Yet he has a simple target to hit, and even Conroy looks a little uncertain answering questions.

Everything seems to be on hold right now. Conroy – well – I’m going to say it.

Conroy is not across his portfolio. He clearly has a poor undestanding of its subject matter.

Turnbull, on the other hand, has basically had a $%^& shoved in his face by the kind-minded mister Abbott.

Between the two, for communications minister?

Turnbull, hands down.

Unfortunately the politics of ineptitude seem to have prevented that from happening. It probably started with Malcolm acquiring too much money in the first place.

–

Some said it was tripe (which it always was intended to be – readily available technology).

Some said it would amount to nothing – and it very well may not.

But let’s put this in perspective.

Rudd is gone, and Gillard has called an election.

The government is secretly trying to monitor your usage, but the filter is on the backburner until after the election.

So maybe not doing a hell of a lot of shit does help. I promise I’ll get that AMI up as soon as I don’t sleep through a weekend. The model is perfect.

Poor ol’ Conroy.

In the meantime I would recommend that you read some publicly available no-nonsense clearly-legible no-nonsense policy.

Register.

Or you could just fuck off. I do mean that. If you’re over 17 and don’t register then… fuck off.

I could explain your obligations to you slightly more politely, but no, if I have to listen to you whinge and complain – whether it be about your mother, computer or uber-president – i want to be assured that you made an effort to misguide your votes out of ignorance.

I’m pretty damn serious about this. All trolls will be asked to state their voting credentials. If they fail they will get flamed.

Note how I still haven’t stated a political affiliation. Aren’t I good.

Rudd, afraid of getting another 4.1 for his next high-dive backflip, is never going to allow Conroy to back down before the next election.

Nevertheless he lets the docked staff loose on the morning shows. And someone needs to draft the legislation.

Conroy makes accusations: your passwords, banking details and personal data may have and are still liable to be sucked up by the Google-monster.

Pied Piper deserves a decent score imho.

Right. That’s the allegation. Where is the evidence or the proofing mechanism?

I’m looking for it. I should be in bed. I have a nasty cold. I’m looking for it. Help me out. Post the relevant links.

Let’s start with this $2 de-mystifyer:

Banking transactions conducted over the internet use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption between web browsers and banking servers

I am radically searching through media to establish that any of the things along the lines that Conroy has insinuated over the last few weeks, but specifically alleged this morning, carry any weight at all.

Show me the mother$%^&ing links. There are none. At least none gaining page rank. Let’s follow this up with a trail of Conroy’s subsantiated bullshit, this man is flogging a dead horse.

CafeScreen are a company that install advertising displays around the major CBDs. As part of their business model they provide a free WiFi access point to customers. You could probably pick up signal from outside – but it’s only fair to buy a coffee, isn’t it? Just choose your cafe carefully based on their choice of bean. I used to support some of their equipment and I think they probably have the best service in Sydney.

uConnect operate free WiFi spots usually based on Unwired mobile broadband connections, so they’re not superfast. But you can, for instance, visit a museum in Sydney for $10, get cheap all-day CBD parking for $12 and all your WiFi needs to boot.

As much as I hate to divulge it, many McDonalds in Australia are now outfitted with free WiFi. I must admit to being partial to a bacon cheeseburger but please moderate your intake – for the sake of the planet.

Of course, the days of warwalking, when unscrupulous operators would drive up to a Starbucks carpark and offload a couple of hundred thousand spams are probably behind us. But these are generally open networks. Noone can tie your usage to your person (as long as you’re careful). Sort of reminds me of the time I hijacked a mate’s domain name by sending a fax from a Kings Cross newsagency at 2 in the morning just to prove that it could be done.

Additions, anyone?

Stephen Conroy has used a senate hearing to blast Google (and Facebook) over privacy issues – with a particular focus on Google’s recent collection of information relating to WiFi devices in the course of its Street View campaign.

Of course, there’s nothing new about web sites that list WiFi access points on maps – back in the day when Bigpond were sending out unsecured Motorola WiFi routers to their best cable customers, these sites were in fact quite useful if you needed to quickly borrow a little bandwidth. Naturally the software has been around for quite a while too, even if Stephen would like you to believe that Google wrote a piece of uniquely malevolent code.

Admittedly Google’s “accidental” excuse doesn’t quite stack up (wait a minute… does that not pertain to an entirely different country?). Nevertheless Conroy capitalised on the opportunity to avoid discussing the real issues by getting back at Google for their criticism over his proposed filter. And we would imagine that he was still a bit miffed about the lack of cooperation he got over the issue of Youtube filtering as well.

Google’s response?

“We were surprised to hear more discussion about Google and Facebook than about the actual proposed filter”

We’ll post the full record from the Hansard when it becomes available.

     the open door policy

Naturally, in this day of mobile access it’s becoming harder to implement, but this is a bit of a fundamental. I’ve been telling parents to move PCs to open living spaces for years. And maybe it is true you’re better off with a Mac – at least in the case of an iPhone. But at the very least expect your children (of appropriate age) to show you the respect that they should be expected to be supervised when on the net in their own bedrooms. So ask them to leave their doors open, and start this at an early age.

In the old days your parents would “ground” you and prevent you from going out when you got into trouble. Maybe it’s time to do the opposite? By cutting of internet access, you actually force them to go out and get some fresh air. This can be as simple as removing the network cable or changing the WiFi password – always keep the administrative password to yourself!

I have just spent a lot of time experimenting with Parental Controls under Mac OS X. I will endeavour to post my findings as a comment here once I’ve had a chance to fully document them.

ABC’s Four Corners recently covered the issue and pretty much agreed with everything we have to say and stand for.

Conroy has postponed the legislation required to actually implement the filter because of the current political climate. That buys us a few more months.

Google introduced encrypted search last week.

And, typically of this government, the debate is still not open.

Just as few of their other policies seem to be carefully considered (and I’m still not voting for either major party, never have, so don’t be so deluded as to interpret that as an endorsement of Abbott).

Meanwhile our adwords campaign is achieving 80,000 exposures per month, costing nothing ($20 so far, just realised we ran out), and hopefully reinforcing the message that filtering is a poor policy model for the issues it’s intended to address.

IDG: Internet filtering hacking classes take-off

… not just for seniors seeking advice on euthanasia anymore. There’s a revenue model – people are willing to pay to get trained to circumvent the Clean Feed.

Also, the Murdoch media, not willing to do any actual journalism, recycle a story from three years ago without actually adding anything to the debate:

News Media: No penalty for bypassing Conroy’s internet filter

In their defence, it was nice of them to highlight some of the legal non-issues.

But it seems even News can’t turn this story into a scandal. So perhaps ironically, they turn it into reverse scare tactics: “some criminally-inclined teenager is going to hack your safety net” (subtext?). Normally News just stick to the forward scare tactics.

[edit] Quite a good article that explains the whole thing in a very straightforward manner; not sure how we missed it:

SMH: Net nannies take on the freedom fighters