Category: Privacy

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Weekly Wrap 59: Making paragraphs while the rain pours

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. While Sydney dealt with its wettest July since 1950, I was at the Bunjaree Cottages in Wentworth Falls, writing and writing and writing and writing. And talking on the radio.

“Make hay while the sun shines,” goes the old saying. But for a writer, it’s about making paragraphs while the rain pours. Being stuck indoors with a magnificent view really helps.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. But there’ll be plenty next week. I’ll tell you more about that later this morning.

Elsewhere

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: Potholes on Frenchmans Road, Wentworth Falls, photographed on 20 July 2011. This is a slightly modified version, here’s the original.]

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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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Google+ gives me grief, generally

It seems to have been my annointed role this week to press back against the rush to join Google+, the new social networking service (SNS) from Google.

It all began when I posted the Patch Monday podcast on, erm, Monday. “Can Google+ kill Facebook? Twitter?” I asked. But as I discussed the potential success of Google+ and its strengths and weaknesses compared with Facebook, I couldn’t help but think…

I don’t want to do this.

Join Google+, that is.

I’d first written about Google+ for Crikey a week and a bit earlier. It was a cranky piece. I speculated that Google would have to come up with something pretty persuasive to get people to migrate from Facebook.

That of course soon triggered one of the usual, predictable comments.

sorry im not on facebook, i dont need to be, i dont have a mobile phone, i really dont need one, i dont have a GPS, i have a brain and know how to get around, hell, i dont even have a watch, i do have a job , im thankfull of that and i do manufacture and retail a product that everyone wants.

… said William Magnusson, who also seems to live without capital letters, apostrophes or the ability to decide when it’s time to end his sentence and start a new one.

I’d expected that. But what I hadn’t expected was much of the reaction to my follow-up Crikey piece, There’s no way I’m handing over data to Google+, and to a lesser extent my ABC The Drum piece, Why rush? Let others find the Google+ privacy landmines.

Continue reading “Google+ gives me grief, generally”

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Weekly Wrap 48

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week was very much a calm — sort of — before the storm.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 86, “Apple: Big Brother or just misunderstood?”. When news broke that Apple’s iOS-based devices were logging location-based information, the media went wild. I speak with information security engineer Alex Levinson from Katana Forensics and Professor Roger Clarke, chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation.

Articles

  • APF urges criminal penalties for smartphone privacy breaches, for ZDNet Australia, based on Professor Clarke’s comments on Patch Monday.
  • Gamification: Hot, new, unethical? for the new site Technology Spectator. I’ll say it straight up: the mindset behind the gamification trend disgusts me. And, despite what the first two commenters on that op-ed imagine, it’s not because I haven’t heard or read enough about it. The more I hear and read from gamification’s buzzword-addled cheer squad the more disgusted I become.

Media Appearances

  • On Monday I spoke with Perth radio RTRfm about the Sony PlayStation Network hack.
  • On Friday I spoke with Kate O’Toole on ABC 105.7 Darwin about the surge of spam and malware following the killing of Osama bin Laden.

I haven’t posted the audio files of those radio interviews, even though I have them. Should I? Part of me says I should do so, because it helps create a proper archive of what I do. But another part of me reckons that radio in particular is ephemeral, and that my conversations about these issues really haven’t added much new to the vast global pool of media on these subjects. What do you think?

Corporate Largesse

None. But that will seriously change next week. Stand by.

Elsewhere

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: Victory is mine! The view from the dining table at Wattle Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages where I’ve been living off and on for the last three months. The title is because this was the last in a sequence of photos documenting my battle with the forces of natural gas. I guess you had to be there…]

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Weekly Wrap 26

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.

Articles

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 67, “Cybercrime: the FBI’s worldview”. Edited highlights of a presentation to the eCrime Symposium by Will Blevins, the FBI’s assistant legal attaché to Australia for cybercrime issues.
  • A Series of Tubes episode 120. Richard Chirgwin and I have a long chat about the National Broadband Network. Was the business case document worth the wait? Is there a black hole in the NBN financials? What’s the product roadmap? And what about this Points of Interconnect issue?

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

Elsewhere

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: Low-grade reindeer is low-grade, taken earlier today at the Broadway Shopping Centre, Sydney.]

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Weekly Wrap 24

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.

Articles

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 65, “Hello cloud, meet cookies. Goodbye privacy”. My interview with Kevin Shaw from iappANZ.
  • A Series of Tubes episode 119. Ruckus Wireless engineer Steve Chung talks 802.11n streaming and I talk about the OECD’s comments on the National Broadband Network, privacy and crowdsourcing.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

They have lovely biscuits at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Elsewhere

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 close-up of my eyes, taken by Trinn (‘Pong) Suwannapha, cropped out of the photo he took for my US visa application.]