Category: Media

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Crikey: LinkedIn pulls a Facebook-style privacy swifty

“Social advertising”. It sounds so innocuous. But it isn’t. It means that simply by “liking” something on LinkedIn, or if you “take other actions”, they can use your name and photo in third-party advertising. Pricks.

I’ve written about this in Crikey today, LinkedIn pulls a Facebook-like swifty on ‘social advertising’. I called them “exploitative”. I compared them to the “consumer-grade arseholes at Facebook”. I stand by all of that, and more.

I asked how LinkedIn could be so stupid. But it’s more than that.

Just what sort of mindset do LinkedIn’s executives have if they reckon this is an acceptable way to do business with people?

To me it indicates that they have no idea how people might react to discovering their face in someone else’s advertising. Or, if they do realise that, a disturbingly callous disregard for others, putting their business profits before their basic responsibilities as human beings.

Is that antisocial personality disorder? That seems to be what we call being a psychopath these days.

If you’re a LinkedIn user and want to opt out of all this, go to where your name is displayed on the top right of your LinkedIn screen and click on “Settings”. Click on “Account” at the bottom left of screen, then “Manage Social Advertising”.

[Disclosure: I receive a free LinkedIn Pro account as part of their media outreach program.]

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Talking LulzSec/Anonymous vs PayPal on TripleJ’s Hack

On Wednesday afternoon, LulzSec and Anonymous joined forces to encourage people to boycott PayPal by withdrawing their money and closing their accounts.

The back story is that PayPal has cut off WikiLeaks’ account, meaning that people could no longer donate money to WikiLeaks via PayPal. Anonymous launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against PayPal. Last week the FBI and others arrested people alleged to have been responsible for those attacks. So this week, the boycott of PayPal.

The joint statement by LulzSec and Anonymous makes for interesting reading. It describes DDoS attacks as “ethical, modern cyber operations”. Such things are actually a criminal act, despite what Anonymous may imagine the law to be. “Law enforcement continues to push its ridiculous rules upon us,” they write, when it’s not law enforcement who makes the laws, but governments.

The call for the boycott was unfolding as Triple J’s current affairs program Hack was going to air, and I phoned in a report. Here’s the audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:06 — 1.7MB)

I found it interesting that presenter Tom Tilley responded to my comment that DDoS is a crime by saying “Yeah I imagine there’d be people with lots of different points of view about what they’re doing and whether it’s indeed lawful.”. Personally I reckon the law in this is pretty clear. Pandering to their audience?

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It has been extracted from the full program audio [MP3].

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R18+ computer games, finally, but little on cybercrime

Australia’s Standing Committee of Attorneys-General has been meeting in Adelaide these past two days. They’ve finally agreed to allow an R18+ classification for computer games. But I’m surprised to see they’ve said almost nothing about online crime.

In their Communiqué and Summary of Decisions [25kb PDF] they say:

R 18+ Classification for Computer Games

Ministers made a decision in principle, to introduce an R 18+ category for computer games. NSW abstained.

Ministers:

(a) agreed to take the Guidelines for the Classification of Computer games, as amended at the meeting, to their respective Cabinets

(b) agreed in principle, with the exception of the NSW Attorney General who abstained, that the Commonwealth introduce the proposed amendments to the National Classification Code to support the introduction of an R 18+ category

(c) agreed, with the exception of the NSW Attorney General who abstained, to commence drafting amendments to their enforcement legislation to reflect the introduction of an R 18 + category for computer games

(d) agreed that it would be desirable for classifications of existing games to be reviewed in light of the new classification Guidelines.

This leads to the interesting possibility that the federal government could legislate to create the R18+ category, but NSW could choose not to implement matching laws. The result would be that the games would be legal to sell everywhere in Australia except NSW.

A similar situation already exists for X-rated movies. The federal government passed the laws, but the states changed their minds later. So X-rated material is available in the ACT.

But as I say, there was precious little on cybercrime.

Continue reading “R18+ computer games, finally, but little on cybercrime”

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Privacy rights for Australia, maybe, but where’s speech?

Early this morning, Australia’s Minister for Privacy Brendan O’Connor announced that the government will start a public consultation into whether Australia should have a statutory right to privacy.

The media release was emailed at 6.26am AEST, a clear sign that it was a calm, reasoned decision made as part of a long-term government strategy. Sorry? No? Read the release?

“The News of the World scandal and other recent mass breaches of privacy, both at home and abroad, have put the spotlight on whether there should be such a right.”

The Australian Law Reform Commission’s recommendation for such a law has been sitting on the table for three years now. But hey, something in the news cycle triggers a potential “announceable” and… disco!

Right then.

I’ve already written straight news stories today for CSO Online, Australia to consider right-to-privacy law and Watchdogs welcome Australia’s right-to-privacy move. I’ll be writing about the timing thing tomorrow for ABC’s The Drum.

Right now, though, I have one question. It’s a question I’ve asked before, but I was reminded by something Mark Newton said earlier this evening.

How come we don’t see such sudden action, ever, when is comes to giving Australians a statutory right to freedom of speech?

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LulzSec vs Murdoch: the lessons, and what’s next?

LulzSec’s hack of The Sun and other UK websites belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s News International yesterday was one of the highest-profile infosec breaches in history. But will it mean anything beyond today’s news cycle? I suspect not.

(If you’re not up to speed on this, please read my initial summary for CSO Online or a shorter but fresher story for Crikey.)

As I thought about this overnight, and after chatting with Paul Ducklin from information security vendor Sophos, I came to the conclusion that despite all the media coverage yesterday nothing will change.

I wrote that up as an op-ed for CSO Online, Four lessons from LulzSec vs Murdoch.

We’ve seen hack after hack after hack, but civilisation has stubbornly refused to crumble. We’ve cried wolf a few hundred times too often. We’re experiencing what Paul Ducklin from Sophos calls “hack fatigue”.

We only hear about successful hacks, from LulzSec or anyone else, Ducklin told CSO Online. “They can crow about every time they have a success,” he said, “but you never hear about the sites they never broke into.”

And the idea that LulzSEc’s high-profile hacks will suddenly focus attention on organisation’s information security vulnerabilities? Bah. We’ve been flooded with media reports of high-profile hacks for the last few years, from NATO to Paris Hilton, Google to prime minister Gillard.

After all those stories we held urgent meetings, changed our ways, and put infosec at the top of the business agenda, right?

Yeah right.

So now what? I’ll put my money on LulzSec being forgotten until their next high-profile attack, or their arrest.

[Picture: Early this morning Australian time, LulzSec tweeted: “The Sun taken care of… now what about the moon…”, linking to that image (source unknown). Is it a hint? Or a meaningless distraction?]