Brandon Selic | Politician

Brandon Selic

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25.01.2022 The best apology is changed behaviour. We screwed that one up.

25.01.2022 Between this and the senator complaining about anime content, I’m torn as to whom is currently the most useless representative to the Australian people. This country needs a better class of politician

24.01.2022 Your reminder that during what can be only described as ridiculous fears of toilet paper shortages, there is still journalism in Australia that can only be described as strong yet soft, and thoroughly absorbent.

23.01.2022 The most damaging phrase in the language is 'We've always done it this way'. - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.

22.01.2022 Supply distribution issues and bad fuel reserves have already been highlighted by this pandemic and ticked the boxes in this report. But given we’re an island that massively exports its resources and doesn’t manufacture anything this is hardly surprising. All I can surmise somewhat flippantly from all this is that none of the current crop of politicians in parliament have ever played an RTS or 4X game that required resource management.

21.01.2022 1. The original ad was stupid. The memes are great. 2. As a Doctor Who fan, "Cyber First" as a policy has some rather disturbing implications

20.01.2022 Congratulations to Rupert Murdoch, Tony Abbott and the Coalition Government. But gutting the NBN you’ve damaged this country in a myriad of unexpected ways for decades to come.

20.01.2022 Let’s hope that’s the end of it. But we won’t forget.

16.01.2022 Essential reading:

14.01.2022 The Government has doubled NewStart for the next six months. I could level criticism or concerns, but good job. This needed to be done.

11.01.2022 OK. The damn roni app. I’ve read a few million posts about it, written several thousand words on it myself for Digital Rights Watch and others, and I've been r...ustled by some festering nonsense amongst some genuinely good commentary from experts in particular fields, so to prevent any further word vomit from me in conversation threads with mates here is some feelpinion. Privacy and security issues have a unique power to elicit ignorance by privilege. I’ve had conversations with people who’ve done good work on refugee and anti-racism campaigns who dismiss issues like data retention or anti-encryption legislation with a blithe ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, oblivious to the fact that those very same people are the first victims of expanded powers of surveillance for law enforcement and governments. The impact on people who are never targeted by authorities is negligible, but not caring about something that doesn’t personally harm you is exactly the selfishness that has dumped us in a world slow-cooking its way to uninhabitability. The app doesn’t really work. Singaporeans are compliant and government-trusting in a way Australians aren’t. A 2019 survey found that they trust their government far more than Australians do, yet fewer than 1 in 5 people there downloaded the app after being implored to. Our PM says 40% of people need to use it for it to be effective. Experts elsewhere say that number is 60% or more. OK, we are a nation overflowing with neighbour dobbing narcs and let me speak to the manager Karens, and if the app was asking people to spy on other people instead of themselves, Australians would in all likelihood disregard the unending series of tech failures from their government over recent years, roll the dice and try to rack up as many covid cop points as they could so they could win the race to be first back to the pub. The PM has none too subtly coerced us to download the app so social restrictions ease sooner, but it is not a real incentive. We haven’t been given any specific rate of uptake that will lead to a set of newer relaxed restrictions, possibly because the app doesn’t really work. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy to exchange data with other phones with the app in proximity, an elegant design solution that avoids the need to track every single person’s movements over GPS. Go see Dan’s post for details. Apple in particular has safeguards within iOS to stop data leaking out over Bluetooth. To work at all on an iPhone, users overseas reported the phone needs to be on, unlocked, with the app open and in focus. When you use the phone for anything else or switch the screen off to save battery, the app stops working. Apple and Google have proposed an API (rigidly controlled, at least in Apple’s case) to get around these protections, which the Australian government said won’t be used here. So, an app that won’t really work that the government reluctantly said will be voluntary to install. Trust is essential in this kind of arrangement. But it is OK because you can trust them. The government has already lied about data and tracking in the midst of this crisis. Less than a week after saying no, the Australian government is not accessing phone location data like the British government is, it was revealed that this is exactly what they are doing. No reason to lie, it was a reasonable use of aggregated anonymised data. But they can’t help themselves. After public pressure, the government said they would open source the app. This would be genuinely good, and should be the norm for government tech projects, not an exception. Of course, they’ve since rolled that back, and the rest of the stack remains totally opaque. No info at all on what happens at the government end. They’re desperate for us to think that the app is for health services only. That is as it should be, but also almost entirely beside the point. How and what data is collected is important, but far more so is what the government does with it. Your ISP uses metadata to charge people appropriately for the service they use or to guide infrastructure planning. The AFP uses metadata to find a journalists confidential source. And then they smash down the door and sift through an underwear drawer. The extraordinary powers governments have given themselves in recent years (with barely a whisper from the opposition) in combination with this app could lead to a massive increase in surveillance capability. Take the stated purpose out of it and just look at the function. An ability to see when and for how long a meeting between ‘people of interest’ takes place is absolutely porn for Home Affairs jackboots. Data retention laws mandate the collection and retention of the unique device IDs this app will also use. That info is already being accessedno need for a warrantby federal, state and local government agencies for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with ‘national security’. Cross-referencing tracing app data with that retained metadata would de-anonymise all of it, show who met with who, for how long, and provide a pretty good indication of why. Last years anti-encryption bill means Australian law enforcement and intelligence agencies can force the tracing app developers to add features, or give them access to all of the data, or both. And they couldn’t tell anyone about it. The penalty for revealing an order to do this is years in prison. Its years more if they don’t do what they’ve been directed to. This environment of distrust we’re in is the government’s own doing, the result of years of not giving a shit about what they trample on. When these laws passed, it was over the objections of experts warning it meant software built in Australia could not be trusted anymore. And yet even after all of this, covid-19 is so insidious, it presents such a danger to so many in the communityincluding me, I am one of the lucky ones with a chronic health condition which puts me in the high risk categorythat I can see why some might say the app is a risk we have to take. Except it Doesn’t. Really. Work. ok thanks don't trace me bro. EDIT 1 of what may be several. The hits, they keep coming. The government is using Amazon. Australians' data from the COVID-19 contact tracing app could end up in hands of US law enforcement, regardless of protections here. http://www.abc.net.au//amazon-to-provide-cloud-se/12176682

10.01.2022 Now this raises a valid point I hadn’t had time to consider; here we have a Coalition Government that since Abbott as Prime Minister has perpetuated a culture of fear for political gain. Now we have an actual crisis, a real reason for fear, and the sabre-rattling Coalition Government cannot respond appropriately. Credit where it’s due, Morrison isn’t responsible for much of this, he’s just inherited it, and he’s made some good decisions. But some commentary from him and other ministers has been spectacularly tone deaf.

10.01.2022 Someone, somewhere wrote a policy paper or even just a damn email advocating for the awful practice of RoboDebt to become policy. I want to see that document and I want whomever wrote it to be held accountable.

09.01.2022 The skewed priorities of this government are mind-boggling

09.01.2022 Yes. This is needed.

08.01.2022 We’ve got to look at numbers in the House of Reps & Senate and start petitioning members to vote on keeping payments at these levels. Even if we somehow can’t sell the compassionate stance, if these payments drop we will have a public mental health crisis on our hands.

08.01.2022 This week is Anti-Poverty Week. Something that often gets overlooked is the poverty trap for people who're earning a little bit of income, but not a full wage.... When welfare payments fade out at 60 cents in the dollar -- more than the top tax rate -- something's gone wrong. We think it's time to overhaul the welfare system so that it actually works for the people who need it most - by introducing a Basic Income.

07.01.2022 In summary: - Telstra got $11 billion from taxpayers in exchange for its fixed line customers migrating to the NBN - The Federal Government built the NBN and now (after years of wasted money and time) is upgrading it... - Telstra is now actively stealing market share and wrecking the NBN’s profitability and market value via its 5G rollout - Telstra will next acquire the NBN from the Federal Government at cents in the dollar. This will mean Telstra will have succeeded in first offloading its wholesale network for $11 billion before purchasing it back from the NBN at a heavy discount. (For those who don't remember, they did something similar with the copper phone lines; they sold the Liberal Federal Government the copper phone lines at a profit, after buying them cheap from the Government and not maintaining them). The brazenness is breathtaking. But they'll get away with it because no one is talking about it.

06.01.2022 Excellent news.

05.01.2022 The statement Only Nixon could go to China comes irresistibly to mind.

05.01.2022 It is my professional opinion that this is a *terrible* idea.

02.01.2022 The latest iteration of a continuing problem.

02.01.2022 I’ve been saying this for years; Australia needs a better class of politicians.

01.01.2022 Our view on the COVIDSafe app: the app itself is as expected. It's everything else that's the problem. Read our full statement here: https://pirateparty.org.au//covidsafe-its-a-matter-of-tru/