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!
People were surprised by racist abuse on a Melbourne bus this week? They need to get out more. I’ve had two racist encounters on Sydney trains this week alone.
Continue reading “Two casually racist encounters concerning Auburn”
This week saw my third appearance on Marc Fennell’s program Download This Show on ABC Radio National. Great fun.
Cleaning up the web: Nearly three years since announcing the proposed mandatory internet filtering system Cleenfeed, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s scheme is dead. But what have they replaced it with and were we better off with Conroy’s old system? Meanwhile, we peek into the secret UN meeting that could radically change the way the net is governed, and take time out to ask whether games can truly change our minds and society.
The internet “filtering” stuff of course relates to the Interpol blacklist that I’ve written about for Crikey once or twice, and which was also the subject of this week’s Patch Monday podcast.
My fellow guest was digital arts evangelist Fee Plumley. The audio below is linked directly from the ABC’s website.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (13.1MB)
The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
[Photo: Waiting in ABC Studio 291, Coffs Harbour, the location from which I joined the program.]
Every now and then I end up doing an explainer that starts at the very beginning — like this radio spot about data mining for ABC Gippsland this morning.
Breakfast presenter Gerard Callinan has posted the audio under the title Mapping key strokes. Who’s watching?
For many of us, the idea of going a day without using the internet either at work or at home is almost unimaginable. Have you ever thought what happens to the information that you leave behind when visiting your favourite websites? Every page you visit, every survey you take, every ad you click on builds up a profile which is used by marketing companies and increasingly, political parties to build up a picture about what sort of things you are interested in and how you might be swayed to buy items or even vote in an election.
Here’s a slightly different version of the audio here, with the volume re-normalised — which just means it’s now supposedly at the optimal volume.
I think Mr Callinan got slightly paranoid after he’d read a certain op-ed I wrote earlier this year.
I’m not so sure how well I explained things. This was a live-to-air piece at 0720 AEDT after I’d had just three and a half hours of sleep and a few hours dealing with, um, a very aggressive intestinal problem. So I wasn’t as focused as I’d like to have been.
If I had my time again, I’d have made sure to explain how the advertising embedded in web pages, or the Facebook “Like” buttons, allow those organisations to track you across multiple sites. And I’d have made sure to have a link I could give out for some concise “How to protect your privacy online” guides.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.3MB)
The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.
Milorad “Michael” Trkulja’s defamation case against Google was also the topic for my regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio this week.
Here’s the audio of my segment — Skype drop-outs and all — in which we go well beyond defamation law and Google’s reliance on the defence of “innocent defamation” and the argument put in my Crikey piece about needing a third category of “speech”, to talk about a lack of vowels and discovering that the missing $50 was actually spent on vodka.
There’s also references to Mark Pesce, Senator Stephen Conroy and Naomi Robson, as well as our impromptu plan to replace the justice system with a TV program that’s a cross between The X Factor and Judge Judy.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:51 — 6.1MB)
If you’d like more Balls Radio, have a listen to the full episode. You can subscribe over at the website.
A Melbourne man’s successful defamation suit against Google has been one of the big “technology” news stories this week. I wrote about it for Crikey yesterday, and spoke about it on the radio.
The Crikey piece, “Google defames us all, but should we sue?â€, is currently behind their paywall, though you can sign up for a 21-day free trial. It will emerge from the paywall in two weeks.
In it I argue that we may need a new legal category for online conversations, something that’s obviously not private but also not as formal as “publication”. I’ll come back to that theme once you can all see the story for free, you cheapskates.
Yesterday afternoon I briefly outlined the case to Richard Glover on ABC 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.4MB)
The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.
“ASIO don’t seem to realise how privileged they are compared to intel orgs in other Western democracies,” tweeted terrorism researcher Andrew Zammit (pictured) yesterday.
Zammit is a researcher at the Global Terrorism Research Centre (Monash University) and Australian Policy Online (Swinburne University), and he was responding to my blog post from yesterday, “Insulted, ASIO? That’s not really the problem, surely?†and the attached podcast.
Here are his subsequent tweets, turned into continuous prose:
CIA for example has ongoing congressional oversight (of actual operations) as opposed to our occasional parl[iamentary] inquiries, people can FOI CIA docs only a few years old (ASIO has 20-30 year exemption) and some of the CIA’s analytical roles are transparent, as in analysts will have CIA business cards whereas even an ASIO kitchen hand’s identity will be kept secret. And CIA isn’t even a domestically-focused agency. So yes, ASIO needs to be less precious about being asked questions.
I agree. From the perspective of the United States I’m a foreign national, yet I’ve spoken with officers from the FBI, NSA and the Secret Service — all of whom had business cards with their full names. The closest I’ve gotten in Australia is chatting briefly with a DSD chap, one of two attending Linux.conf.au in January this year — given names only, and I suspect that those given names were really in scare quotes.
The excuse always given is “operational security”, but I do think the world has changed. The tools and methods are surely not so different from SEKRIT agencies to private-sector security companies and even analysis in non-security realms, given that so much technology is now available off the shelf to all comers.
Surely these days OPSEC is more about protecting sources and the specific operations that are or are not being conducted?
Of course I really don’t know this stuff. I’ve never worked in this field. I’ve never even held a security clearance. I’m just an interested bystander mouthing off. But I am intrigued.