Tag: podcast

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Corrupted Nerds on metadata, surveillance and privacy

Corrupted Nerds 12 cover image: click for podcast pageLast Wednesday I had the very great pleasure to moderate an event titled “Data Retention: the European Experience”, a public conversation with Privacy International’s legal director Carly Nyst. The audio from the event forms the latest Corrupted Nerds: Conversations podcast.

This is a live issue in Australia right now. Australia’s favourite Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis QC, has said, “This is very much the way in which western nations are going, it’s been the case in Europe under the European Data Retention directive for some little while now.” Except that’s not true.

What Brandis didn’t say was that the European Court of Justice has declared the blanket recording of telecommunications data to be a breach of human rights. It isn’t a proportionate response to the claimed threat, and there’s no evidence that it’ll actually even help.

Europe is now winding back data retention. Well, except for the UK.

In this hour-long conversation, Nyst and I discuss the legal and historical background to data retention; the risks of the blurring law enforcement and foreign signals intelligence-gathering for national security; the revelations of Edward Sowden; and whether Australia really does have robust democratic institutions which can protect us from the risks of surveillance over-reach.

The event was organised by Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Privacy Foundation.

Please, listen to the entire podcast. Or, if you prefer a quick read, try my op-ed at ZDNet Australia today, Will metadata musings ever mature beyond paranoid fears?

Subscribe to all Corrupted Nerds podcasts via RSS, iTunes and SoundCloud.

If you enjoyed this podcast, why not make a tip, or even subscribe? Every contribution helps me provide these podcasts for free.

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“Corrupted Nerds” on the future of media

Corrupted Nerds 11 cover image: click for podcast pageIt was my very great pleasure to meet Bob Garfield the other day — former advertising man, veteran journalist and media commentator, and co-presenter on NPR’s On the Media and Slate’s Lexicon Valley.

We managed to find time for a coffee and a conversation, and the result forms the latest Corrupted Nerds podcast.

“For 300-plus years, it was great for the audience, they got free and subsidised content. It was great for advertisers ’cos they got audience. And it was great for media, ’cos they got filthy stinking rich,” Garfield said. But now, things are bleak. “Unless you are in gambling, search or porn, there’s just no money to be made.”

Garfield explains why, basically, we’re all fucked.

Subscribe to all Corrupted Nerds podcasts via RSS, iTunes and SoundCloud.

If you enjoyed this podcast, why not make a tip, or even subscribe? Every contribution helps me provide these podcasts for free.

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Weekly Wrap 212

[This post was actually written on 17 August 2014, but I’ve dated it 29 June 2014 so it appears in the archives in the correct sequence. This post is part of an attempt to clear the backlog of routine posts, hence the lack of photo, detail and finesse. — Stilgherrian.]

My week of Monday 23 to Sunday 29 June 2014 was relatively unproductive, thanks to the illness alluded to previously. There was one significant highlight, however: the return of The 9pm Edict podcast.

Podcasts

Articles

None. I did write a column for ZDNet Australia, but it wasn’t published until the following week.

Media Appearances

5at5

Why don’t you subscribe to 5at5?

Corporate Largesse

None.

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The 9pm Humanity, with added confusion

The Internet of Trees: click to embiggen

This episode of The 9pm Edict heads into a eucalypt forest in search of the internet, and encounters a dog.

You’ll hear about the National Broadband Network’s fibre-to-the-node trial, Russell Brand, Bertrand Russell, the 20th anniversary of a sarin nerve gas attack in Japan, the 25th birthday of the internet in Australia, the 60th birthday of nuclear power stations, Hillary Clinton and the mangoes, Google co-funder Larry Page’s threat to kill 100,000 people, and the arsehattery of Village Roadshow co-CEO Graham Burke.

And there’s the dog, of course.

And a cat. Sort of.

But don’t forget the dog.

Continue reading “The 9pm Humanity, with added confusion”
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The 9pm Caltrain

Caltrain at San Jose Diridon Station: click to embiggen

The sharing economy explained in just two minutes. A Florida meth lab is a threat to dolphins. And the failure of hashtag diplomacy.

This episode of The 9pm Edict heads to the United States, at least in some strange warped sense.

There’s a story of a meth lab in a Florida hotel room, and we encounter both an episode of Hannity on Fox News and a “sharing economy guru” on the BBC.

There’s also mention of Glassholes harassing a New York restaurant, a bread line in San Jose. and a plan to reverse the California Aqueduct.

Continue reading “The 9pm Caltrain”
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“Corrupted Nerds” on privacy engineering

Cover image for Corrupted Nerds: Conversations episode 10: click for podcast pageAfter a gap of some six months, I’ve finally produced another episode of the Corrupted Nerds podcast.

Earlier this month, during Australia’s Privacy Awareness Week, I had the very great pleasure of meeting McAfee’s chief privacy officer, Michelle Dennedy.

Not only did I end up writing a ZDNet Australia column a few days ago, Developers, ask your users about data privacy, I so thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that it inspired me to bring Corrupted Nerds back from recess.

In brief, privacy engineering is the process of turning various policies, from privacy laws to the needs of the business’ plan for data, into something that programmers can work with — indeed, something they’ll want to work with because it’s now an engineering problem.

I think you’ll agree that this conversation with Michelle Dennedy is rather fun.

Corrupted Nerds is available via iTunes and SoundCloud.