Starting shortly at 1200 AEST, the ASPI event “The road from 9/11: The evolution of counterterrorism and extremism”.

I’m interested to hear what Karen Andrews has to say, though I suspect it’ll just be boilerplate. The Morrison government isn’t notable for its intellectual heft.
What is it with institutional event MCs that they have to read everyone’s entire CV when introducing them? Karen Andrews can simply be introduced as Minister for Home Affairs. Anyway here she is. Image
The first part of Andrews’ speech is just 9/11 boilerplate. Terrorism is bad, first responders brave, roll call of terrorist attacks, etc. We’re in pandemic lockdown now, but after the pandemic we’ll gather in large groups again and the spectre of terrorism will return.
The terrorism threat level is at PROBABLE where it has been since 2014. The word “probable” is doing a lot of work there.
ANNOUNCEABLE: Andrews has called the state and territory law enforcement ministers to a meeting to discuss counterterrorism. (Don’t they already do this?) Continues the cooperative approach set up by PM John Howard.
Compulsory mention of the dark web. [Drink!]
“With little warning a lone actor with a knife and a mobile phone,” etc.
Yeah apart from announcing what should be a routine, regular meeting, this is just a standard speech about look at all the terrorism we must defend our way of life and a lot of not terribly well joined up thinking confusing terrorism (a strategy) with the ideologies behind it.
We are good because we passed lots of laws and now were are still good because we are about to pass more laws.

“This government has your back,” she says to the law enforcement types. The rule of law should apply online as well as offline etc.
Standard comments about how terrible the internet is, encryption is bad, my priority to stop this, etc etc. Again, all the stuff we’ve heard before.
Terrorism remains a significant threat, Andrews says. (But then so many other things are too.)

“Those who would do us harm” is a phrase that keeps being repeated.
Anyway she’s finished now, and that’s 25 minutes of my life I won’t get back.
Just quietly, delivering such a drab speech with virtually nothing new to say is showing complete disrespect to the people who’ve invited you to speak.
We’ve moved on to the panel. (The minister has of course bailed out before the less-structured conversation.) Here’s the top three upvoted questions. Numbers two and three are to the point. ImageImage
Roger Noble says the lessons from our international counterterrorism activities are that cooperation is important, actions need to be integrated, and lessons need to be learned and shared from each event — all of which seem to me like the bleeding obvious.
(In the cybers, every single conference people say that what’s needed is more cooperation and information sharing. Really? Yes. Obviously. So just bloody well do it.)
Anyway, those questions. I don’t know whether they’ll necessarily get up because the focus of the discussion is mostly external rather than internal to Australia.

That said, en passant Robert Noble has acknowledged the existence of the neo-Nazis in Australia.
The discussion is on Afghanistan right now, which is perhaps inevitable given recent events, but personally I’ve already overdosed on Afghanistan commentary lol.
The panel discussion has finished. I got distracted by currawongs at the end, but as I expected the discussion stayed mostly with West Asia and the allies’ departure from Afghanistan.

Anyway you can watch it all for yourself at the time of your choosing.

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More from @stilgherrian

15 Sep
Ping if you remember one of the best submarines ever, because it could fly. Image
Mind you, there was also the Reid Flying Submarine RFS-1. Image
And the Convair Submersible Seaplane, though that was only a design concept. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_S… Image
Read 5 tweets
15 Sep
I’ll be tweeting from the APNIC 52 conference this afternoon, starting shortly at 1300 AEST. Program at conference.apnic.net/52/program/sch…. Follow or mute #APNIC52 as you prefer.

My thread from yesterday is attached.
First up for me is the APNIC - FIRST Security session number one, on the Lazarus Bear Armada (LBA) DDoS campaign, a CSIR case study from Vanuatu, and recent supply chain attacks targeting Mongolia. conference.apnic.net/52/program/sch… #APNIC52

It’ll be on YouTube at .
MC @adliwahid in da house! #APNIC52 Image
Read 17 tweets
14 Sep
That spyware thing that triggered Apple’s security update today? theguardian.com/technology/202… I’ll be talking about it on @abcadelaide shortly at 1650 ACST / 1720 AEST at abc.net.au/radio/adelaide… or on the ABC Listen app.
@abcadelaide I’ve been pushed back half an hour because the current conversation about gambling adverts on TV and social media, and its effect on kids. It’ll now be at 1720 ACST / 1750 AEST. Unless a better story pops up, because this is live radio.
@abcadelaide I am cool with this. I used to produce this sort of live radio and I know how the game in played. :)
Read 7 tweets
14 Sep
Guess what time it is? It’s an Essential polling Tuesday! essentialvision.com.au

Let’s see what we can find. As always, this polling was done Wed–Sun and the margin of error for top line figures is about ±3 percentage points. Here we go...
Federal government response to Covid-19. essentialvision.com.au/federal-govern…

Total “Good” is up 4 points in NSW and VIC for some reason lol. ImageImage
State government response to Covid-19. essentialvision.com.au/state-governme…

Six points up in NSW and VIC. Screenshots include all of Essential’s notes. ImageImage
Read 15 tweets
14 Sep
I’ll be tweeting from thew APNIC 52 conference this afternoon, starting shortly at 1300 AEST. Program at conference.apnic.net/52/program/sch…. Follow or mute #APNIC52 as you prefer.
Gaurab Raj Upadhaya is saying that in the last 18 months, i.e. the pandemic times, APNIC has seen more internet traffic than ever before. As you might imagine. I hope we get to see some graphs later. #APNIC52
The keynote by Kathleen Moriarty, CTO for the Center for Internet Security, is a curious topic. “Role of Service Providers in Transforming Security”. Curious ’cos as service providers try to make the whole thing encrypted all the way down, governments don’t want that. #APNIC52 Image
Read 49 tweets
9 Sep
I know it’s 1pm but before I do anything else I need to tell you about the dream I had, before it fades from memory.
I dreamed I had a friend who was a duck, just an ordinary-looking Pacific Black Duck, whose hobby was recreating scenes from famous movies.
For example, he recreated Jennifer Beals’ performance from “Flashdance” using a series of water-filled enamelled trays lined up on the lawn, and he’d splash from one to the next in his joyful dance. Image
Read 11 tweets

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