back to article Australia to conduct national cyber-security review

Australia will conduct a national “cyber-security review”. Speaking today at the launch of the new Australian Cyber Security Centre in Canberra today, prime minister Tony Abbott put network security on par with physical security, said it is a guarantor of economic security and added “it is so important we keep one step ahead …

  1. Tannin
    Gimp

    Who'd a thunk it?

    Strewth! What a coincidence! Who'd a thunk it?

    Just at he very self-same moment that Abbott is being hammered every day by headlines all across the nation about his "no cuts to the ABC" lie the night before the election, just as he finally has to admit his failure to get the massively unpopular unfair budget passed, just as his mob is about to get right royally smashed out of office in the Victorian state election .... guess what?

    By an amazing coincidence, Abbott's generals happen to suddenly break their months-long policy of military secrecy about everything to make a big announcement about dropping a lot of bombs on somebody rather nasty in Iraq. And today, by an even more amazing coincidence, Abbott pops up to make a big headline motherhood announcement about nuking some even scarier-sounding somebodies out there in cyberspace. Hey, it's got the word "security" in there, so it must be threatening and important!

    Naturally, Abbott's new cyber security task force will take months to figure out what the problem is, many more months to figure out how to deal with it, and even longer to actually do anything about it, by which time that particular problem will have long since been sorted, forgotten, and replaced on the radar of working techs by three or four new and different ones, which we will deal with as and when they arise, same as always. That - clumsy and belated action to fix last year's problem - is the down-side case. The upside case, of course, is that the new committee will meet once a month for a year or two, drawing a nice fat fee meanwhile, and do absolutely nothing, same as usual.

    Isn't life full of nice little surprises?

  2. DocJames

    "will be asked to consider... whether Australian businesses and individuals have the tools and skills to defend themselves."

    I'd suggest the answer is no, if privacy from government and its many contractors is considered. Have I just saved them several months of work?

    1. Tim Bates

      "I'd suggest the answer is no"

      I'd say so too. Get within wifi range and most would be screwed.

      Or just send emails about speeding fines like the Crypto-bastards are doing lately. Seems to work great.

  3. P. Lee

    I can save them some time

    "We need to be able to snoop on everything that everyone is doing to stop terrorists and paedophiles."

  4. Invidious Aardvark

    Sounds suspiciously like the government wants some to make some 'evidence based' policies and has asked some nice people to manufacture the evidence for them so they can pass said policies.

    1. MustyMusgrave
      Devil

      One day..

      One day they'll realise stallmans OS with Posix is a giant dog turd, then they'll all be using Plan9..

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