From the government, I’d like more openness and the active inclusion of citizens in decision-making from the beginning. We’re not just an audience to be sold a policy cooked up with noisy lobby groups and the big end of town. The Government 2.0 Taskforce recommended a declaration of open government and, amongst other things, making all public sector information free and freely reusable by default, easily discoverable, and published in machine-readable formats to open standards. Let’s start seeing some of that — and not stuff at the edges like the public toilet database but big slabs of core government information.

From media magnates, less whinging about new competitors “stealing” your audience — we’re not your property! — and a lot more about making yourselves relevant to our new needs. We’ve got so many ways of informing and entertaining ourselves now, so do take that on board. Also, sourcing a comment to a random person on Twitter is not journalism. Find out who and where they are and give a bit of background.

And from the Twitterverse, quite a bit less self-congratulation and a quite a lot more practical work. Turning your avatar green or red or black changes nothing. “But I’m raising awareness” it not a valid explanation, either, because chances are your friends already agree with you. Open communication with someone well outside your normal circle and make a difference. Please.

The ABC piece is worth reading too, with contributions from editor Jonathan Green, Sophie Cunningham from Meanjin, comedian John Safran, opposition leader Tony Abbott, refugee and human rights activist Pamela Curr, futurist Mark Pesce, researcher and author Chris Berg, Julian Morrow of The Chaser fame, Robert Manne, Catherine Deveny, human rights lawyer Julian Burnside, artist Gerard Oosterman, scientist Julian Cribb, journalist and former writer for The Chaser Gregor Stronach, and Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.

I haven’t had a chance to think about what I want personally. I was working on some urgent, stressful documents right up until close of business on New Year’s Eve, and went to bed early, exhausted. Maybe today’s beautiful showery day in Sydney, or tomorrow’s thunderstorms, will provide that inspiration.

I’ll be at the Media140 Sydney conference all day Thursday and Friday. If you’re not going, you can still watch everything on the live stream.

I’m taking part in a panel starting at 5pm Thursday, Sydney time: Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m hoping this moves beyond the stale “bloggers vs journalists” (non-)debate.

My fellow panellists are freelance journalist, columnist and blogger Mia Freedman; new media consultant and recovering journalist Bronwen Clune; Valerio Veo, who heads up online news and current affairs at SBS; social media consultant Laurel Papworth; and late addition Dr Lawrie Zion from La Trobe University.

The moderator is Julian Morrow, co-founder of The Chaser, so I suspect they’re looking for a lighter, end-of-day discussion — particularly as there’s a more serious-looking panel earlier in the day called Social Media: Death or Salvation of Professional Journalism?

(I’m not sure why it can’t be both, death and transformation, but still… every headline has to be a binary opposite to turn it into winners and losers. Sigh.)

My own 5-minute rant is summarised in this tweet:

Who cares if journos do It better if It is outdated and no-one wants It? Whatever “It” is. Journalism ain’t newspapers, radio or TV.

Yes, it’s quite deliberate that “It” is capitalised.

The Twitter hashtag is #media140, and I daresay I’ll be posting snippets as it all unfolds. Stay, as they say, tuned.

Following yesterday’s news that a memo claiming McDonald’s deliberately rips off customers was a fake (pictured), I spoke about Internet pranks on ABC Radio 891 Adelaide this morning. I figured you might as well see my notes.

Oh, and the audio is below.

The fake memo was the work of Adelaide-based satirist and prankster David Thorne who, amongst other things, runs the website 27bslash6 as troll-bait and is flogging t-shirts and a book of his pranks called The Internet is a Playground.

Personally, I reckon pranks that just waste people’s time or otherwise annoy them without making any more significant point about society are pretty cheap.

Thorne’s attempt to pay a bill with a drawing of a spider is perhaps amusing, and it’s good that the victim saw the joke. But I put it at the same level as The Chaser bringing a horse into shops. Whereas The Chaser‘s breach of security at APEC, which you can see on video, made an important point about security theatre and social engineering attacks.

Anyway, this is what I discovered while poking around…

A US ABC News story listed their Top 5 Website Hoaxes of All Time, including the original website for The Blair Witch Project, Bonsai Kittens, a Victorian-era robot called Boilerplate and The Yes Men‘s stunning disruption of Dow Chemicals.

The Web site DowEthics.com looks pretty convincing at first, but it has no affiliation with Dow Chemical’s real Web site, Dow.com.

Even so, it fooled the BBC in 2004 when an unknowing researcher used the Web site to book an interview with a Dow Chemical executive.

While on-air the “executive” said Dow would finally clean up the toxic chemical plant in Bhopal, India and pay billions in compensation to the victims on the 20-year anniversary of the disaster. Dow Chemical’s stock dropped sharply.

In reality, Dow Chemical does not claim responsibility for the lethal gas that killed at least 8,000 people and poisoned about half a million.

The Dow stunt was pulled off by The Yes Men, a loosely knit group of Internet pranksters who spoof prominent corporations and organisations.

I also stumbled across the Exploding Cactus Spider Hoax, how the story of Jeff Goldblum’s death was created and spread using a “celebrity fake news generator” at FakeAWish.com, and the Museum of Hoaxes’ list of The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time.

I suppose I should mention that to check if something’s a hoax or not, Snopes is your friend.

So, which are your favourite Internet hoaxes?

[The radio interview is probably Copyright © 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don't archive them I reckon it's fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to the ABC Adelaide website and encourage you to listen.]

It happened again! It’s been days and days before I got around to telling you that Stilgherrian Live episode 49 is online for your viewing pleasure.

So sue me.

The clear winner of “Cnut of the Week” was the government of China for continuing to deny the extent of the massacre at Tianamen Square twenty years ago (54%). The audience of The Chaser’s War on Everything came in 2nd place (25%) for complaining about the now-deleted comedy sketch about the Make a Realistic Wish Foundation — beating The Chaser themselves, who came in 4th place (8%) for making the sketch in the first place.

Heritage media came in 3rd place for their continued panic over Swine Flu.

Congratulations to Nick Hortovanyi , who won a t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing — and a big raspberry to Stephen Collins and mal who would’ve won if they were watching the program when their names were drawn from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.

I plan to have a regular edition of Stilgherrian Live tomorrow night at 9.30pm Sydney time, but we’ll see how we go. I’ve just received some important news about Project TOTO.

Dear Mr Rudd, it’s wonderful that you’ve joined Twitter. Of course Mr Turnbull was here a month before you, but Twitter has been around more than two years. Even sceptical old me has been here a year. You’re both complete n00bs. May I offer some tips?

The first thing you must understand is that Twitter is about human communication. We already have more formula-driven spin-doctor-approved crap than we’ll ever need. What we want to see is you, Kevin, that smart hard-working control-freak slightly-daggy-but-endearing father of three. The guy who after a long day’s campaigning could still crack a joke with The Chaser crew when they turned up at your home.

This afternoon you walked into the world’s weirdest non-stop front bar cum water cooler conversation and said “Looking forward to communicating with you on Twitter”. Outstanding. And now 430+ people have turned around to pay attention, and quite a few have even said hello. More will join them. What happens next is a conversation. You’ll be judged on that conversation, not what you do elsewhere — though we’ll certainly want to talk about your work. And your pets.

And your tea towels.

I’m guessing that right now your Hollowmen are analysing every reaction to your tweet (singular), agonising over how you should respond. Tell them to piss off. You’re a grown man — you’re the Prime Minister for God’s sake! — so if you can’t talk with a fellow human when they say hello without someone advising you what to say, you might as well give up now.

Just. Be. Yourself.

The second thing, though, is that you will find it strange and challenging. And that’s OK. We all did.

Twitter is both ephemeral and on the record all at the same time. It represents a new mode of communication. Society (and politics!) will need to adapt to people’s actual humanity. Twitter’s ambient intimacy provides you with a window into the lives of the people you follow, and us with a window into yours. What will we see?

We understand that you won’t want to reveal everything. Old-fashioned tabloid journalists, hypocrites that they are, make a big deal about what is actually normal human activity. Those of us who’ve made the transition to the hyperconnected world don’t care so much, because we see more of humanity’s actual variety. We know that people express frustration after a tough day, or doubts in uncertain times, and we don’t think any less of them. In fact, we think more of them for sharing.

We know that you’ll draw the curtains from time to time. We won’t see tweets like “Ordering the RAAF to bomb Wellington” or “I so want to stab Malcolm Turnbull with a pen, the smarmy prick!” or “ZOMG Julia Gillard is teh hotness!!1!!!1!” — though we’d all relate to that last one! But it’d be good to loosen that media mask just a little. Us hyperconnected folks respect honesty.

The other thing to notice is that Twitter is fast. Very fast.

The inimitable Mark Pesce has already written all about this in his lecture Hyperpolitics, American Style. You might want to put your feet up, make a nice strong cup of tea, crack open the Iced Vo-Vos and watch. He “gets it” more than those Sussex Street machine men will ever understand. If you’ve got time, you might also try Only Connect or even the more challenging This, That, and the Other. If you can absorb the lessons and work them into your personal politics, you will be full of WIN!

If you truly engage with Twitter — or rather, engage with the people who sit right in front of you thanks to Twitter — you’ll be able to bounce around ideas and reach a consensus before one of the old political dinosaurs has even finished his first canvassing phone call.

The real lesson is that you can’t just translate what you do in industrial-age media into this new world. You need to learn new skills, and the best way is to immerse yourself. Take the plunge. We won’t laugh.

Well, not at first.

Of course if @KevinRuddPM is not actually you but a minion, things are different…

There’s nothing wrong with a minion-operated Twitter account. @DowningStreet has even managed to inject real personality into the role even though it’s shared by three humans! Just be honest about that up front, and let the minion be a human.

It’s even kinda OK if the Twitter account is only to tell us about new posts to kevinpm.com.au — though that’s also kinda lame because the website already has an RSS feed and your first tweet did use the word “communicating”. We have expectations.

Over to you, Prime Minister!

P.S. Can you tell Conroy to pull his head in about the Internet censorship thing? It’s not a good look to have been elected on talk of “evidence-based policy” and then ignore the evidence.

P.P.S. Do you agree with John Birmingham when he says that Conroy does a “puckered cat’s bum thing with [his] mouth” when equating freedom of speech with kiddie-porn-watching? Just wondering. You can message me privately about that one, promise I won’t tell.

[This post was also re-published by ZDNet News Australia.]

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.

Now here’s a surprise. Not. The massive security operation surrounding APEC brings us yet another example of security theatre — pointless activity that’s all for show but which does nothing to actually enhance security.

The police busy themselves by (mostly politely) hassling tourists and photographers, deleting images of The Fence because “protesters might be doing reconnaissance for weak spots.” Uhuh. But The Chaser crew get within metres of George W’s hotel by playing dress-ups and driving big black cars.

If you watch the Sydney Morning Herald video, you’ll see an enormous contrast. The uniformed police laugh with The Chaser team. Then the assistant commissioner and the police minister try to look Very Serious Indeed. Minister David Campbell even claims…

I think this reinforces that APEC security has been successful by the mere fact that 11 people have been arrested… I offer my congratulations to those police officers for their diligent work.

Yeah? What’s your reasoning, Mr Owens? Seems to me that if you can cruise through the first two checkpoints just by hiring cars and dressing up — something anyone can do — then you’ve got a Bloody Great Hole.

“I am not embarrassed at all,” says Assistant Commissioner David Owens — in the same tone and body language as Richard Nixon claiming “I am not a crook.”

From what I hear, the boys and girls in blue on the ground are doing their best to help people cope with the over-the-top lockdown. Some are starting their conversations with “Hi, look we don’t make the rules, but would you mind…”

The SMH editorial respected journalist David Marr gets it right:

Not even an assistant commissioner can deny the verdict of laughter. The Chaser‘s ratings will go through the roof next week. And maybe somewhere down the track a magistrate with a sense of humour will watch the footage and dismiss any charges laid under section 19 of the APEC Meeting (Police Powers) Act 2007 because he gets the joke.

It happened in February. Police at a Dick Cheney demo in The Rocks did not find the antics of the Tranny Cops the least bit funny and had them arrested…

Sure, they were impersonating officers as alleged. But the magistrate dismissed all charges after pointing out to the police that this was a joke in a long tradition going back beyond the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Vietnam moratoriums. The magistrate explained: “Part of protest has always been challenging figures of authority.”

Police were not amused then and have learnt nothing since. Demonstrations seem to have a solemn impact on senior officers, though it has to be admitted it would take a superhuman sense of humour for Dave Owens to join the laughter after his security arrangements were shown to be a bit of a farce…

Not known at this stage are police plans for dealing with another outbreak of comedy this afternoon in Hyde Park, where Justice Action proposes a “21 bum salute” to welcome the 21 heads of economies to Sydney…

It sounds like a case for dog squads and the water cannon. I can already hear Owens telling the media that he enjoys a joke as much as anyone. “But this isn’t funny.”

Mr Owens, if anyone was seriously doing reconnaissance for weak spots in The Great Fence of Sydney, they can do it from home by flicking through Flickr.