The Weekly Cybers #48
A new way to make big online platforms pay for news, yet another call to break open encrypted communications, and more.
Welcome
The world of policy and politics may be winding down for the year, but the Australian government still managed to invent a new way to continue its war on the major online platforms.
If Meta and Google and TikTok won’t pay for news, because they don’t want to run news, then they’ll just be forced to pay anyway. It’s an “incentive”, you see.
There’s also another call to give cops and spooks more access to encrypted communications, this time in the hunt for right-wing extremists.
News Bargaining Incentive to get platforms to pay
The Australian government has announced a News Bargaining Incentive to “ensure large digital platforms contribute to the sustainability of news media in Australia” — although why it’s their responsibility to do so remains unclear.
Some of the platforms, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram in particular, have avoided paying for news under the existing News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) simply by not running news.
According to the Guardian explainer, the new system would force all platforms with more than $250 million in revenue in Australia to pay the government a fee of “millions, not billions”, regardless of whether they run news content or not.
This threshold would include Meta, Google, and TikTok, but not Elon Musk’s X, which says something about the current success of that business.
Platforms could reduce the fee by paying news organisations directly, with the government’s fee being the more expensive option.
Rod Sims, the former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, says the Albanese government should be commended, and that the new plan will force the platforms back to the NMBC.
If you think this is a curious plan, well, even Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones described is as four-dimensional chess.
As RMIT University’s Associate Professor Diana Bossio notes, “No doubt he and [communications minister Michelle] Rowland were playing with one eye on Canada, where the government played hardball — and lost.”
“The federal government is yet to address the Meta-sized elephant in the room: what if digital platforms continue to withdraw from negotiations with news publishers?”
The government says it will release a discussion paper early next year, so obviously there’s a way to go yet. However it intends to backdate the fee to 1 January 2025.
“This will undoubtedly give Meta time to consider its next move,” Bossio said.
Meanwhile, news companies have already cut hundreds of jobs in the months since Meta stopped paying for news.
Yet another call to access to encrypted messages
The Senate inquiry into right-wing extremism in Australia has recommended new laws to enable law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access encrypted communications “if there is a well-founded threat to national security and a warrant has been issued by a judicial officer”.
The wording of the inquiry’s final report echoes the language we’ve seen many times before. While it acknowledges that encrypted communication platforms “can also have a socially beneficial role”, and “are integral to the proper functioning of the internet and play an important role in public transparency”, that isn’t sufficient to protect them entirely.
“Law enforcement and intelligence agencies should be permitted access to encrypted communications in very specific cases that involve well-founded concerns for national security and where such access is regulated by the judicial system through the issue of warrants... To ensure that violent extremism can be combatted wherever and whenever it emerges, it is vital that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are equipped with the tools they need to effectively monitor and respond to national security threats.”
The report highlighted the emergence of radicalisation on social media, gaming platforms, and “gaming-adjacent platforms” such as Twitch.
It also called for a national hate crimes database, something which is currently lacking, as is a coherent agreed-upon definition of “hate crime”.
NEW PODCAST: On Thursday I posted a new podcast episode with digital rights enthusiast Justin Warren on the social media age bans, a curious AI image generation tool, the new Cyber Security Act, and much more, titled The 9pm Chickens of Cyber Necromancy with Justin Warren. Look for The 9pm Edict in your podcast app of choice — but be warned, there is bad language.
Also in the news
- Australian Federal Police (AFP) says it has “no choice” but to use AI to analyse data on seized phones and emails. “It’s beyond human scale, so we need to start to lean in heavily on AI, and we’re using it across a number of areas,” said the AFP’s manager for technology strategy and data, Benjamin Lamont, at a Microsoft AI conference in Sydney.
- The latest outcomes report from the Mapping the Digital Gap project shows that internet access is improving overall, but half of Australia's Aboriginal communities still don't have phone reception.
- Meanwhile the government released its First Nations Digital Inclusion roadmap, “the result of nearly two years of engagement with First Nations communities and organisations, governments and industry representatives across Australia”.
- Several federal politicians want Sportsbet to remove ads from Snapchat because these custom image-modifying filters can be viewed by children.
- Industry and science minister Ed Husic, along with his South Australian counterparties, launched the Adelaide-based Responsible AI Research Centre (RAIR). It will explore four key themes: tackling misinformation, safe AI, diverse AI, and AI that can explain its actions.
- It’s Telstra’s turn to pay more than $3 million in penalties for failing to comply with emergency call rules during a technical disruption at its Triple Zero emergency call centre.
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Elsewhere
- “The UN technology agency has created a new body to boost protection for submarine cables, aiming to help shore them up against damage and accelerate repairs after a series of high-profile failures,” reports Reuters.
- A 24-year-old Melbourne man has copped an 18-month jail sentence for his role as a money mule in a business email compromise scheme.
- auDA, the administrator of Australian internet domains names, has fessed up to a data breach, which they call a “data incident”.
- From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), some analysis of the under-16s social media ban which uses words including “unwelcome consequences”, “undermines parents’ rights”, and “little clarity”.
Inquiries of note
Nothing new this week, at least nothing relevant to this humble newsletter.
What’s next?
Parliament is currently on its long summer break until Tuesday 4 February 2025 — although that doesn’t mean the policy work stops.
Next Friday 20 December will see the final edition of The Weekly Cybers for 2024.
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.
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.