I love Australia. The country is breathtakingly striking, and the people are breathtakingly complacent. They are also inveterate optimists, which has its good and bad sides. Take the last Federal elections. Wine was flowing in the streets following John Howard’s (well deserved) defeat. However, I have to say I wasn’t as hopeful regarding the incoming government. Call me a cynic. But, the year has barely begun, and already something’s happened that smacks more of Howard than A New Beginning under Kevin Rudd. From an article in The Age, dated 14 April (you have to be quick with these news items; some of them have the tendency to disappear off the paper’s website awfully quickly) … Now, before I continue, if you’re after the really important news in Australia, don’t look at the front page of the newspapers. All the important stuff is buried elsewhere, usually in the Opinion pages. This one was buried in the Technology section:

COMPANIES will be able to intercept the emails and internet communications of their employees without their consent under new laws being considered by the Federal Government to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from a cyber attack.

The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland … [states that] … “There’s no question that breaches of both government and private sector computer networks have occurred already - in some instances as a result of mischief, in some instances to obtain security-sensitive information and in some cases to obtain commercial information.”

He cited an attack by hackers in Estonia last year that, in effect, shut down its Government for almost two weeks … They used thousands of computers controlled through viruses - known as botnets - to simultaneously access an Estonian Government website, overwhelming the server and crashing its entire network.

And monitoring employees’ email is going to stop a similar attack … how? What is the government expecting? An email like this?

Dear Piotr,
I’ve spoken to Boris and it’s all set. Starting tomorrow, at 6am, Moscow Standard Time, we hit Estonia with all we’ve got. Make sure the local high school chess club has been clued in and have synchronised their watches. I’ve also spoken to the guys in charge of the Storm botnet, and they’ve said this project is eligible under the “charitable griefer” category that they have budgeted for each year. So it all looks good to go! I’ll txt you later. Btw, how’s your sister? I know a great club a few blocks away. Tell her I’ll be happy to meet her there next Saturday.
Maks

Legislation written to monitor the emails of company employees shows an ignorance of how botnets, or even basic security, operate. The truth is, you don’t even need email to crack a company, as various social engineering experiments have shown.

If I may have a word to the Anglo, English speakers among the audience for a moment. Ahem. Those of us of a duskier hue and/or accented voice have a very sensitive ear to machinations such as this. You just have to go up to your local mature-aged 7-Eleven proprietor and say something like, “Hey, Ram, what does it mean when the government is thinking of monitoring everyone’s emails to stop hacker attacks?”

“Stop hacker attacks?” Ram will reply. “How can they stop hacker attacks by reading Sanjay’s aunt’s vadai recipe? More likely they are trying to monitor everyone to see if someone is speaking ill of the government. Ashish’s second cousin’s nephew, who works in Bangalore, told my wife, that a call centre chum recently discovered …” and so on.

You see, our sensitivity to bullshit like this has been honed for generations and, for us of the Global South, it has become an almost genetic trait. “Cut out corruption? Get rid of the other guys so you can put your own cronies in place, more like it!” “Eliminate estate tax? Yes, and increase VAT on staple goods so the poor people end up starving!” “Reinstate the judiciary? Ah, all but one, so you can still shaft the most influential judge!” “Save trees and emissions by changing to Booksurge? Yah, and it also happens to strengthen an impending corporate monopoly! Pfft!”. (Oops, how did that get in there?)

We are your barometer. Where we have been, you are now going. Welcome.