back to article Conroy pledges to stop spams infecting Aussies' portals

Stephen Conroy has pledged to protect Australians from the threat of spam through their portals. The Australian communications minister made the brave pledge this week as he kicked off the lucky country's National Cyber Security Awareness Week. The minister, who some cruelly believe is himself the biggest threat to Australia' …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Chris Collins

    Spam portal

    Mm, delicious penis-pill cake awaits.

    1. Chris Griffiths
      Stop

      Oh, come on...

      Surely by now we all know the cake is a lie!

      1. Tim Bates

        Re: Oh, come on...

        Of course we know the cake is a lie - Fits in well with Conroy, since he's into lies.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The Portal"

    ..into another dimension ?? Presumably into the Politico-Space.

    I guess he means that 20 million Ozzie PCs are infected. That's a more likely number.

    1. Goat Jam
      WTF?

      errm

      We only have a population of 21 Million. Even accounting for a few double ups in businesses etc that'd still be a staggering number of PC's for a small country like Oz

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    title

    Is Conroy related to George W Bush? He seems to have had the same English teacher at least.

  4. Steve Evans

    Oh dear...

    As usual with MPs, speaking the unintelligible about that which he knows jack sh*t about.

    How about they challenge him to protect his own personal email address from spam and then publish his address whilst still getting 100% of the real emails?

    It's only one email address, how hard can it be?

  5. TeeCee Gold badge
    Stop

    "If that sounds like he was reading from an auto cue..."

    Actually it sounded more like he was reading from the Big Bullshitter's Bumper Book of Blithering Bollocks to me.

    1. frank ly
      Thumb Up

      Big Bullshitter's Bumper Book.......

      That would make a great Christmas gift. It could have quotes from real politicos and business press releases as well as made up stuff, organised by categories of some kind.

      Let's see if anyone manages to publish one in time. Note: Just because you (seem to have) thought of it first, that doesn't mean you have any rights to the title.

      P.S I want to know who's pulling Conroy's strings. There is no way that idiot could have figured out any technical stuff himself.

      1. EXAFLOPS'R'US
        Flame

        The Puppet Master is...

        ... Christian lobby groups. They've admitted as much on television a few times.

      2. TeeCee Gold badge
        Happy

        pulling Conroy's strings?

        How to write a speech.

        1) Print off a load of El Reg articles.

        2) Print off a speech by Enoch Powell.

        3) Cut the Powell speech into soundbites, removing the subject words.

        4) Cut some buzzwords out of the Reg articles.

        5) Place all the cuttings into a bag, shake vigorously and tip them out onto the floor.

        6) Read the results.

        "As the <firewall> looks <onto the internet>, <the input buffer> is filled with <goatse pics>; Like the <Twitterati> I seem to see the <limited IPV4 address space> foaming with much <pr0n>."

        See? Easy isn't it?

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      plusone

      Hat's off to you for that one, sir.

    3. CD001

      @TeeCee

      I would actually buy that book if someone were to publish it :D

  6. Giddy Kipper
    Black Helicopters

    Titanic

    I'm sure he said the the spams or scams were getting through the 'porthole'.

    This is worse than we realised people.

  7. Cameron Colley

    They want our precious bodily fliuds!

    This moron has influence?

    My condolences Australia, it seems you too are suffering.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    It's not a Truck!

    Reminds me of the whole "Internet is a series of Tubes" speech given by seemingly even more clueless American politico Ted Stephens a few years ago...

    ...but I do think educating the common man in the ways of recognising spam and scams and even updating their computer is worthy of being lauded. After all even the most technically minded of us don't want to be trawling through all the spams that got in the portal trying to find an internet someone sent you!

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Politicians will have you know...

      ...that the series of tubes ends in portals.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Track Down the Acronym "FRZ"

    Between Tony Abbott (aka "The Mad Monk" for his Christian bias, some would say zealotry) and Stephen Conroy's cluelessness combined with anal-retentive, bureaucratic zealotry, we're in bad shape down here... %) Our only hope, ironically enough, is that "V" may be true... %)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    WTF????? Brainloss alarm

    How on earth can an idiotic moron like this be able to get into such a position?

    I always though we had super stupid politicians here in Europe (geographically speaking) but he sounds almost worse than George W. Bush, Robert G. Mugabe, and Mu'ammar Gadhafi combined!!!

    1. Peter Murphy
      Go

      Where do party hacks come from, daddy?

      "How on earth can an idiotic moron like this be able to get into such a position", you ask?

      Easy. People get to vote for politicians, but to be a successful politician, you generally have to get pre-selected by your party first. And a lot of the time, the people who succeed getting the nomination are good at the social networking game. I'm not talking about actual social skills like being friendly or nice or helpful; we're talking about pleasing factional warlords, stomping potential rivals, and shaking hands with as many other pollies as possible. Other attributes would be nice - say, like being competent, or the willingness to understand one's portfolio - but they're optional.

      It's not like that in the UK? Colour me surprised. It's like that here in Australia. How else did you think Conroy got elected?

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. LaeMing
    FAIL

    Communications Minister...

    ... has difficulty communicating.

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. Mike Echo

    Blush

    Sometimes I am embarrassed to admit I'm an Australian. Right now is one of those times.

    There is nothing lamer than a politician trying to sound as though he is technologically literate but merely showing his ignorance.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Someone once posted to Reg comments

      - possibly spoofing my IP address - in the process mentioning about how most people have an idea of their intellectual limitations, but some are so stupid they think they're smart....

  15. James 63
    IT Angle

    [ashamed]

    What is it about the state of Victoria producing retarded IT ministers? Richard Alston was bad enough (another Victorian senator), and now we've got this arse-hat. Out of a population of 5.5M people there's got to be someone who has some smarts.

    While I'm doing my bit for getting rid of this clown, I wish I wasn't a Victorian voter...

    IT angle? - this man has none.

  16. Argus Tuft
    Black Helicopters

    there's a plan....

    'The Portal' makes it sound like a nice single point-of-entry from the big nasty internet thingy into Aus. That'd make it easy to "protect" us by simply putting a filter onto that single 'portal' wouldn't it.....

    Apart from the fact that he's a raving moron, there's a pattern appearing in his babbling of trying to create an 'understanding' in the general population that the Great Firewall is a good and simple thing....

    Little details like polls taken by the major newspapers showing 99% of the population opposed to it are just issues to be worked through.

  17. Big-nosed Pengie

    Makes about as much sense...

    ...as anything else he says.

  18. Rattus Rattus
    Unhappy

    <sigh>

    I weep for my country.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    He was born in the UK.

    Would you like him back? Please?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If that's true...

      ...feel free to make him swim back. I know you have lots of sticks of one sort of another over there so don't bother looking for a carrot.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Governments sell security through media

    Billions of home computers connected to the internet continue to remain infected. No government action has ever resulted in the decline in number of infections. The number of topics about botnets and the amount of spam which we continue to receive in email everyday is a testament.

    There's a reason why spamhaus.com exists - There's a reason why the list of criminal spammers and thieves who steal private information have never been caught. There's a reason why we celebrate when we catch the biggest criminals who negatively affects several innocent netizens.

    Most malware are created by very intelligent criminals who work outside the jurisdiction of law enforcement of developed nations. Our governments are keen only to sell illusions of security to their people. Creation of real global safety would involve investing outside your country and improving security where it's absent, mitigating threats where they originate... Admit that the people of richer nations will be the primary target.. Accept that internet does not segregate your people from other people.

    Don't impose curbs on the freedom of your own people - It is not the way to move forward.

    Spend your time, effort and money to go after the real purveyors of greed and malice - Be prepared to lose and try again until you succeed. Good luck Australia!

  21. Steve Roper

    Sounds to me like

    he intends to extend the filter to email as well as HTTP. All pornographic email (even those you subscribe to and want) will automatically be filtered as "spam". I'll have to check if I can run email through my PublicVPN account as well. Although I do use Hotmail for most of that kind of stuff, so I can't see how this will affect it, above and beyond what the already-planned filter might do.

  22. Joshua Goodall
    FAIL

    Portal cleansing

    Perhaps Google could attach that "wireless hoover" the Senator also hilariously claims is sucking up the Internet Banking transactions? It'll help clean the portals of these 20,000 scams.

    If it was the Minister for anything else I wouldn't care about technical competence. Unfortunately he is our Minister for Broadband. What a chump.

  23. Sean
    Unhappy

    In the up coming elections, australians have a choice between this idiot...

    And a guy who wants to scrap the plans to actually bring in a national fiber network so that Australian internet speeds might actually let us pretend that we're a first world nation.

    And whoever wins is going to assume that their victory is a mandate for their preferred method of buggering up the intarwebs.

    On behalf of all voting Australians, I'm really sorry that anyone ever voted for this idiot. If it helps, I'm seriously considering moving almost 2000km's south before the next election, just so I can vote for against him.

    1. archengel46
      Headmaster

      Was that?

      Voting for? or Voting against?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    What he meant was...

    Pray to the sky-gods that your CPU clock-bicycles are blessed and free from the spam-scam devil...

  25. Patrick Ernst
    FAIL

    Oooohhh. So embarressed.

    This is why CEOs, Ministers and others who have floated to the top like so much flotsam, should not be given a computer - or at least they should be last on the refresh list.

    Conroy embarresses the technical minded here although I am sure he plays well at the local bingo hall. To all and sundry, I apologise on behalf of the people of Australia, to the rest of thte world. Sorry. I mean it. We'll try to get Steve to shut the fsck up!

  26. Adrian Esdaile
    FAIL

    Grand Poobah Conroy will save us!

    GREAT! So the Evil Senator is going to save us from all spam?

    Internet users of Australia: Class Action against Commonwealth Of Australia for receiving spam in..

    3...

    2...

    1...

  27. Sam Therapy
    FAIL

    Of course he sounds like an idiot...

    ...because he is. He's a politico.

    Simples.

    Where's the bleedin' meerkat icon, then?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like