The week of Monday 2 to Sunday 8 March 2020 started to see the rise of panic buying in Sydney thanks to overblown fears about the novel coronavirus COVID-19. And in Canberra, the government continued to suffer embarrassments.
I won’t talk about the latter here, or indeed the former, except to note that Australia’s toilet paper shortage fears seemed to reach their peak on Wednesday night, as this chart of Australian Google Search activity for “toilet paper” shows.
Articles
- Australia’s surveillance laws are hitting the social license problem, ZDNet, 2 March 2020.
- Aussie Parliament’s sad cyber espionage saga is a salient lesson for others, ZDNet, 2 March 2020. This is part of a feature titled Cybersecurity: Let’s get tactical and you can download the whole thing as a PDF.
Media Appearances
- On Thursday one of my tweets was quoted in a story titled New Aussie obsession ruthlessly mocked at The Chronicle in Toowoomba, and I believe in other News Corp mastheads as well. Classy stuff.
- Also on Thursday, that damn bird ended up on an Israeli website. I won’t type the title here because I can’t figure out how to embed the right-to-left Hebrew script properly.
Podcasts, Corporate Largesse
None.
The Week Ahead
It’s a week of cat-sitting in Sydney, peppered with all manner of meetings and such, and a bunch of writing. As one might expect. Actually the work is the key thing, but the cat-sitting does shape the week’s logistics.
On Tuesday lunchtime, there’s a book launch at the Lowy Institute, Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China won’t map the future by Rory Medcalf.
On Wednesday morning, there’s a thing called “AustCyber AllStars: Launch of the CISO Lens Benchmark and Australia’s Sector Competitiveness Plan“, which is what it says on the tin. In that those two things will be launched. I’ll explain later.
On Friday I’m being interviewed for an episode of the podcast Well May We Say with Jeremy Sear-Pirko.
Further Ahead
So many little events pencilled in!
- Indonesia: A tough road ahead, Lowy Institute, Sydney, 16 March 2020.
- Australia’s place in the world: a conversation with rising politicians Peter Khalil and Dave Sharma, Lowy Institute, Sydney, 17 March 2020.
- The next episode of The 9pm Edict podcast will be recorded on 19 March 2020.
- Ethics of data science conference 2020, Sydney, 25–27 March 2020.
- Australian Cyber Conference, Canberra, 6–7 May 2020 (TBC).
- AusCERT 2020 Cyber Security Conference, Gold Coast, 2–5 June 2020 (TBC).
- Australian Cyber Conference, Melbourne, 27-29 October 2020 (TBC).
Please let me know if there’s anything I should add. Send airline tickets if it’s outside the Sydney region, yeah?
[Photo: Empty Egg Aisle at the Coles supermarket in Ashfield, Sydney, during the coronavirus scare of early March 2020. People had mostly started panic-buying paper goods such as facial tissues, paper towels, and of course toilet paper, but on 7 March they’d also bought out the eggs.]