You’d think Minister Stephen Conroy, the man proposing the biggest regulatory change to the Australian internet in history, would have a firm grasp of the internet.

I mean he doesn’t need to know the technical specifics on say an engineering level of how it works, but y’know, is a basic understanding too much to ask?

At the launch of Australia’s National Cyber Security Awareness Week recently, this is what Stephen Conroy had to say;

There’s a staggering number of Australians being in having their computers infected at the moment, up to 20,000… uh… can regularly be getting infected by these spams or scams, that come through the portal.


Read over or listen to Conroy’s statement again, just incase it didn’t completely not make any sense the first time around.

This is Australia’s broadband minister speaking in public about the internet. Forget speechwriters and slip ups, even on a personal knowledge level could you sound any more incompetent about the internet if you tried?

Forget Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran… it sounds like we need to be deploying everything we’ve got against this mystical internet portal thingy. Lest it engulf our internets at a staggering rate of 20,000 innocent Australian’s computers ‘regularly‘.

I wonder if Conroy’s internet filter would stop the attack of the portal?

Probably not.

In other news, the Labor government announced today it was considering an ISP level data retention system. What does that mean? Well it means that

One internet service provider (ISP) source told ZDNet Australia that the Australian regime, if implemented, could go as far as recording each URL a customer visited and all emails.

hey said the regime being considered by the Australian Government could see data held for much longer than EU Directive time of 24 months — it would be more like five or ten years.


So we’re looking at the early stages of the Australian government thinking about retaining every internet users browsing history and email communications for five to ten years. This after they’ve also censored our internet to buggery.

Thankfully however Internet Industry Association CEO, Peter Coroneos, is assuring everyone that

there wouldn’t be any intention, I wouldn’t think, to move to any policy position on this unless there was a full public debate about the proposal.


Right, because we all know how well that worked out with the internet filter. I’m still waiting for someone from government to ask me whether I want it or not.

It seems quite clear the direction the Labor government is planning to take Australia’s internet use over the next five to ten years. Yes you can have a lightning speed network but you can only visit sites we classify as appropriate. Oh, and just incase you get up to anything we don’t like we’re going to log your every movement and keep it on file.

Whoosh!

Sorry, that was the sound of my confidence in the government being sucked through the ‘portal‘…


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