The Pozible crowdfunding campaign “Send Stilgherrian to Ruxcon 2015” has been successfully funded. See you in Melbourne next weekend.
Talking Turnbull’s private email on ABC 720 Perth
As the working week came to a close on Friday, news was spreading that Australia’s new PM Malcolm Turnbull has been using a “private” email address for some of his official communications — a situation, it was said, was similar to that of Hillary Clinton when she was US Secretary of State.
It’s not quite the same. Clinton’s people had rolled their own email service, whereas Turnbull had used a commercially-available service — it looks like it was Microsoft’s Outlook.com as resold by NetRegistry. But the concerns were the same. Was it secure? And was it being properly archived as required by law?
Don’t assume government email is more secure than private email, Turnbull said. But the archive question never seemed to get as much traction.
I spoke about some of these issues on ABC 720 Perth with Jamie Burnett.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.4MB)
This audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Launching “Send Stilgherrian to Ruxcon 2015”
I’m re-launching Corrupted Nerds, my podcast about “information, power, security and all the cybers in a global internet revolution that’s changing… everything.”
And to kick things off, today I launched a crowdfunding campaign to take the podcast to Ruxcon 2015, one of Australia’s key information security conferences, which is being held in Melbourne on 24–25 October 2015.
[Update 16 October 2015: The campaign closed last night, and was successfully funded. Thank you.]
There’s plenty of information on the Pozible campaign page. I should mention, though, that the initial $2000 target just gets me to Melbourne and puts a roof over my head. We need to go beyond that to fund some production.
If there’s something you think should be explained better, or if you have a suggestion, please let me know.
Bonus link: Today, ABC Radio National’s Media Report broadcast an interview with me about my crowdfunding work, Crowdfunding journalism.
Debate: Is digital disruption in the best interest of consumers?
“Will the latest wave of digital disruptors liberate consumers from monopolies or shackle them to new ones?” asked the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN) in the program notes for the somewhat amusing debate which ended their annual conference back on 2 September.
I was on one of the debate teams. Guess which side.
Well, the affirmative team was Daniel Duggan, head of mobile for Yatango; Brad Kitsche, Uber’s director of public policy for the Oceania region; and Brendan Coady from Maddocks Lawyers.
So yeah, I was the final speaker on the negative team, following David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of NSW; and Katina Michael, associate professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at the University of Wollongong.
And we won.
The video over the fold has the entire thing, except for the first few words by our moderator, Delia Rickard, dDeputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Continue reading “Debate: Is digital disruption in the best interest of consumers?”
Algorithms and the Filter Bubble references for 2015
This morning I delivered version six of my now-regular guest lecture to media students at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble”. Here are the references and further reading.
The links over the fold start off with some background material that sets out my worldview, and then things are in roughly the same order as presented in the lecture — with the order becoming less coherent further down the page. There’s more material linked here than I mentioned in the lecture itself. Enjoy.
A recording of the lecture will be made available in roughly one week on Wednesday 23 September on Friday 25 September, as the change in Prime Minister has triggered the demand for some of my commentary. This page may be updated with further links at that time.
Continue reading “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble references for 2015”
Talking metadata on ABC 105.7 Darwin
Australia’s mandatory data retention legislation is back in the news again, in part because ABC journalist Will Ockenden put a year’s worth of his so-called “metadata” online and invited people to trawl through it.
This morning I spoke a little about the concept on ABC 105.7 Darwin with breakfast presenter Alan Steer.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.6MB)
The audio is of course ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Given that there’s bound to be quite a bit about data surveillance in the news again soon, here’s three of my articles on the topic that’ll set the mood.
- It’s time that ‘metadata’ met an end, ZDNet Australia, 20 March 2014.
- Will metadata musings ever mature beyond paranoid fears?, ZDNet Australia, 20 October 2014.
- Australia’s data-retention debate hits Derpcon Zero, ZDNet Australia, 18 March 2015.