Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
If there’s one thing funnier than a prescriptivist, it’s a prescriptivist who’s clearly wrong yet doesn’t know it. I was therefore giggling as soon as I saw Neil tweet about my spelling of “jail”.
Continue reading “Prescriptivist fools should go to jail, sorry, gaol”Goodness. Nothing posted in more than a week. Not even a Weekly Wrap! I am aware of this. You’ll get a Weekly Wrap late today, and something new tomorrow.
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week was busy enough, but this week was even busier. Something’s gotta give.
Two radio spots this week, and a guest appearance on someone else’s podcast.
None. I am reliably informed that the drought will be broken next week.
Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.
[Photo: A misty dawn at Bunjaree Cottages, 1 July 2011. This is the view from Roselle Cottage, not normally rented to the punters. The much-battered camera in my phone does not do this scene justice.]
My first op-ed for CSO, “The Resource for Data Security Executives”, has just been posted. It’s voluntary ISP-level internet filtering, but a different angle from my Crikey piece earlier today.
After nearly four chaotic years, Australia’s internet filtering scheme is finally coming together in a way that makes sense technically and politically, if not necessarily for effective child protection.
The chaos wasn’t all communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy’s fault. The “clean feed” was announced as Labor policy back in March 2006 by then-leader Kim Beazley. ISPs would filter out the nasties hosted overseas, where they couldn’t be hit with a takedown notice from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
But Conroy’s name was on Labor’s Plan for Cyber-safety published just five days out from the federal election in late 2007, and once in government it was Conroy’s job to explain that plan and sell it to voters. Everyone presumably imagined it’d be a protect-the-kiddies no-brainer.
Problem was, neither the plan not Conroy’s explanations were clear…
As I say, it’s my first outing for CSO, but if all goes according to plan there’ll be more. And in case you’re wondering, CSO is a job title. Chief Security Officer.
Over at Crikey I’ve written a summary of what’s happening with Australia’s internet filter.
Australia’s mandatory internet filtering by internet service providers (ISPs) won’t happen for at least two years. But we’re getting filtering anyway. Voluntarily. By ISPs. Next month…
Telstra and Optus are expected to have their filters ready within weeks, although the situation with Primus is unclear…
The Internet Industry Association (IIA) is also about to release a voluntary industry code that would see an estimated 80% to 90% of Australian internet connections filtered by the Interpol blacklist over the next year. Attempts to access domains on the list would be redirected to an Interpol block page.
Overall, I reckon the process that’s now unfolding could well result in the gvernment’s planned mandatory ISP-level filtering disappearing off the table entirely.
As a bonus link, here’s Interpol’s explanation of their “worst-of” blacklist of child exploitation material.
Information security has an image problem, I reckon. No-one apart from the infosec geeks themselves know what’s really involved in hacking or fighting hackers. So the public thinks it’s all like the bullshit in movies.
Like Hugh Jackman creating a virus in Swordfish, pictured.
Does anyone remember the episode of Spooks where the office lights went out when the hacker breached the firewall?
Let’s fix that.
Let’s hear more about the real war stories. OK, everything has always gotta be so goddam SEKRIT! No-one wants to admit to an embarrassing problem. But I reckon we can tell some of these stories while leaving out the identifying details.
We don’t need to reveal which bank nearly had its data centre pwned by a 14-year-old Ukrainian, nor which vendor’s product provided the bloody great hole he came through. But we can certainly talk about the processes, the time pressures and the paranoia.
This week I’ve started writing for a certain as-yet-undisclosed masthead. I reckon we could do regular stories from the front line of cybersecurity. I’ve been told to go for it. And I reckon it’d be fun to write in a stronger narrative style for a change.
If you are, or know of, someone that I should meet for a few drinks in a quiet place while I take notes, please contact me.