With barefaced lying becoming more commonplace in Murdoch & Nine newspapers, perhaps it's time that Australians consider the Liverpool solution?

The Sun (U.K.) first published in 1965 is owned by News Group Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

For the last 31 years the people of Liverpool in England have boycotted this newspaper because of its barefaced lying about the events of one single day.

In 2016 even some Liverpool taxis carried the boycott message.

The Echo, 19 September 2016

This boycott is said to have markedly affected sales of this newspaper up to the present day.

The boycott is still being regularly reported. 

In November 2019 two academics from Department of Government, London School of Economics & Political Science & Department of Political Science, University of Zurich published a study which suggests the the number of Liverpudlians who did not vote for Brexit was possibly increased in number by the fact that The Sun was not read it that city.

Given how loose-with-the-truth News Corp Australia journalism in particular becomes during election years, perhaps it is time rural and regional communities considered whether they too might like to drive a newspaper such as The Australian or The Daily Telegraph out of their towns and villages.

It is painfully obvious that The Daily Telegraph hopes to step into the print space left vacant after News Corp banished the Clarence Valley's 161 year old The Daily Examiner to a digital website.

I imagine its editor is also hoping to pick up readers in other regional areas along the NSW coast.

BACKGROUND

The Overtake. 19 July 2018:

After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 in which 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death in overcrowding, the Murdoch-owned newspaper printed pages of false claims that not only blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, but accused them of urinating on police officers and other fans, beating up officers attempting CPR, and pickpocketing the dead. 

These reports have since all been proven as fabrication. 

The effect that the disaster had on the people of Liverpool is huge, not least for those who attended the match, but also those who lost friends and family. 

The saddest of these is Stephen Whittle, known as the 97th victim of Hillsborough. Whittle had work commitments and therefore sold his matchday ticket to a friend, who tragically died there. 

In 2011 Whittle took his own life, with the coroner citing depression and likely survivor’s guilt caused by the events of Hillsborough. Whittle left £61,000 to the families of those who died at Hillsborough. 

In the aftermath of Hillsborough, the city of Liverpool came together to stand up to the figures of authority who were lying to their faces.....

The truth eventually became official record 27 years after Hillsborough, when a jury exonerated the fans of any wrongdoing, and condemned the police present at the match of unlawful killing by gross negligence. 

However, there is still a way to go before the people of Liverpool will consider justice served, as many of the police officers still await trial, and many who attacked Liverpool supporters, including The Sun and Boris Johnson, have only felt repercussions from the fans themselves....

Communities in Liverpool have truly come together and forced a decline in the newspaper’s readership and therefore local sales figures. It makes a lot of sense that both Liverpool and Everton football clubs have banned The Sun’s reporters from press conferences at their stadiums, but the real power of the people is shown by the actions of national companies. 

The fact that supermarkets such as Tesco, which stopped stocking the paper purely due to a lack of demand rather than any political or moral affiliations, say it isn’t worth selling the paper, shows the power of the city and its people.....


The boycott in Liverpool occasionally extends further than Merseyside, usually with travelling Scousers, and is now reaching further with the use of Twitter through accounts such as Total eclipse of the S*n and people encouraging others to hide copies of The Sun when they see it on sale.

A perspective on society and the COVID-19 pandemic

This is a Twitter thread created by Janette Francis, a Walkley-award winning journalist, TV Presenter and podcaster.

Jan’s Twitter account was created in 2009.

The debate on the best responses to the COVID-19 pandemic is global and one cold-blooded aspect of this debate is currently found in British, American and Australian mainstream media articles and on social media - save the investments and assests of the well-off because old people and the chronically ill are going to die anyway.

This is Jan's contribution to this debate.

Jan Fran @Jan__Fran, 21 April 2020:

I keep hearing folks describe this pandemic as a kind of trade-off between public health and the economy. This trade-off is often framed around loss of life. 1

It usually goes something like this: if we ease the lockdown we’ll see people die from the virus. If we prolong the lockdown we’ll see people die from the consequences of possible economic collapse (i.e suicide, depression, poverty, ill health, violence). 2

We are led to believe that attempts to limit one set of deaths, will increase the other, that one group of people will have to sacrifice for the other. But whose lives are more important? 3

Do we sacrifice the sick now to save the healthy later; the old to save the young; the poor to save everyone else? We are led to believe that this is our dilemma and it is an impossible one. 4

Hey, here’s a fun thing to think about: guess how much money Jeff Bezos made today? 5

Jeff Bezos made 17,000 dollars. But he didn’t make it in one day. He made it in ONE SECOND. Every single second Amazon is reaping 17 thousand dollars worth of sales (this is AUD BTW) & this is happening SPECIFICALLY during this pandemic as more people seek deliverable supplies. 6

Jeff Bezos is now worth 216 BILLION dollars and good on Jeff Bezos, I say! I mean, the man is clearly providing a service that people need and reaping the rewards. That is #inspo, amirite?! Please speak at my conference, Jeff. 7

Thing is, there's a wee bit more to the world we live in. 8

We live in a world where, in the middle of a pandemic, one man makes 17 thousand dollars A SECOND and another is buried in a mass grave because his family can’t afford a funeral. 9

It’s a world where the homeless sleep in socially-distant quadrants in a hotel car park, while above them thousand-dollar-a-night rooms sit empty. It’s a world where folks are protesting their right to get sick in a country they can not afford to seek treatment in. 10

One thing this pandemic has done is exacerbated the gross inequalities we always knew existed. It has exposed them, brought them to the surface as the bodies of the poor and the desolate continue to be stacked beneath the ground. 11

The framing of this pandemic as ‘lives lost now V lives lost later’ is really just us tryna work out which sections of our society are more productive, more useful. Which sections are going to best replicate the system that was in place before all this Covid/lockdown malarky. 12

I mean, we all wanna get back to how it was ASAP, right? Now that we think about it we were having a great time. The system was working. But for who? 13

Not for the man whose body now sits in a mass grave on Hart Island NY, it wasn’t. Not for the homeless sleeping in their car park quadrants, it wasn’t. Not for the nearly 40 million Americans living below the poverty line, it wasn’t. This is the system we will replicate. 14

It is right to talk about sacrifice in this dark and uncertain time. I guess we all have to make sacrifices at some point so if not now, when? If not me, who? Before you answer that, know this … 15

Twenty-six individuals own as much wealth as HALF the world’s population - Lemme say that again: TWENTY SIX people (two. six) own the same amount of wealth as 3.8 BILLION PEOPLE. 16

That’s worth remembering the next time some legend waxes lyrical about why you might need to sacrifice yer nan for the sake of the economy. Maybe those 26 people should sacrifice the spoils they’ve reaped from a system that now needs saving from itself. 17

We do indeed have a dilemma but it might not be an impossible one. Maybe we actually don’t need to ask those who have the least to sacrifice the most, maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe that’s the trade-off? 18

Anyway, thanks for letting me share my thoughts on this website twitter dot com. 19/19

l'état, c'est moi: Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is acting more like an autocrat every day

"Until this week, I’ve felt that comparisons between Morrison and Donald Trump have been way overblown. Now, I’m not so sure."  [Journalist Katherine Murphy writing in The Guardian, 28 November 2019]

In which it is revealed that Scott Morrison made a 'perfect' phone call à la Trump......

Crikey Worm: For the early birds, 28 November 2019:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is coming under increasing fire over his phone call to the NSW police commissioner, with a former top judge calling it an inappropriate use of his position.

Former ICAC commissioner David Ipp said the call appeared to have been made in the interests of political decision-making, rather than in the interest of the state, telling The Guardian “an ordinary citizen would not be able to get that information from the police … so what is it about the prime minister that entitles him to that information?” Ipp joins former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor leader Anthony Albanese in condemning the call. The prime minister has refused to release notes from the call with the police chief, despite differing accounts of what was discussed, The New Daily reports.

THEY REALLY SAID THAT? 

“	Being blunt about it, it is a call I would not have made. — Malcolm Turnbull

The former prime minister offers his two cents on his successor’s decision to ring the NSW police chief.

NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption investigating regulation of lobbying, access and influence in state government circles

In New South Wales state governments have attempted to regulate political and commercial lobbying of members of parliament and public servants under provisions contained in Lobbying of Government Officials Act 2011 , Lobbying of Government Officials (Lobbyists Code of Conduct) Regulation 2014, Lobbying of Government Officials (Lobbyists Code of Conduct) Amendment Regulation 2019, Premier’s Memorandum M2015-13 ‘NSW Lobbyists Code of Conduct’, Premier’s Memorandum M2015-05 ‘Publication of Ministerial Diaries and Release of Overseas Travel Information’. 

To date this approach has obviously been working so well that on 5 August 2019 the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began public hearings into the regulation of lobbying, access and influence in NSW (Operation Eclipse). 

Three hearing days occurred in August and the next public hearing date is not scheduled until 21 October 2019.

 According to ICAC; “Like the Commission’s previous examination of lobbying practices in 2010 (Operation Halifax), this investigation is not concerned with examining whether any particular individual may have engaged in corrupt conduct, but rather seeks to examine particular aspects of lobbying activities and the corruption risks involved in the lobbying of public authorities and officials.” 

Interestingly on 30 August 2019 The Australian gave this explanation of the possible genesis of Operation Eclipse: 

The NSW corruption commission will examine the “revolving door” where politicians and public servants leave their careers to move into jobs with private sector lobbyists, warning that the trend has whittled away public trust. 

Heidrun Blackwood, a senior corruption prevention officer for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, said the crisis of public trust in government risked cascading towards “doomsday” levels in the near future. 

She said the integrity body would soon investigate the access granted to special interest groups by MPs and public servants. 

Ms Blackwood flagged the investigation after Christopher Pyne — a former federal defence minister — took up a defence consulting job with EY, and former federal foreign minister Julie Bishop landed a gig as a board director with development contractor Palladium. 

Both have denied wrongdoing and have been cleared by outgoing public service boss Martin Parkinson, who is appearing before a parliamentary committee today to take questions on the matter….. 

According to the Grattan Institute, since 1990 more than one-quarter of all federal ministers or assistant ministers have taken up roles in lobbying outfits or special interest groups since leaving parliament. 

“The revolving door is an issue that we are going to look at,” Ms Blackwood said. “It is true that, on the one hand, it is part of democracy to have that conversation. 

“On the other hand, there is also the impression that some people are getting more access than others. That has prompted our commissioner to look at that issue more closely.”

USA 2019: crazy continues to be order of the day (Part Three)

A look at the US politician so many Australian Liberal and Nationals MPs and senators admire and seek to emulate....

Daily Kos, 12 January 2019:

Most of Donald Trump's $35 million in real estate deals in 2018 came with a huge political footnote attached to them. A Forbes analysis found the largest deal, yielding $20 million to Trump, came from the sale of a $900 million federally subsidized housing complex in Brooklyn in which the Trump Organization had a 4 percent stake. 

The Department of Housing & Urban Development had to approve the sale. In other words, the Trump Organization, which is still owned by Trump, needed permission from HUD, which reports to Trump as pr*sident, to turn a profit through a Brooklyn real estate deal. And guess what: HUD greenlit the deal.

Trump also took in another $5.5 million from 36 units sold in a 64-story Las Vegas tower. The catch? About a third of those units were bought by buyers hiding behind limited liability companies so they wouldn't have to disclose their identities. In 2017, USA Today reported that during the two years before Trump became the GOP nominee, only 4 percent of Trump’s building units were acquired by LLCs. So now that Trump's pr*sident, anonymous people are lining his pockets with real estate purchases cloaked through LLCs.

Remember when Trump made a big show of stacking up all the paperwork he was signing in order to supposedly clear up his conflicts of interest and forfeit management of his businesses? Yeah, he's still getting that money.

Facebook Inc still getting caught out spreading fake news and breaching users' privacy

The Guardian, 13 December 2018:

Journalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.

Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook’s hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics – fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk – should be a deal-breaker.

“They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” said Brooke Binkowski, former managing editor of Snopes, a factchecking site that has partnered with Facebook for two years. “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck … They clearly don’t care.”….

“Why should we trust Facebook when it’s pushing the same rumors that its own factcheckers are calling fake news?” said a current Facebook factchecker who was not authorized to speak publicly about their news outlet’s partnership….

 “Working with Facebook makes us look bad,” added the journalist, who has advocated for an end to the partnership…..

ABC News, 15 December 2018:

Facebook said a bug had exposed private photos of up to 6.8 million users, the latest in a string of glitches that have caused regulators around the world to investigate the social media giant's privacy practices.

The bug allowed some 1,500 applications to access private photos for 12 days ending September 25, Facebook said.

"We're sorry this happened," it said in a blog targeted at developers who build apps for its platform.

Facebook said the bug was now fixed.

The problem is the latest in a string of security and privacy issues that have caused complaints from users and led to investigations by regulators and politicians.

The issues include the massive Cambridge Analytica scandal and a security breach that affected nearly 30 million users.

The company said it would send an alert through Facebook to notify users whose photos may have been exposed by the latest issue.

The alert will direct them to a link where they will be able to see if they have used any apps that the bug allowed to access private photos.

Facebook shares fell 1.2 per cent early trading, compared to a 0.9 per cent decline in the Nasdaq composite index......

July 2018 was not a good month for Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc - Channel 4 undercover investigation, a lawsuit, falling user numbers, sudden 19% drop in company value & US$12 billion hit to personal fortune

As the fall-out from manipulated US presidential campaign and UK Brexit national referendum continues try at it might Facebook Inc just can't give a cursory apology for its part in these events and mover on - users and mainstream media won't cease scutiny of its business practices.

News.com.au, 27 July 2018:

Shares in Facebook plummeted 19 per cent to $US176.26 at the end of trading on Thursday, wiping out some $US120 billion ($A160 billion) — believed to be the worst single-day evaporation of market value for any company....

Founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has a 13 percent stake in Facebook, saw his fortune dropped by more than $US12 billion ($A16 billion) in less than 24 hours, to around $74 billion ($A100 billion).

The fall came after the social media giant revealed three million European users had closed their accounts since the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The record decline pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq more than one per cent lower.

CNet, 27 July 2018:

It began Wednesday with Facebook, which announced that daily active user counts had fallen in Europe, to 279 million from 282 million earlier this year. Facebook also indicated it was no longer growing in the US and Canada, two of the most lucrative advertising markets. Just as Facebook was working through its second year of nearly nonstop scandals over unchecked political meddling and data misuse, it was becoming clear that the days of consistent and relatively easy growth were fading.

Reuters, 28 July 2018:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg were sued on Friday in what could be the first of many lawsuits over a disappointing earnings announcement by the social media company that wiped out about $120 billion of shareholder wealth.

The complaint filed by shareholder James Kacouris in Manhattan federal court accused Facebook, Zuckerberg and Chief Financial Officer David Wehner of making misleading statements about or failing to disclose slowing revenue growth, falling operating margins, and declines in active users.

Chanel4.com, news release, 17 July 2018:

Dispatches investigation reveals how Facebook moderates content

An undercover investigation by Firecrest Films for Channel 4 Dispatches has revealed for the first time how Facebook decides what users can and can’t see on the platform. (Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network, Channel 4 Dispatches, 9pm, 17 July). 

Dispatches’ investigation reveals:

       *Violent content such as graphic images and videos of assaults on children, remaining on the site, despite being flagged by users as inappropriate and requests to have it removed.

·         *Thousands of reported posts remained unmoderated and on the site while we were filming, beyond Facebook’s stated aim of a 24-hour turnaround, including potentially posts relating to suicide threats and self-harm.

·        * Moderators told not to take any action if content shows a child who is visibly below Facebook’s 13-year-old age limit, rather than report it as posted by underage users, even if the content includes self-harming.

·         *Allegations from an early Facebook investor and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, that Facebook’s business model benefits from extreme content which engages viewers for longer, generating higher advertising revenue.

·         *Pages belonging to far-right groups, with large numbers of followers, allowed to exceed deletion threshold, and subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging to governments and news organisations.

·       *  Policies allowing hate speech towards ethnic and religious immigrants, and trainers instructing moderators to ignore racist content in accordance with Facebook’s policies.

      Dispatches sent an undercover reporter to work as a content moderator in Facebook’s largest centre for UK content moderation. The work is outsourced to a company called Cpl Resources plc in Dublin which has worked with Facebook since 2010. The investigation reveals the training given to content moderators to demonstrate how to decide whether content reported to them by users, such as graphic images and videos of child abuse, self-harming, and violence should be allowed to remain on the site or be deleted. Dispatches also films day-to-day moderation of content on the site, revealing:

      Violent content:

      One of the most sensitive areas of Facebook’s content rulebook is about graphic    violence. When dealing with graphic violence content, moderators have three options – ignore, delete, or mark as disturbing which places restrictions on who can see the content.

      Dispatches’ undercover reporter is seen moderating a video showing two teenage schoolgirls fighting. Both girls are clearly identifiable and the video has been shared more than a thousand times. He’s told that Facebook’s rules say that because the video has been posted with a caption condemning the violence and warning people to be careful about visiting the location where it was filmed, it should not be deleted and instead should be left on the site and marked as disturbing content. Dispatches speaks to the mother of the girl involved who tells the programme the distress and impact the video had on her daughter. She struggles to understand the decision to leave the video up on the site. “To wake up the next day and find out that literally the whole world is watching must have been horrifying. It was humiliating for her, it was devastating for her. You see the images and it’s horrible, it’s disgusting. That’s someone’s child fighting in the park. It’s not Facebook entertainment.”

      Facebook told Dispatches that the child or parent of a child featured in videos like this can ask them to be removed. Richard Allan, VP of Public Policy at Facebook said, “Where people are highlighting an issue and condemning the issue, even if the issue is painful, there are a lot of circumstances where people will say to us, look Facebook, you should not interfere with my ability to highlight a problem that’s occurred.

      Online anti-child abuse campaigner Nicci Astin tells Dispatches about another violent video which shows a man punching and stamping on a toddler. She says she reported the video to Facebook in 2012 and received a message back saying it didn’t violate its terms and conditions. The video is used during the undercover reporter’s training period as an example of what would be left up on the site, and marked as disturbing, unless posted with a celebratory caption. The video is still up on the site, without a graphic warning, nearly six years later. Facebook told Dispatches they do escalate these issues and contact law enforcement, and the video should have been removed.

      One moderator tells the Dispatches undercover reporter that “if you start censoring too much then people lose interest in the platform…. It’s all about making money at the end of the day.”

      Venture Capitalist Roger McNamee was one of Facebook’s earliest investors, a mentor to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the man who brought Sheryl Sandberg to the company. He tells Dispatches that Facebook’s business model relies on extreme content:

      “From Facebook’s point of view this is, this is just essentially, you know, the crack cocaine of their product right. It’s the really extreme, really dangerous form of content that attracts the most highly engaged people on the platform. Facebook understood that it was desirable to have people spend more time on site if you’re going to have an advertising based business, you need them to see the ads so you want them to spend more time on the site. Facebook has learned that the people on the extremes are the really valuable ones because one person on either extreme can often provoke 50 or 100 other people and so they want as much extreme content as they can get.”

      Richard Allan told Dispatches: Shocking content does not make us more money, that’s just a misunderstanding of how the system works …. People come to Facebook for a safe secure experience to share content with their family and friends. The vast majority of those 2 billion people would never dream of sharing content that, like that, to shock and offend people. And the vast majority of people don’t want to see it. There is a minority who are prepared to abuse our systems and other internet platforms to share the most offensive kind of material. But I just don’t agree that that is the experience that most people want and that’s not the experience we’re trying to deliver.

      Underage users:

      No child under 13 can have a Facebook account. However, a trainer tells the undercover reporter not to proactively take any action regarding their age if the report contains an image of a user who is visibly underage, unless the user admits to being underage: “We have to have an admission that the person is underage. If not, we just like pretend that we are blind and we don’t know what underage looks like.” Even if the content contains images for self-harm for example, and the image is of someone who looks underage the user is treated like an adult and sent information about organisations which help with self-harming issues, rather than being reported for being underage: “If this person was a kid, like a 10-year-old kid we don’t care, we still action the ticket as if they were an adult.” Facebook confirmed to Dispatches that its policy is not to take action about content posted by users who appear to be underage, unless the user admits to being underage.

Hate speech:

       Dispatches’ undercover reporter is told that, while content which racially abuses protected ethnic or religious groups violates Facebook’s guidelines, if the posts racially abuse immigrants from these groups, then the content is permitted. Facebook’s training for moderators also includes a post including a cartoon comment which describes drowning a girl if her first boyfriend is a negro, as content which is permitted. Facebook confirmed to Dispatches that the picture violates their hate speech standards and they are reviewing what went wrong to prevent it from happening again.

     “Shielded Review” – Popular pages kept up despite violations:
Our undercover reporter is told that if any page is found to have five or more pieces of content that violate Facebook’s rules, then the entire page should be taken down, in accordance with the company’s policies. But we have discovered that posts on Facebook’s most popular pages, with the highest numbers of followers, cannot be deleted by ordinary content moderators at Cpl. Instead, they are referred to the Shielded Review Queue where they can be directly assessed by Facebook rather than Cpl staff. These pages include those belonging to jailed former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, who has over 900,000 followers, and who has been given the same protected status as Governments and news organisations. A moderator tells the undercover reporter that the far-right group Britain First’s pages were left up despite repeatedly featuring content that breached Facebook’s guidelines because, “they have a lot of followers so they’re generating a lot of revenue for Facebook. The Britain First Facebook page was finally deleted in March 2018 following the arrest of deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

      Facebook confirmed to Dispatches that they do have special procedures for popular and high profile pages, which includes Tommy Robinson and included Britain First.

      They say Shielded Review has been renamed ‘Cross Check’. Lord Allen told Dispatches: “if the content is indeed violating it will go….I want to be clear this is not a discussion about money, this is a discussion about political speech. People are debating very sensitive issues on Facebook, including issues like immigration. And that political debate can be entirely legitimate. I do think having extra reviewers on that when the debate is taking place absolutely makes sense and I think people would expect us to be careful and cautious before we take down their political speech.”

      Delays in moderating content:

      Facebook’s publicly stated aim is to assess all reported content within 24 hours. However, during the period of the undercover filming, Dispatches found a significant backlog. Moderators told the undercover reporter that due to the volume of reports, or tickets, they are supposed to moderate, they are unable to check up to 7,000 reported comments on a daily basis. At one point there is a backlog of 15,000 reports which have not been assessed, with some tickets are still waiting for moderation up to five days after being reported. Facebook told Dispatches that the backlog filmed in the programme was cleared by 6 April.

…/ends

[my yellow highlighting]

Did the Australian Bureau of Statistics spy on Telstra customers at one remove in 2016?

“…with its near-complete coverage of the population, mobile device data is now seen as a feasible way to estimate temporary populations” [Australian Bureau of Statistics Demographer Andrew Howe, quoted in The Australian Bureau of Statistics Tracked People By Their Mobile Device Data at Medium, 23 April 2018]

Cryptoparty founder. Amnesty Australia 'Humanitarian Media Award' recipient 2014 and activist Asher Wolf recently reported that in 2016 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) without informing or seeking permission from mobile phone users ran a secretive, publicly-funded tracking program via signals emitted by the mobile phones of an unspecified number of people, in order to find out where they travelled over the course of an unspecified number of days and how long they stayed at each location.

A presentation of the basic details of this pilot study was made by the ABS researcher leading the pilot at a Spatial Information Day in Adelaide on 11 August 2017.

A second ABS researcher also made a presentation on the day.

Spatial Information Day (which has the ABS as one of its sponsors) is characterised by the organisers as an annual educational and promotional event and was first held just on 18 years ago.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics was swift to reply to Asher Wolf's Medium article, stating that it has only been supplied with hourly agregate data by the telco (Telstra) which did not identify individuals.

However, the aggregated data supplied to the ABS was at the second lowest SA2 Level and some of these statistcal areas have populations of well under 3,000 residents according to 2016 Census data. Which makes the task of matching names to some of the tracked population movements just that much easier for a demographer or determined hacker.

Given recent less than transparent disclosures by data mining corporations concerning data collection/retention practices, readers might forgive me for waiting to see if the other shoe drops in this ABS-Telsta data mining and privacy matter.

One might say that thanks to Ms. Wolf we are all being educated further about big data and the ethics of data collection.

This is the response Ms. Wolf received when she contacted privacy experts concerning the pilot study:

“I find this tracking of people using their telephone location data without their knowledge and consent extremely concerning. The fact that the telecoms company allowed this data to be handed to a third party, and then for that third party to be a government agency compounds the breach of trust for the people whose data was involved,” said Angela Daly, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Law, research associate in the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society and Digital Rights Watch board member.

“After the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal this is yet another example of why we need much tougher restrictions on what companies and the government can do with our data.”

Electronic Frontiers Australia board member Justin Warren also pointed out that while there are beneficial uses for this kind of information, “…the ABS should be treading much more carefully than it is. The ABS damaged its reputation with its bungled management of the 2016 Census, and with its failure to properly consult with civil society about its decision to retain names and addresses. Now we discover that the ABS is running secret tracking experiments on the population?”

“Even if the ABS’ motives are benign, this behaviour — making ethically dubious decisions without consulting the public it is experimenting on — continues to damage the once stellar reputation of the ABS.”

“This kind of population tracking has a dark history. During World War II, the US Census Bureau used this kind of tracking information to round up Japanese-Americans for internment. Census data was used extensively by Nazi Germany to target specific groups of people. The ABS should be acutely aware of these historical abuses, and the current tensions within society that mirror those earlier, dark days all too closely.”

“The ABS must work much harder to ensure that it is conducting itself with the broad support of the Australian populace. Sadly, it appears that the ABS increasingly considers itself above the mundane concerns of those outside its ivory tower. This arrogance must end.”

“For us to continue to trust the ABS with our most intimate details, the ABS must maintain society’s trust. Conducting experiments on citizens without seeming to care about our approval or consent undermines that trust.”

International privacy advocates also raised concerns about the study.

“Data the companies, like telcos, collect inevitably becomes very attractive to government agencies looking to track, monitor, and survey people. Like here, users are rarely informed, let alone consent to these uses. The impact on privacy rights is severe: location information (especially combined with other sensitive data) can reveal startlingly detailed information about your life (where you live, work), connections (who you talk to or visit), preferences (what you buy and when), and health (doctors and pharmacies frequented),” stated Amie Stepanovich, U.S. Policy Manager for digital rights organisation Access Now.

Read Asher Wolf’s full article at https://medium.com/@Asher_Wolf/the-australian-bureau-of-statistics-tracked-people-by-their-mobile-device-data-and-didnt-tell-them-16df094de31