The Weekly Cybers #57
The commentariat froths over Starlink’s risk to regional Australia, Apple comes up with a sensible way to do age verification, and the ABC recreates Senator Jacqui Lambie for $100.
Welcome
You know an election is looming when ministers make grand promises that’ll only become reality a couple of years in the future — and so we have the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation to bring mobile connectivity to the endless deserts of Australia.
“Starlink is risky with Musk in charge,” screeched the commentators, but we know better.
Also this week, Apple announces support for in-app age verification, and we scoop up a bunch of smaller news items. Read on...
Mobile communications everywhere, and it doesn’t have to be Starlink
On Tuesday communications minister Michelle Rowland announced the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation (UOMO), which will “require mobile carriers to provide access to mobile voice and SMS almost everywhere across Australia”.
So that means something like low earth orbit satellites (LEOSats) and direct to device (D2D) messaging.
“The Albanese Government will introduce legislation in 2025. Implementation of outdoor SMS and voice will be expected by late 2027, with many Australians likely to obtain access before then,” Rowland wrote for the Canberra Times. So, well after the election.
Rowland didn’t mention Elon Musk’s Starlink by name, but journalists and commentators everywhere jumped to the conclusion that Starlink will get the gig — and perhaps not only because it’s the only operator they’d heard of.
After all, both Optus and Telstra already sell Starlink.
And this week the Senate committee looking at the shutdown of the 3G network recommended “that the Australian Government and the telecommunications industry do all they can to accelerate the introduction of mobile phone services via the Starlink network”.
Meanwhile NBN Sky Muster, which uses satellites much further away from the Earth in geostationary orbits, is struggling to meet users’ needs, and will soon need replacement.
Starlink already has 200,000 customers in Australia, so it seems an obvious choice.
Isn’t Starlink now a risky choice?
Given the reported threat by Starlink to cut off access from Ukraine unless they signed a minerals deal with the US, something Elon Musk denies, this obvious choice might also be a risky one.
Fortunately Starlink is not the only option.
According to friend of the newsletter Leanne O’Donnell, a lawyer with plenty of experience in the telco industry, if Starlink left Australia by the end of this year, say, current customers would still have plenty of options.
These include LEOSat internet providers Project Kuiper, a subsidiary of Amazon, and Eutelsat OneWeb, as well as existing satellite phone operators such as Globalstar, Iridium, Inmarsat, Thuraya, and even China’s Tiantong — although people complaining about the risk of using Starlink might balk at that.
There’s also AST SpaceMobile.
“I literally fact-checked this statement with a call to a senior executive who is been in telco for 25+ years [and] engaged directly with Starlink. He could not understand the fuss I was telling him about nor was he at all concerned,” O’Donnell said.
“I also sense checked this with another even more experienced [and] older white man. Also did not see the fuss.”
Admittedly this doesn’t address the issue of cost, but this is a hand-wavy election promise at this stage and nothing more.
It’s worth remembering that we’re talking about providing service to areas which for the most part have no service at all. Anything, even something risky, is better than nothing.
Although yes, keep an eye on Musk, because he’s a loose unit.
Apple plans age verification with parental control
App creators may soon have an easier way to comply with Australia’s social media age restriction laws, at least on Apple products.
Apple plans to add a "declared age range" feature to iOS and iPadOS. Parents will be able to set a child user’s device with their age range. Apps can then ask the operating system whether the user is in a certain age range or not — without revealing the actual date of birth.
As the Guardian explains:
“Apple will also update the age ratings for apps in the app store from the current two ratings, 12+ and 17+, to four: 4+, 13+, 16+ and 18+.”
I wonder what will prevents parents working around the restrictions by simply lying.
Google, meanwhile, will begin testing a “machine learning-based age estimation model”. So, guessing.
CATCH-UP LINK: If you haven’t been following the news of Australia’s social media age restrictions and need a catch-up, this backgrounder from Terry Flew, professor of digital communications and culture at the University of Sydney, would be worth your time.
Also in the news
- The eSafety Commissioner has given Telegram an infringement notice for almost $1 million for failing to respond to a transparency reporting notice deadline. I’m sure that Telegram’s billionaire Russia owner based in Dubai, with his company registered in the British Virgin Islands, will pay immediately. Oh wait, he’s on bail in France awaiting trial.
- One of the things I mentioned last week was the annual threat assessment speech by ASIO boss Mike Burgess. This week friend of the newsletter Justin Warren highlighted in his own excellent newsletter The Crux an interesting bit that I missed: “You cannot arrest your way to social cohesion. You cannot regulate your way to fewer grievances. You cannot spy your way to less youth radicalisation.” So true.
- Australia’s chief scientist Hugh Durrant-Whyte reckons we’re “nowhere in the AI race”, saying we’re lagging in innovation, and lacking talent, support, and entrepreneurship.
- Increasing reports of teenagers using AI to make deepfake porn images have led to calls for tougher penalties.
- The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) says the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is developing AI with only “partially effective” governance, highlighting policy gaps and ethical concerns. Here’s the full report.
- From iTnews, “Services Australia is trialling machine learning to detect potential instances of identity theft affecting Centrelink customers, with the goal of stopping payments from being rerouted”. I’m sure this agency’s governance of AI is just fine.
- ABC News Verify cloned Senator Jacqui Lambie’s voice with AI to show you what a deepfake election could look like. It cost just $100 and voters were convinced.
- The Department of Home Affairs has issued Protective Security Direction 002-2025 (PDF) under the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF), banning Kaspersky Lab products and web services from Australian government systems because they pose “an unacceptable security risk... arising from threats of foreign interference, espionage and sabotage”.
- Southern Ocean Subsea is now exporting its underwater net repair drone to fisheries in Norway.
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Elsewhere
- As some predicted, Apple has removed iCloud encryption for UK users after that government demanded that their backdoor access to users’ data be retained. Cryptographer Matthew Green has posted a nuanced take on Apple vs UK in relation to that backdoor request.
- Meanwhile, encrypted messaging app Signal is thinking about leaving Sweden because that country is thinking about introducing backdoor laws.
- An interesting aside about events in the US: “DOGE understands something the US policy establishment does not: technology is the spinal cord of government”.
Inquiries of note
Nothing new for us this week.
What’s next?
Parliament is currently on a break. Both houses return for three days of sittings on Tuesday 25 March, then the Senate only returns for two weeks starting Monday 7 April. Unless the election is called. I explained the potential timing for that two weeks ago.
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.