The Weekly Cybers #33
Defence to get $11 billion IT upgrade, “Twiggy” Forrest takes on Meta with an early win, more sookage about the News Media Bargaining Code from both sides, and much more.
Welcome
The Defence department reckons it can revamp its IT infrastructure in three years — although it'll cost $11 billion.
Meanwhile, “Twiggy” Forrest is taking on Meta over scam ads featuring his face and name, and he’s scored an early win.
And the battle continues between Google and Meta and other major platforms versus the legacy news mastheads over the News Media Bargaining Code.
All that and more...
Defence to get $11 billion IT revamp
The government has released the Defence Digital Strategy and Roadmap 2024, which defines their approach to spending $11 billion to deliver a “secure, integrated, and scalable digital environment able to fight and win in the digital age”.
As iTnews reports, the department has given itself three years to modernise everything and retire legacy systems.
“It calls for existing productivity tools to be migrated from on-premises to the cloud, together with a Windows 11-compatible virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and enterprise mobility rollout.”
While we already know that $2 billion will be spent on a top secret cloud with Amazon Web Services, we’re told that overall it’s a “multi-cloud” approach. A big chunk of the spend is for cybersecurity, as you might expect.
Chris Crozier, CIO of the Defence Digital Group, says Defence is “embracing a new enterprise-wide, single-pane-of-glass to our ICT architecture, offering a seamless, end-to-end view of our digital landscape”. Gosh.
Crozier has called the current tech procurement process cumbersome and impeding.
Yet more News Media Bargaining Code sookage
As both Google and Facebook’s parent Meta push back against having to pay for news content on their platforms, players on both side have been expressing their opinions this week.
It’s all about the News Media Bargaining Code, a Morrison-era system under which the major online platforms are meant to pay for the news they run or link to from their platforms.
Although no platforms have been formally “designated” under the code and forced to pay, the government had persuaded them to voluntarily come to an agreement.
Nine’s CEO Mike Sneesby says the government must “use all the powers available to them” to get Meta to pay for news.
As Mumbrella reports, news outlet redundancies are being blamed on Meta cutting off the dollars.
Media giants like Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and News Corp Australia have been rolling out redundancies over the last few months, which are attributed to Meta axing news from its platform, first announced back in March.
Google also wants to cut down what it pays, according to the AFR, while Capital Brief reckons the planned figure is a 40% cut.
According to Professor Axel Bruns from the Digital Media Research Centre at QUT, there’s some selective innumeracy all across these discussion. Click through for an amusing tomato analogy.
The news industry chose to give its product away for free when it began to publish its news online in the mid-90s; as a result, audiences now expect news to be free and are unwilling to start paying for it again. The fact that advertising revenue is going mostly to the major platforms simply reflects the fact that these general-purpose platforms have much larger user bases than news outlets (which are of interest only to a fraction of web users). No surprise there. Of course they're more interesting to advertisers than news sites; whatever the news industry keeps claiming, social media didn't somehow siphon away advertising revenue from their sites. That advertising money was never going to news sites in the first place.
Finally, at The Conversation there’s the suggestion of what I think is a more reasonable alternative, a direct “tech tax” levy on the global platforms.
SATURDAY EVENING: I’m publishing a podcast episode which includes a discussion of the News Media Bargaining Code with Professor Axel Bruns. The link to follow will be The 9pm War on Social Media with Professor Axel Bruns. Or just look for The 9pm Edict in your podcast app of choice.
Andrew Forrest tests US Section 230 immunity
Mining giant Dr Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has won the first round in his legal battle against Meta over scam adverts on Facebook which used his image.
Meta had tried to get the case throw out under Section 230, part of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996, which generally provides immunity for online platforms against liability for the material posted by their users.
A judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California disagreed.
As Information Age reports:
“Forrest argues that by providing tools to help advertisers display and manage their content online, Meta is actively facilitating the publishing of the ads — meaning, he argues, that the social media operator cannot then argue that the ads are entirely separate from its own business.”
Lawyers will be watching this one very closely indeed. If Forrest wins, it could mean many more lawsuits against the platforms for being complicit in all manner of problematic content.
Twiggy isn’t the only identity to be used in these scams. An AI-generated Dr Karl has been flogging dodgy health products. But Twiggy’s pockets are deep enough to give it a red hot go.
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Also in the news
- According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), more than 28,000 people have self-excluded from online and phone wagering services via BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register. Almost half were aged 30 and under, and around 80% were aged 40 and under. Around 40 per cent have decided to self-exclude for life.
- ACMA has also been directed to establish enforceable industry standards for telcos to improve public communication during network outages. This is very much an action in the wake of last year’s Optus outage.
- In contrast with the $340 billion failure for GovERP we wrote about last week, InnovationAus reports on how the National Health Funding Body (NHFB), a clearing house for $68 billion in annual funding for the public hospital system, has processed $300 billion in payments without a single outage. And it cost just $2 million.
- Abigail Bradshaw will lead the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) from 6 September. She is currently the agency’s deputy director and head of the ASD’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). She replaces Rachel Noble, who had led the ASD for five years, a time of massive expansion and the start of a transformation program called REDSPICE.
- Taxation commissioner Rob Heferen has announced the team who will be conducting the ATO’s first capability review in a decade.
Data breaches and hacks of note
I’ve decided that this section is duplicating the work of others, so this is the final time it’ll appear as a separate section. Hey, I did say it was a trial run!
However of course I’ll list data breaches and hacks where the government gets involved — or is the victim.
If you need to be across this stuff more generally, may I recommend:
- Risky Business, a highly regarded Australian-based but globally-focussed podcast and newsletter operation focused on cybersecurity.
- Cyber Daily, a free Australian newsletter which does exactly what it says on the tin.
Both of these cover data breaches and hacking news in detail.
Elsewhere
- Optus reckons its anti-scam processed have saved Australians from losing “up to $250 million”. Remember, the phrase “up to” also includes the number zero.
- From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist, Let’s take a close look at how we protect our undersea cables.
- California has passed a contentious AI safety bill. Needless to say, the industry is opposed to it, SB 1047: Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act.
- From the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China’s Views on AI Safety Are Changing Quickly. “Beijing’s AI safety concerns are higher on the priority list, but they remain tied up in geopolitical competition and technological advancement.”
- A new report from RAND, The Root Causes of Failure for Artificial Intelligence Projects and How They Can Succeed.
Inquiries of note
- The Senate Standing Committees on Economics is holding an inquiry into how the Australian Bureau of Statistics produces statistics relating to the inflation rate. There‘s an Upload Submission button, but no clear deadline. However there will be a public heading on 9 September and the committee has to report back by 19 September, so get a move on.
What’s next?
Parliament is on break for one more week and returns on 9 September.
This Monday 2 September there’s a public hearing in Melbourne for the Inquiry into the Digital Transformation of Workplaces.
On Wednesday 4 September there’s a public hearing in Canberra for the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society.
Maybe you don’t get as excited about committee hearings as I do.
The Weekly Cybers is a personal look at what the Australian government has been saying and doing in the digital and cyber realms, on various adjacent topics, and whatever else interests me, Stilgherrian, published every Friday afternoon (nearly).
If I’ve missed anything, or if there’s any specific items you’d like me to follow, please let me know.
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This is not specifically a cyber *security* newsletter. For that that I recommend Risky Biz News and Cyber Daily, among others.