audio recording. Recordings from those cameras have been taken into consideration.

At about 11.30am on Thursday 6 September 2007 the fake motorcade approached along Macquarie Street from the south and stopped at the intersection of Bent Street. One of the motorcyclists and Morrow pointed forward. Police waved the motorcade on and indicated in a northerly direction along Macquarie Street towards the restricted area. It then proceeded through an open gate further into the declared area.

The motorcade then stopped briefly before moving north again towards a second open gate which in fact marked the beginning of the restricted area (although police in the vicinity were unaware of that and the Chasers were uncertain where the restricted area began). The motorcade then stopped just short of the second gate. Morrow asked people with whom he was in contact about the restricted area and was given to understand that it commenced at Bridge Street. The motorcade then proceeded again through the second open gate towards the intersection of Macquarie and Bridge Streets. There was no attempt by police lining the route to inspect or stop it.

The motorcade then stopped short of the intersection of Bridge Street and Morrow told police that there had been a change of plans and that they needed to turn back. Morrow suspected that they had entered the restricted area, which he had not intended to do. Macquarie Street had been narrowed by fencing and barriers between Bent and Bridge Streets and it was necessary to advance into the intersection to turn around. Police waved the motorcade forward into the intersection to enable that to occur.

The motorcade then stopped in the turn, Morrow consulted with Licciardello and he (dressed as Osama Bin Laden) got out of the sedan and with Morrow started to walk south in Macquarie Street. Police then arrested the 11 accused and seized items. (The two motorcyclists rode away.)

The Chasers had carried out an examination of the area on 5 September 2007 when police procedures had been different from those followed on 6 September 2007. The Chasers had also conducted a planning session on the morning of 6 September 2007 and some video and audio recording of that has been considered.

The evidence establishes that the Chasers plan, in what was considered the unlikely event that they were allowed to pass through any gates, was to stop short of the restricted area and to get Licciardello out of the vehicle.

Referral to ODPP

Police prosecutors were primarily responsible for the conduct of the prosecutions, they being for summary offences in the Local Court.

A large amount of evidentiary material was made available to the police prosecutors, along with representations on behalf of the accused and advice from senior officers and the Crown Solicitor.

Police could have prosecuted or withdrawn any or all of the charges. The case was first referred to the ODPP for the purpose of giving advice on 13 March 2008. On 14 March 2008 it was decided that the ODPP would conduct the matters and they were then taken over from police.

The matters have been assessed in this Office in the usual way for all briefs received. Regard has been had to the applicable law, the admissible evidence and the Prosecution Guidelines. There has been some urgency in the treatment of the matter by reason of the elapsed time since the events and the listing of the matters in court.

Reasons

It was an offence to enter a restricted area without special justification. Special justification was defined in section 37 of the Act and included circumstances where a person was permitted to be in the area by a police officer and where the person was required to be in the area for a work-related purpose.

The offence is one of strict liability. Consequently, the defence of honest and reasonable mistake of fact is available to the accused. Put another way, it is a defence to establish, or to raise a reasonable doubt that there existed, an honest and reasonable but mistaken belief in a set of facts which, if they had existed, would have rendered the conduct innocent.

In the cases of all 11 accused I am satisfied that on the evidence presently available the prosecution would not be able to negate, beyond reasonable doubt, the existence of an honest and reasonable (but ultimately mistaken) belief that they would not enter or be taken into the restricted area and that, when they did enter it, it was with the permission of police (given by waving them through the Bent Street intersection towards the first gate north along Macquarie Street, then allowing them through the second gate unhindered and then directing them to turn in the intersection of Bridge Street). Police permission in fact constitutes special justification for entry.

Accordingly, there is no reasonable prospect of conviction and for that reason the prosecutions should not proceed.

In the cases of Licciardello, the six crew and production staff members and the three hire car drivers a further defence may be available that they had special justification by reason of their requirement to be there for work-related purposes in the circumstances that unfolded. Morrow was directing the progress of all who were employed for the purposes of the stunt and they either followed or were swept along by the directions that he gave.

I am also satisfied that, if the prosecution proceeded against Morrow only on the basis that his situation could be distinguished from the rest, the court would be bound to find that the motorcade entered the restricted area in error and if the offence were otherwise proved (which I consider unlikely) it would be probable that a magistrate would dismiss the charge without conviction under section 10 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (considering also Morrow’s otherwise good character). That would provide an additional discretionary basis for not proceeding in Morrow’s case, in accordance with the Prosecution Guidelines.

There’s also a story at ABC Online. My comments to come tonight.

News has just come through that charges against The Chaser team for their APEC security breach stunt have been dropped. Good, someone has a brain. Yes, they did enter the APEC security zone — but you, dear police and security forces, stood back and saluted as you waved them through the checkpoints.

Speaking at the AusCERT conference on Monday, Ivan Krstic, director of security architecture for the One Laptop per Child project, says the computing industry relies on “utterly obsolete concepts and assumptions” and has “massively failed when it comes to desktop security”.

The way modern desktop security works is by relying on the user to make informed and sensible choices on things they don’t understand.

The early personal firewall software was a classic example:

A dialogue would pop up and say ‘Hi, we’ve intercepted this packet with this TCP sequence number and these flags set, and SYN and FIN are both on, and here are the destination ports and the source ports and here is a hex dump of the packet. Allow or deny? What do you think?’. Who is that protecting? It’s protecting me, but I don’t need that kind of protection in the first place.

The Apple Blog was sarcastic when they reported Krstic’s speech — I suspect because arrogant OS X users think security issues don’t apply to them — so I posted a response…

Despite your sarcasm, when you ask…

So does that mean ‘there is nothing in place to say that’ OS X’s Chess game cannot format my hard drive or turn over control of my Mac to third parties?

… yes, you’re right on the money. Krstic is absolutely correct. This is exactly the “trust model” of every desktop operating system currently in use.

Software like Minesweeper in Windows, Chess in OS X or whatever — everything from Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office to that cute little widget you just downloaded from… who? — are supplied as pre-compiled binary programs. Unless you reverse-engineer them and do a complete audit, you have no way of knowing for sure what they do. Not 100%.

Even then you have to be really good at software auditing to know you’re not overlooking some trick. And you have to audit every software library they call. And, if you want to be completely sure, audit the microcode on the processor chip while you’re at it.

When you run any software, you’re trusting the author to do only what they claim they will do.

There is no global auditing program to ensure software does what it says and only what it says. In any event, how can you know whether the file you just downloaded is the same one that was audited?

And, despite the “I’m more secure than you” arrogance shown by so many OS X users, there’s nothing about OS X that makes it any different to Windows in this regard: run a program, and it runs with the same privileges as you have.

At this point open-source advocates will say that they have the source code so they’re OK — but honestly, when was the last time you read through the source code before compiling and running a program?

“Safety is paramount and we respond to concerns from members of the public in the way they would expect us to,” said a Durham Police spokeswoman. Too right.

The 5 April story Police secret password blunder explains how a database of email passwords was published on the Internet.

The names, email addresses and passwords of as many as 800 people who signed up to receive NSW Police media releases are listed on the database.

Among the exposed passwords is that of Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Jenkins, the man responsible for the state’s Counter Terrorist Co-ordination Command unit.

The headline’s “secret” is misleading. Nothing secret was revealed, apart from the passwords themselves. They only gave access to mailing list functions such as unsubscribing and changing your address.

But as the Herald points out:

Many [passwords] appear to be the secret codes journalists use to access their email accounts and other password-dependent information.

Well that’s not the police’s fault, that’s the journalists being stupid. People are told over and over again never to use the same passwords for different accounts — precisely because this sort of accident can compromise everything using that password.

The Herald makes a point of noting…

… bizarre passwords such as “smellyundies”, “enforcer”, “chunder” and “crunchymaggots”.

But “smellyundies” and “crunchymaggots” are good passwords, longer phrases less likely to be uncovered by a dictionary attack. And what on earth is bizarre about “enforcer”? Particularly when the user was a member of the Australian Protective Service.

What is “bizarre”, or at least disappointing, are such lame passwords as the Channel 7 newsroom’s “news”, Damian from the South Sydney City Council’s “damian” and AAP Sydney’s “editorial”.

Of the 40 passwords I could still dig out of Google’s cache, only three were halfway decent or better — 7.5%. “Could do better.”

Oh, and just for the record, the “smellyundies” belong to Channel 7 producer Anna Szymanski. Choice.

Now the NSW Police should really have been paying more attention to the website security. But they could have avoided all this embarrassment with a simple email. “We are rebuilding our mailing list to improve security,” which would have been true, “and we are issuing new passwords.” Routine. End of story.

But they didn’t. And so their counter-terrorism chief was caught with his pants down.

He said he had no idea it was available on the internet.

“I’d like to make some inquiries with our media unit before I make any comment whatsoever,” he said.

And the official police response was clumsy.

To rectify the problem, Police Media has arranged for all access to the service to be deleted.

All subscribers will have to re-register and can do so without a password.

This poor media management was probably cock-up rather than cover-up.

The Police Media Unit was informed by its Internet host, that the passwords used by subscribers are visible on the Internet. [Their comma, not mine.]

The media team was probably too embarrassed to tell the bosses and didn’t understand The Power of the Google Cache. But the journalists who re-used passwords should be equally embarrassed.

Yes, the police made a mistake. But, journalists, the only reason your email accounts might have been compromised is because you were stupid enough to use the same password.