The Weekly Cybers #78
There’s quite a lot about internet age restrictions this week, plus extended powers for ASIO, the politics of short-form video, and a lot more.
25 July 2025
Welcome, and some background you can skip
I’ve included a lot about Australia’s planned social media age restrictions and other eSafety news in recent weeks, and this reflects exactly why I started The Weekly Cybers — and why that title is often a bit misleading.
As I’ve said many times in then past, information is power. The internet has been completely re-plumbing the way we handle information, and continues to do so. Which means it’s changing power relationships at every level of society.
The technology itself is important, sure. So is all the costumer gadgetry that all too often seems to be the main focus of “technology news”.
But so much of that reporting is really just saying that this year’s version is faster than last year’s and has a few more features. Or in the case of what’s usually counted as “the cybers”, this new hacker group has thus-and-such new hacker technique, and company X suffered this big a data breach.
There’s lots of people already writing about that stuff.
I’m more interested in the bigger picture, and especially the longer-term implications of the political and policy decisions about how all this technology is designed, deployed, paid for, and regulated — and who is making those decisions.
In the specific case of the social media age restrictions, the issues go beyond the desire to create a safer internet environment, what the relevant ages should be, and whether the proposed technology works.
There’s also issues such as balance of responsibilities between the platforms, the government, parents, and individuals. Freedom of speech comes into it. And who decides what is and isn’t appropriate for a child of a certain age anyway?
And of course there’s the questions which are often forgotten. How could these systems be misused? What could happen if they go wrong? And once the laws and procedures and systems are locked in place, how could some future government use them in ways that might be... suboptimal?
To influence policy, you have to get in early
Another motivation for The Weekly Cybers is that the so-called “mainstream media” generally doesn’t report on political and policy action until it’s reached the very last stages of becoming law: the debates in parliament.
By then, any amendments are usually just fiddling at the edges. Legislation might be spun out for a committee review, but by then the political parties have chosen their sides and are unlikely to change their views. After all, that would be reported as a “backflip”.
That’s why there’s a little section here titled “Inquiries of note”, and why I try to mention the department-level inquiries which set the agenda well before draft legislation is made public.
I’m not sure how well I manage to do that.
Would you rather I change the focus?
I’m open to suggestions, but as I say there’s already some excellent technology news digests out there. Next week I’ll list a few.
But if you do have comments or suggestions, just reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.
Internet age restrictions still dominating news
Australians are slowly starting to realise that it isn’t just about the kids and those horrible social media platforms. This affects everyone.
And as we mentioned two weeks ago, the eSafety Commissioner has introduced rules forcing age checks for search engines.
The logic is inescapable. Any system which aims to prevent people under a certain age from accessing an online service must, by definition, require every user to show that they’re above that age. Every user.
Assuming age restrictions are a thing you want to do in the first place, the questions are then about how you do this with sufficient accuracy so that people can access the services they want without having to provide personal information that the platforms will definitely 100% not use for other purposes or fail to protect.
On Saturday the Guardian had a solid feature headlined “Face age and ID checks? Using the internet in Australia is about to fundamentally change”. And digital rights advocate Samantha Floreani wrote about the huge implications for privacy and inclusion. Both are worth reading.
What happened to the exemption framework?
Over at Crikey, Cam Wilson has noted that political deal-making removed a “crucial” part of the legislation ($): an “exemption framework” described as making sure the law would “protect, not isolate, young people”.
“The exemption offered tech companies a way out of the ban if they were able to prove that their apps weren’t risky for teens to use,” Cam writes.
“Removing it, as one insider put it, made ‘no fucking sense’ and turned the law into something that will ‘probably now lead to more harm than good’.”
The intention of this framework was to give the platforms an incentive to make things safer, to avoid having to do age verification at all.
Now with the pressure to include everything in the system, including search engines, the risk of massive fines for mistakenly allowing in kids means the platforms are now incentivised to implement tougher checks which might exclude some adults.
But really, who knows. There’s still nearly five months left before the rules come into force in mid-December. I’m sure it’ll all be sorted out by then.
And while we’re talking about age verification...
- In the UK and EU, social media network Bluesky introduced age verification to comply with new regulations. Lawyer Simon McGarr, managing director of Data Compliance Europe, explains how that works in practice. His words: epic fail.
- The Guardian has a solid explain of the UK rules and how they will be enforced.
- The UK’s technology secretary is now considering a two-hour screen time limit and curfews for children.
- The Senate of Pakistan has introduced a bill that seeks to ban children under 16 from creating or using social media accounts.
- In the US, more than a dozen states have passed legislation regulating the use of social media by youth, so obviously that’s now going to the Supreme Court.
- Global research suggests that social media age restrictions will be a defining issue for Generation Alpha.
- Scientists have called on governments to ban under-13s from social media and from even having smartphones at all.
Older readers may remember being told “Don’t watch so much TV, you’ll get square eyes”, or before that to spend less time with your nose in that book and get outside.
ARE YOU SICK OF ALL THIS? Then why not listen to some music instead? Why not check out the new Another Untitled Music Podcast with Snarky Platypus and myself, AUMP 00001: Uni Tunes. Look for it in your podcast app of choice.
ASIO powers to be continued and even extended
One of the government’s first actions this week was to try to make ASIO’s 9/11-era compulsory questioning powers permanent and even extend them to other crimes.
The guts of the changes are in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025, introduced on Wednesday.
Currently section 34A of the ASIO Act defines an adult questioning matter as relating to espionage, politically motivated violence, or acts of foreign interference, “whether directed from, or committed within, Australia or not”.
This new bill would add in sabotage, promotion of communal violence, attacks on Australia’s defence system, and “the protection of Australia’s territorial and border integrity from serious threats”.
It is not immediately clear to your writer how “serious threats” are defined. If I find out, I’ll add it in next week.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2025 extends the existing regime for another 18 months, so that “ASIO continues to have access to these powers to respond to the threat environment while appropriate reforms to the framework are developed and progressed through Parliament”.
The powers have rarely been used, however. Just four warrants have been issued since 2020, against three people. And human rights commissioner Lorraine Finlay says they were never intended to be permanent.
Short-form video apps are creating a generation of mind jolts, shrugs, and slugs – and what that means for global politics
I love that headline and it’s from an article at the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter.
“If you could sustain enough attention to read that long headline, you’re on the right track,” writes youth researcher Dr Intifar Chowdhury.
“Short‑form video apps have become the cultural mainstream worldwide, signalling a shift from traditional newspapers and broadcast news to podcasters, YouTubers and TikTok creators,” they write.
“Global debates risk being flattened into fleeting trends, with serious issues reduced to punchy one-liners that stoke passion or apathy without nuance.”
It’s well worth reading the whole thing — if you still have the attention span.
Also in the news
- The Albanese government has been worse than the Morrison era at producing documents for public scrutiny, according to the Centre for Public Integrity. In 2022-23, for examples, more freedom of information requests were refused than fully granted, and wait times have ballooned. Check out the full report.
- From iTnews, “The federal government has quietly launched a sovereign-hosted instance of OpenAI’s GPT-4o for use by the Australian Public Service (APS).” Meanwhile the head of the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) reckons extensive AI use could reduce “white-collar effort”.
- The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is reviewing major IT suppliers to assess their compliance with local tax obligations. The Mandarin says that could trigger a “code-of-conduct” review for government suppliers.
- From Cyber Daily, court documents show the extent of communications between Qantas and its hackers.
- As we mentioned last week, Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and United Australia political parties were hit with data breach. They said they reported their hack to the privacy commissioner, but no they didn’t. As Crikey reports, “Organisations are legally required to report data breaches. Political parties are exempt — except the United Australia Party was de-registered in 2022”.
- Experts have repeated the obvious. The fallout from data breaches would be limited is businesses were forced to delete unneeded personal data. As ABC News reports, “The federal government agreed ‘in principle’ to the proposal two years ago but says it is still ‘taking time’ to draft the reform.”
- The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has published a proposal to reform the PJCIS, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, “to ensure it remains an effective pillar of democratic accountability for Australian intelligence”.
- The Australian Academy of Science reckons we should tax big businesses who don’t invest in research and development.
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Elsewhere
- As the New York Times reports, the chatbot culture wars are here (gift link). On Wednesday, President Trump issued an executive order on what he called “woke AI”. “Once and for all, we are getting rid of woke,” he said in a speech. “The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries.”
- Pew Research has found that only 1% of users click past Google’s AI Overview in search results to check the sources, and only 8% click on any other search result.
- From Mumbrella, “Google is looking to introduce new ad formats native to AI Overviews, which are already being monetised by the search giant at around the same level as normal search”.
- A bloke called Jason Lemkin tried using an AI assistant called Replit to write his software application, a process called “vibe coding”. It was a disaster.
- Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX are now significantly affecting radio astronomy.
- Kenya and Tanzania have launched a cross-border terrestrial fibre link. East Africa’s adult population is now largely English-speaking — along with Swahili and other languages — and the potential for economic growth is huge.
- From the Guardian, “Economic inequality has reached a staggering milestone in Silicon Valley: just nine households hold 15% of the region’s wealth, according to new research from San Jose State University. A mere 0.1% of residents hold 71% of the tech hub’s wealth”.
Inquiries of note
- The Whistleblower Protection Authority Bill 2025 is back on the agenda, so there’s a fresh committee inquiry. Submissions close 29 August.
What’s next?
Parliament continues Monday to Thursday this coming week before taking a break until 25 August.
The Senate program includes debate on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill.
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).
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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.