Tag: phil dobbie

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Talking bullying and Twitter laws on Balls Radio, FM 99.3

On 7 August 2012, in my regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio, I vented some thoughts about so-called cyber-bullying and the inevitable call for yet more silly ad hoc laws.

The conversation bounced off the topics I’d discussed in the previous day’s Patch Monday podcast, namely the reaction to the trolling of an Olympic athlete, but also covered a little bit of the future of Twitter itself.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:35 — 5.1MB)

You can of course hear us talk live every Tuesday night from 7pm AEST on Sydney’s FM 99.3 Northside Radio.

I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.

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Talking malware and stuff on Balls Radio, FM 99.3

Here’s last night’s regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio from FM 99.3 Northside Radio in Sydney.

I waffled on disjointedly about stuff that was on my mind after this week’s Patch Monday podcast — that is, how midway through 2012 it looks like all this talk of cyberwar is rubbish — and something about dental floss.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:34 — 4.6MB)

I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.

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Talking Facebook banking on Balls Radio, FM 99.3

For my sins, I’ve agree to do a regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio, originally a podcast and now also a program on FM 99.3 Northside Radio in Sydney every Tuesday night at 7pm.

The first broadcast edition was this week, Tuesday 17 July. Since it was fresh in my mind, I spoke about the Commonwealth Bank’s plans for us to do our banking on Facebook — which I also covered on this week’s Patch Monday podcast.

We also spoke briefly about Microsoft’s plans for Windows 8 and Office 2013 and how they fit into the company’s strategy.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:07 — 5.8MB)

I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.

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Two podcasts on Telstra’s web monitoring ultragaffe

A couple weeks ago Telstra was caught monitoring the web browsing done by customers of its Next G mobile network and reporting them to an overseas company, Netsweeper. I’m writing more about this soon, so here’s some background so I can link to it.

Josh Taylor explained the story for ZDNet Australia, I did for Crikey, and of course there were others. In brief, though, Telstra told Netsweeper what URLs were being visited by Next G customers — in theory with any personally-identifiable information removed — so Netsweeper could discover new web content and classify it for the content filtering system they were developing for Telstra.

It’s a bit wrong. Telstra stopped the project quick smart. But some people, including me, reckon the situation is rather more serious.

Geoff Huston, chief scientist of regional internet registry Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), reckons it’s so far outside the law that law enforcement agencies should be getting involved. As a common-carrier telco, Telstra is in a privileged position. It shouldn’t be reporting anything about any aspect of digital communications to third parties, except as strictly required under law, just as it can’t do anything with analog phone calls.

Huston explained his views in a blog post, All Your Packets Belong to Us, and discussed it with me on this week’s Patch Monday podcast, Hands off our packets, it’s the law.

You can hear Telstra’s PR response on Phil Dobbie’s Twisted Wire podcast, Is your phone watching you?

(Neither of those podcasts are yet appearing in iTunes or other podcast application feeds. On Monday ZDNet Australia was merged into a new global content management system and the podcast feeds broke. I know the CBS Interactive technicians know it’s a problem, but I don’t have an ETA on when it might be fixed yet.)

On Tuesday, Whirlpool had what purported to be an internal Telstra memo from chief executive David Thodey, who seemed to agree that they’d very much crossed the line.

That’s why I want to remind everyone that privacy is not an aspiration at Telstra — it is an essential requirement and our license to operate.

Privacy at Telstra is everyone’s responsibility. We have to do better.

Now there’s some complicated issues in all this. I’ll be exploring them in the coming week. Meanwhile, do listen to those two podcasts and have a bit of a think.

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Weekly Wrap 61: Exhaustion in the forest

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, two days late and without a picture. After the intensity of the previous three weeks, I’d predicted a slow-down, and here it is. I was simply exhausted last week, and spent a couple of days staring at the eucalypts from Rosella Cottage.

Last week also marked six months since I moved from Enmore. Living at Bunjaree Cottages was originally intended to be a temporary measure, or so I thought. I’ve ended up settling into the routine quite well, though I’ve found it impossible to save money for moving house. That said, I’m really not sure where I want to live now. But that’s a story for another time. Maybe later today.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 99, “When apps go wild: beyond the SOE”. Dr Paul Ashley from IBM’s Gold Coast Security Development Laboratory talks about their new technology that sniffs packets to identify applications, and Neil Readshaw, cloud security lead architect with IBM Global Services, talks about, erm, cloud security.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday I appeared with Paul Wallbank on Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, an episode called Google Plus, Inside Out. I got to spout my anti-Google stuff again.
  • Also on Thursday, I made a small appearance on Phil Dobbie’s Twisted Wire podcast. The episode was called The battle for mobile dominance, and if I remember correctly I gave some sort of opinion about Apple iOS versus Android versus Nokia.

Corporate Largesse

None. What is going on here?

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.

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Weekly Wrap 56

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.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 94, “ISP filtering goes ‘voluntary'”. Even though Australia’s controversial mandatory internet filtering program is at least two years away from being implemented, internet service providers will soon start filtering child exploitation material on a voluntary basis. My guests are Peter Black, who teaches internet and media law at the Queensland University of Technology; Network engineer Mark Newton; Lyle Shelton, chief of staff of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Articles

Media Appearances

Two radio spots this week, and a guest appearance on someone else’s podcast.

Corporate Largesse

None. I am reliably informed that the drought will be broken next week.

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 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.]