The Weekly Cybers #40
A short edition this week with news of Australia’s first AI-generated political ad, changes to My Health Record, plus social media, telco risk, AI, and rogue robot vacuum cleaners.
Welcome, from sunny Brisbane
This week is technically a holiday for me, so there’s no long items. It’s just the links today, plus this confusing sub-heading.
Also in the news
- The story broke late last Friday. The eSafety Commissioner and Elon Musk’s X have agreed to end their fight in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) over the videos of the knife attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, Coincidentally, Friday was the last day of the AAT before it was replaced by the new Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).
- Also last Friday, posted after I pressed send, was the speech to the NSW-SA Social Media Summit by ASIO boss Mike Burgess. Among other things, he noted that “AI is likely to make radicalisation easier and faster”. Also, “ASIO is leading work by the Five Eyes security and police services to produce an unclassified paper on minors and terrorism”.
- As reported last week, communications minister Michelle Rowland said some platforms could escape the social media age ban if they can demonstrate a “low risk of harm to children”. This week The Conversation looked at what this might mean, noting that Rowland’s comments “actually raise new problems”.
- Via InnovationAus, “New laws that will force health providers to upload pathology and diagnostic imaging to My Health Record by default or forgo Medicare payments will be introduced to Parliament next month,” although it seems the intention is to remove the current 7-day wait before patients are given access to their own medical imagery.
- The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has published guidance on assessing the delivery confidence of digital projects, so no more failed or over-budget government IT projects!
- “News Corp has raised concerns the federal government’s misinformation and disinformation bill could inadvertently capture its news sites due to its comments section, despite the legislation exempting news organisations,” writes the Guardian, which kinda says everything about comments sections.
- The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) is developing a new cyber strategy and roadmap.
- The Office of the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) Annual Report 2023-24 was tabled.
- While technically a little outside the remit of the newsletter, I’m sure you’ll be interested to hear that disgraced former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has been stripped of his Order of Australia.
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Elsewhere
- The Liberal Party launched Australia’s first political ad created entirely using AI.
- Meanwhile, “A prototype app called Impact describes ‘A Volunteer Fire Department For The Digital World’, which would summon real people to copy and paste AI-generated talking points on social media”. It describes itself as “AI-powered infrastructure for shaping and managing narratives in the modern world”. Something to look forward to.
- Commonwealth Bank has spammed millions of its customers, and has been hit with a $7.5 million fine, or 0.02% of its annual revenue. For someone on a $75,000 annual salary that’d be $15.
- ANU’s Tech Policy Design Centre has released a risk and resilience profile of Australia’s telecommunications sector, the first output of a project commissioned by the Department of Communications. As InnovationAus reports, “Australia’s telco sector has only basic measures in place to respond and recover from disruptions like cyber incidents and natural disasters”.
- “Students using AI to cheat, and teachers using it to plan classes, is more common than most people think, as some say rules intended to limit usage are ineffective,” reports ABC News in a long feature with plenty of anecdotes.
- Hackers have taken over robot vacuum cleaners, causing them to torment household pets and shout racial slurs.
DOES SOMETHING IN THE EMAIL LOOK WRONG? If there’s ever a factual error, editing mistake, or confusing typo, it’ll be corrected in the web archives.
Inquiries of note
- Treasury has launched a Review of AI and the Australian Consumer Law. Submissions close 12 November.
What’s next?
Parliament is now on a break until 4 November, when the House of Representatives kicks off its next session and the Senate holds its Supplementary Budget Estimates hearings.
On Tuesday 22 October, the inquiry into the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 has a public hearing in Canberra.
Also on 22 October the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement's inquiry into the capability of law enforcement to respond to cybercrime has a public hearing in Canberra.
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.
If you find this newsletter useful, please consider throwing a tip into the tip jar.
This is not specifically a cyber *security* newsletter. For that that I recommend Risky Biz News and Cyber Daily, among others.