Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard and the Federal Attorney-General may have announced the Rudd Government's intention to allow business to secretly snoop on employees e-mails, but it is easy to see Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy's puritanical hand in all this as well.
Even if this holier-than-thou senator has nothing up on his website or that of his department at the moment.
According to The Age almost any business in Australia which considers itself vital to the national economy will be given these new intercept powers.
Apparently on the basis that every worker is now a potential terrorist threat and every emailed picture of their youngest's first tooth or of last Saturday's party is likely to be a cyber attack.
Though I honestly doubt that US Homeland Security-driven Cyber Storm ll simulations conducted globally and here in March actually came to such a conclusion.
The weeklong exercise 18 months in the planning and involved 18 U.S. federal agencies, 5 countries, 9 states, 40 companies, and 10 information sharing and analysis centres. This 'war game' involved disruptions of telecommunications, the Internet and control systems.
Indeed its interim conclusions appeared to be more about further global linking of government and corporate bodies and increased information sharing.
The 2006 Cyber Storm l report also did not identify e-mail traffic as a potential problem.
One has to wonder exactly how monitoring what an employee writes will suddenly stop cyber attacks involving e-mails.
Especially when this seems to be the usual scenario.
Top-level business executives, including CEOs, presidents, CIOs, and CFOs, are being directly targeted by e-mails containing malicious Trojans. Cyberattackers know how to follow the money, which is why they often set their sights on companies that are rich with customer data that can be sold online to other attackers and to fraudsters. Now it's getting personal, with top-level business executives, including CEOs, presidents, CIOs, and CFOs, finding themselves being directly targeted by e-mails containing malicious Trojans.
All of which points to flaws in company security software as the major security problem. However, rather than invest in some form of reliable secure mail relay, corporate Australia wants to spy in the workplace instead.
A move that appears to have more to do with a corporate desire to find whistle-blowers or build a case to move unpopular employees out the door.
Today's The Age article.
The proposal has been slammed by civil liberty groups, who say the new laws would be abused by employers.
"These new powers will facilitate fishing expeditions into employees' e-mails and computer use rather than being used to protect critical infrastructure," said Dale Clapperton from Electronic Frontiers Australia.
"I'm talking about corporate eavesdropping and witch-hunts ... If an employer wanted to bone someone, they could use these powers."
The government hopes to have the new laws in place by the middle of next year.
The biggest mistake that Kevin Rudd made on taking government was to leave Howard's neo-con public service mandarins in place. Their advice frequently borders on the unsafe or absurd and the Rudd Ministry is showing itself as foolish in its reliance on such advice.
It is disappointing to see Julia Gillard lend her name to this intrusive cyber nonsense. She was the one Labor politician I thought would not lose her perspective simply because she was now part of government.
I suggest that Ms. Gillard look at whether Australian business executives have truly tried all other alternatives to what is now suggested.
She might start by asking them all to complete this Security School multichoice quiz to see if they even understand what e-mail security is about.
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