Last month the Pirate Party Australia, along with hundreds of other organisations and individuals, made a submission to the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s Inquiry into potential reforms of National Security Legislation. I co-authored the Pirate Party Australia submission and wrote around half of it.

When the submissions were published there was ( Read more... )

I strongly encourage signing the petition to the Australian Senate from Pirate Party Australia regarding the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security’s Inquiry into potential reforms of National Security Legislation. Sign this if you can’t make a submission to the inquiry, although I strongly urge all Australians to do so, or if ( Read more... )

Last week the complete unredacted diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year were revealed to the world following a series of events involving WikiLeaks, the Guardian and possibly others. There has been much finger pointing regarding who is to ultimately blame for this, which is essentially pointless. The deed is done and the information ( Read more... )

I have started experimenting with BitCoin, which is a relatively new form of digital currency. It’s an interesting idea and design which cuts out all the usual middlemen in online payments through a peer-to-peer network, though the price of that is being unable to obtain a refund of a transaction (e.g. a chargeback).

It does, however, provide a ( Read more... )

By now most people will have heard or read about the civil unrest in Egypt and the Egyptian government’s response of shutting down communications networks, including all Internet connectivity. This is, of course, one of the most complete forms of electronic censorship available to a totalitarian state.

Already there are people attempting to solve ( Read more... )

Five people have been arrested in England for their roles in the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks performed by the group calling itself Anonymous, claiming to be defending WikiLeaks and retaliating over the arrest of Julian Assange.

Initially this group formed to protest the activities of the Church of Scientology, both online and ( Read more... )