Australian Biosecurity: here we go again.....

The Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources from 21.9.15 to 27.10.17 
and from 6.12.17 to 20.12.17 was Nationals MP for New England Barnaby 
Joyce.

The current Agriculture and Water Resources Minister since 20.12.17 is 
Nationals MP for Maranoa David Littleproud, a former banker who has been 
in federal parliament for less than two years.

The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection from 23.12.14 onwards 
and Minister for Home Affairs since 20.12.17 is Liberal MP for Dickson 
Peter Dutton.

These three men between them have brought Australian biosecurity to its 
knees and kept it there.

Funding cuts, staffing cuts and poorly planned reorganisation made sure a 
failing biosecurity system ensued.

The story so far.......

ABC News, 21 February 2017:

Quarantine staff feared three years ago staff cuts would threaten the 
biosecurity of Australia's multi-million-dollar agricultural industries.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) surveyed 300 of its 
members in 2014 and found two thirds said "Australia's biosecurity 
has become worse or significantly worse over the past decade due 
to declining standards and increasing risks".

The figures have been reviewed as the Queensland Government 
moves to spend about $15 million on south-east prawn farms while 
white spot disease is traced and eradicated.

It is unknown what caused the white spot disease outbreak that has 
shut down the Logan River prawn farms, where prawns with a combined 
value of $25 million have been euthanased, but tests have shown white 
spot on imported frozen prawns from Asia.

This week, the Federal Government issued a recall of all remaining 
frozen imported prawns for testing.

Tight budget puts pressure on capacity

CPSU deputy national secretary Rupert Evans said the clear view of 
members was that budget cuts, the adoption of a risk-based approach, 
and industry self-regulation would lead to more biosecurity incursions.

"Our members would be saddened and even gutted that they might be 
proven right," he said.

The biosecurity approach is based on risk analysis and shared 
responsibility between governments and industry under the 
Intergovernmental Agreement on Biosecurity.

A review of the IGAB found a tight fiscal environment for governments 
had placed significant pressure on biosecurity budgets and their 
capacity to meet biosecurity commitments.

Not enough people on job

The union said it worried about the impact of efficiency measures.

"In 2013-14 there was a more than 10 per cent cut to the budget to 
Department of Agriculture biosecurity, and it was said at the time, this 
was going to lead to not enough people to do the job," Mr Evans said.

"Another part of risk-based intervention is that it needs to be based on 
sound and unbiased evidence, not just on simply reducing costs.

Inspector-General of Biosecurity, Review report no. 2017–18/01, December 
2017, excerpt:

In 2016–17, the major WSD outbreak in Queensland prawn farms led to a 
six-month suspension of uncooked prawn imports into Australia. Very 
high levels of WSSV were found in imported uncooked prawns, destined 
for retail outlets across the country, which had already passed, Australia’s 
border biosecurity controls. This indicated a major failure of Australia’s 
biosecurity system, which was not providing an appropriate level of 
protection.

During this review, I found several deficiencies in the management of the 
biosecurity risk of uncooked prawn imports, with broader implications for 
Australia’s biosecurity risk management more generally. I found that 
specific policy elements and their implementation had sowed the seeds 
of failure many years before, while progressive and cumulative acts, 
omissions and systemic factors at many levels exacerbated the risks over 
time. Many of these failings have been swiftly addressed by the department 
and other stakeholders, but more needs to be done to manage the biosecurity 
risks of prawn imports in the future. I have made recommendations to improve 
this biosecurity risk management framework and its ability to deal with 
ongoing and emerging challenges. Long-term adequate resourcing will be a 
key success factor in this endeavour.

The importation of uncooked prawns and other seafood into Australia will 
continue to pose significant and changing challenges for the department 
and industry. The recent WSD outbreak in Queensland, and the subsequent 
findings of massive importation of WSSV-infected prawns, despite previous 
import requirements intended to keep this virus out, highlight the need for the department to remain vigilant, proactively review and update import requirements and policies, and maintain excellent communication with both government and industry stakeholders. Above all, detecting and deterring deliberate or inadvertent failures to implement biosecurity risk management policies effectively must be a priority. Governments and aquatic industries must cooperate to resource and implement these efforts. Failure to do so will imperil the future development of a sustainable and profitable aquaculture sector in Australia.

ABC News, 2 July 2018:

A highly destructive virus has again been detected in supermarket prawns 
despite tightened import restrictions introduced after a disease outbreak 
decimated south-east Queensland's prawn farming industry.

The shock results come as a Four Corners investigation reveals how some 
ruthless seafood importers have been deliberately evading Australia's 
biosecurity defences in a hunt for profit, exploiting a quarantine regime 
identified as "remarkably naive" in a top-level inquiry.

The revelations raise troubling questions about the nature of Australia's preparedness to combat a slew of exotic diseases and pests that have 
the potential to wreak carnage on the economy.

Brian Jones, former adviser to the Inspector-General of Biosecurity, 
said the incursion of white spot disease in 2016 "won't be the last".

"The Government is not fulfilling its duty to protect the border," he said.

In the face of soaring international trade, scientists, industry executives 
and former government officials have told Four Corners that Australia's 
biosecurity defences have been simply inadequate…..

In a scathing review Mr Jones co-authored, the Inspector-General found the devastating outbreak of white spot was "a major failure of Australia's 
biosecurity system".

Critical to this failure was a policy decision that allowed seafood importers 
to unpack shipping containers into cold stores unsupervised by any 
government officials.

The policy afforded rogue players days and sometimes weeks to disguise 
dodgy consignments from inspectors, including by substituting diseased 
prawns for clean ones.

The Inspector-General found the department had placed "too much trust 
in importers to do the right thing".

"The department demonstrated a remarkable level of naivety about the 
potential for importers to wilfully circumvent import conditions for any 
class of prawns that required viral testing."

The department conceded to Four Corners there were "significant 
shortcomings in its handling of this issue", and insisted it had "taken 
substantial action to address them".

Import conditions were tightened midway through last year after a 
six-month trade suspension was lifted.

As of July 2017, no containers could be opened except by biosecurity 
officers.

Yet the virus — which poses no harm to humans — has reared its head 
again.

In April, Queensland officials identified the virus in the wild, at locations 
in the northern reaches of Moreton Bay.

Then, in late May, the Department of Agriculture quietly released a note 
that said 12 consignments of prawns — stopped at the wharves under 
the new "enhanced" regime — had tested positive for the disease.

Fresh testing reveals white spot

Now, Four Corners can reveal the virus is still getting past the 
department's frontline.

Testing conducted for the program found traces of the virus present in 
30 per cent of prawn samples purchased from a range of supermarket 
outlets in the south-east Queensland area.

The samples were examined by University of the Sunshine Coast 
professor Wayne Knibb, an expert in the genetics of marine animals. 
He tested green prawns from 10 major retail outlets.

"We found about a third of the material that we looked had evidence 
of white spot DNA in it," he said.

Professor Knibb's testing has been independently verified by a separate 
laboratory.

"Clearly, if we can find in a very limited sample 30 per cent of samples 
that were in the history connected or in contact with the virus, then 
clearly we're playing with fire here," he said.

"We have a route of a virus that is a particularly dangerous virus and 
shown worldwide just how destructive it can be. It's damaged whole 
national economies, and it's cost billions of dollars."

ABC TV “Four Corners”, 2 July 2018:

Four Corners has confirmed that supermarket-bought prawns are still 
being used by recreational fishers on the Logan River upstream from 
prawn farms…..

 It has been put to us that some front-line officers working for the 
Department over the past decade have engaged in any or several of 
the following: corrupt conduct including the acceptance of financial 
benefits from importers, and the extortion of some importers in return 
for financial benefits. Is the Department's aware of any cases of this 
nature or similar in the past decade?

All allegations of corruption in this area of our business are referred 
to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI). 
We cannot comment on current or ongoing investigations for 
operational security reasons. ACLEI have investigated a number of 
matters involving corrupt conduct of departmental staff and publish 
all results on their website.

Japan finds threats and bribery not working as well as expected with member countries in International Whaling Commission – will seek to change voting rules

I’ve lost count of the times that Japan has threatened to leave the International 
Whaling Commission (IWC) and bribery allegations seem to have been floating 
around forever. 

In 2001 a Japanese government official admitted to using these tools.

However, it appears the Government of Japan is not satisfied with results to date 
and now want to see IWC voting rules changed so that it won’t take as many 
threats and bribes to get its way and recommence large-scale commercial whaling.

Kyoda News, 27 June 2018:

Japan is set to propose resuming commercial whaling of some species at a 
meeting of the International Whaling Commission in September as a ruling 
party endorsed the government plan on Tuesday.

Tokyo is targeting certain types of whales whose numbers are relatively 
abundant such as minke whales for the proposal, but it remains uncertain 
whether it can secure support from members of the IWC that are split over 
whaling.

Tuesday's approval by the Liberal Democratic Party came amid emerging 
calls from some government officials and ruling party lawmakers that Japan 
should weigh withdrawal from the IWC.

Their criticism is directed at the divisive and what they see as dysfunctional 
nature of the international body, with one ruling party source saying, "We 
are not going to drag this out."

At the meeting from Sept. 10 to 14 in Brazil, to be chaired by Japanese 
government representative Joji Morishita, Japan plans to make a packaged 
proposal that also calls for easing of the IWC's decision-making rules, a plan
seen as a tactic to court anti-whaling members.

Currently, approval from a majority of three-fourths of IWC members is 
needed to set a catch quota or a sanctuary where whaling is banned. 
The Japanese proposal is to lower the hurdle to a simple majority.

The potential easing of the rules will make it easier for anti-whaling members
to secure support for designating a new whale sanctuary.

Of the IWC's 88 members, 40 support whaling while the remaining 48 are 
against the practice, according to Japan's Fisheries Agency.

The IWC, which aims to manage whaling and conserve whales, was 
established in 1948. In 1982, it declared there should be a moratorium on 
commercial whaling and the ban came into force in 1986.

Japan stopped commercial whaling across the board in fiscal 1988. But it 
continues to hunt whales for "research purposes," drawing criticism 
overseas that the practice is a cover for commercial whaling.

Phys Org, 27 June 2018:

At September's meeting in Brazil, Japan "will propose setting a catch 
quota for species whose stocks are recognised as healthy by the IWC 
scientific committee", Hideki Moronuki, an official in charge of whaling at 
Japan's fisheries agency, told AFP.

Moronuki said the proposal would not specify which whale species and 
how many mammals Japan wants to hunt, but he said the IWC classifies 
several species as no longer depleted.

The moratorium has been in place since 1986, and Japan's previous 
attempts to win a partial lifting have been unsuccessful.

Japan will also propose measures to change the body's decision-making 
process, lowering the threshold for proposals to pass from three quarters 
of members to half.

"The IWC has not been functioning. We should get united to build a more 
cooperative system," Moronuki said.

Tokyo has continued to hunt whales despite the moratorium, exploiting a 
loophole allowing "scientific research". It says the research is necessary to prove whale populations are large enough to sustain a return to commercial 
hunting.

It makes no secret of the fact that meat from the expeditions ends up on dinner tables, despite a significant decline in the popularity of whale meat.

Whales were a key protein source in the immediate post-World War II years, 
when the country was desperately poor, but most Japanese now say they 
rarely or never eat whale.

But foreign pressure on Japan to stop whaling has hardened the positions 
of conservative activists and politicians.

Japan cancelled its 2014-2015 hunt after the International Court of Justice 
said permits being issued by Tokyo were "not for purposes of scientific 
research".

But it resumed the hunts in 2016, and conservationists were furious this 
year after Japan reported it had caught 333 minkes on its latest expedition, 
122 of which were pregnant.

Japanese officials said the high rate of pregnant whales showed the strength 
of the minke population.

Japan's last bid to ease the restrictions was in 2014, when the IWC voted 
down its request to hunt 17 minke whales in its coastal waters—where 
smaller whales which Japan claims are not regulated by the committee are 
already hunted.

NAIDOC Week 2018 - Sunday 8 July to Sunday 15 July

National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC):

Under the theme - Because of Her, We Can! - NAIDOC Week 2018 will be held nationally from Sunday 8 July and continue through to Sunday 15 July.

As pillars of our society, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have played – and continue to play - active and significant roles at the community, local, state and national levels.

As leaders, trailblazers, politicians, activists and social change advocates, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women fought and continue to fight, for justice, equal rights, our rights to country, for law and justice, access to education, employment and to maintain and celebrate our culture, language, music and art.

They continue to influence as doctors, lawyers, teachers, electricians, chefs, nurses, architects, rangers, emergency and defence personnel, writers, volunteers, chief executive officers, actors, singer songwriters, journalists, entrepreneurs, media personalities, board members, accountants, academics, sporting icons and Olympians, the list goes on.

They are our mothers, our elders, our grandmothers, our aunties, our sisters and our daughters.

Sadly, Indigenous women’s role in our cultural, social and political survival has often been invisible, unsung or diminished.

For at least 65,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have carried our dreaming stories, songlines, languages and knowledge that have kept our culture strong and enriched us as the oldest continuing culture on the planet.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were there at first contact.

They were there at the Torres Strait Pearlers strike in 1936, the Day of Mourning in 1938, the 1939 Cummeragunja Walk-Off, at the 1946 Pilbara pastoral workers' strike, the 1965 Freedom Rides, the Wave Hill walk off in 1966, on the front line of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972 and at the drafting of the Uluru Statement.

They have marched, protested and spoken at demonstrations and national gatherings for the proper recognition of our rights and calling for national reform and justice.

Our women were heavily involved in the campaign for the 1967 Referendum and also put up their hands to represent their people at the establishment of national advocacy and representative bodies from the National Aboriginal Congress (NAC) to ATSIC to Land Councils and onto the National Congress for Australia’s First Peoples.

They often did so while caring for our families, maintaining our homes and breaking down cultural and institutionalised barriers and gender stereotypes.

Our women did so because they demanded a better life, greater opportunities and - in many cases equal rights - for our children, our families and our people.

They were pioneering women like Barangaroo, Truganini, Gladys Elphick, Fannie Cochrane-Smith, Evelyn Scott, Pearl Gibbs, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Celuia Mapo Salee, Thancoupie, Justine Saunders, Gladys Nicholls, Flo Kennedy, Essie Coffey, Isabel Coe, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Eleanor Harding, Mum Shirl, Ellie Gaffney and Gladys Tybingoompa.

Today, they are trailblazers like Joyce Clague, Yalmay Yunupingu, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Nova Peris, Carol Martin, Elizabeth Morgan, Barbara Shaw, Rose Richards, Vonda Malone, Margaret Valadian, Lowitja O’Donoghue, June Oscar, Pat O’Shane, Pat Anderson Jill Milroy, Banduk Marika, Linda Burney and Rosalie Kunoth-Monks – to name but a few.

Their achievements, their voice, their unwavering passion give us strength and have empowered past generations and paved the way for generations to come.

Because of her, we can!

Yet another 'temporary' asphalt batching plant rears its ugly head - this time at Woombah in the Clarence Valley

It would appear that the Berejiklian Government is about to wish a temporary asphalt batching plant on the Lower Clarence River flood plain.

Running for two and a half years day and night.

Two years of bitumen odour from the holding tanks, lime dust from the silo, diesel fumes from the generator, sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides releasing during production - all wafting on the breeze - along with the never ending rumble of dusty heavy trucks belching exhaust fumes.

Then a cleanup of the toxic waste left behind.

With not even the courtesy of a genuine community consultation.

Australian and NSW Government-RMS, June 2018:

The Australian and NSW governments are jointly funding the Woolgoolga to Ballina Pacific Highway upgrade. Roads and Maritime Services’ Pacific Highway Project Office, Pacific Complete and its contractor partners are working together to deliver the upgrade.

To build the upgrade, the project team will be establishing batch plants along the 155 kilometre route. These sites will have different functions and will support the building of the new road.

The project team is proposing to build a temporary asphalt batch plant at Woombah. The batch plant would be located on the eastern side of the existing highway about 700 metres north of the old Iluka Road turnoff. A map has been provided to show the proposed location of the temporary asphalt batch plant.

This facility would make asphalt for the upgrade between Maclean and Devils Pulpit. Batch plants are facilities where raw materials are brought in, mixed together and then loaded into trucks and transported to site for use.

If approved, we would start building this site in July, with the batch plant operational by mid-August 2018. This site is proposed to be operational for about two and a half years with the land to be rehabilitated after completion in line with the project’s conditions of approval…..

There would be up to 500 heavy vehicle movements and 100 light vehicle movements per day at peak…..

Typically work would be carried out during the project’s approved construction hours which are:

9am -  6pm Monday – Friday

8am – 5pm Saturday

In areas where residents live more than 200 metres from the work area, extended work hours are allowed between 6am and 7am and 6pm and 7pm from Monday to Friday. Additionally, work outside or normal construction hours is also allowed where the impact to residents is predicted to be low, including no greater increase in noise levels than 5 decibels above the existing background noise level. 

The batch plant would need to be operational whenever asphalting work is required on the road. To minimise the impact on the Pacific Highway and ensure the work sites are safe, some of this work would be carried out at night. The temporary batch plant would need to operate at night to support these activities. Residents would be notified in advance of this taking place.

We are seeking your feedback on the proposed building and operation of the temporary asphalt batch plant at Woombah. To have your say, please fill out the attached feedback form by Wednesday 4 July 2018.

You can return it by:

 Email: W2B@pacificcomplete.com.au

Alternatively, you can provide your feedback over the phone by calling 1800 778 900 (toll free).

Google Earth snapshot of Woombah site and surrounding land, an est. 2.5kms as the crow flies from the Clarence River estuary and est. 1km from residential dwellings.

Woombah batching site boundaries.

The Daily Examiner, Letter to the Editor, 29 June 2018, p. 9:

Iluka Road problems

THE safety of Iluka road users is being put at risk by increasing truck movements to an additional 500 truck and trailers as well as 100 cars per day. That’s an additional truck or car travelling on Iluka road at a rate of one every 50 seconds! A situation that will continue for two and a half years.

The NSW Government has put out a letter seeking feedback on a proposed asphalt batch plant at Woombah for the Pacific Highway Upgrade from Mororo to Devils Pulpit.

However speaking with other locals in the Woombah area I found out quickly that very few residents of Woombah, let alone IIluka have received this letter. It is something that will affect all the 2500 residents of Iluka/Woombah area, as well as tourists and service vehicles. The letter has only just been sent out, but the site is already being prepared. Another case of community consultation and feedback after the fact, and the decision has been made!

The new temporary turn off from Iluka Rd onto the highway is already a difficult and dangerous turn-off because of the short turning lanes, additional turns and give way signs. Along with increased truck movements and road blockages associated with the construction of the Iluka road overpass, the dangers associated with navigating this entrance and exit to Iluka Road has increased.

Now all the traffic for an asphalt batching plant is to also travel on Garretts Lane, coming from the Old Pacific Highway and crossing Iluka Rd onto this new temporary turn-off.

This will cause traffic congestion problems for all Iluka Rd users. It will create further problems entering and exiting the highway. It will increase that danger of motor vehicle collisions and possible injury. We must stand up for the safety of our loved ones, our children, and for the many families who holiday here.

Locating the batching plant where it has its own dedicated access road to the highway, one which could adequately accommodate this large number of truck movements is the only sufficient solution. They should not be placed on busy local roads.

There are several areas, including Mororo Rd, which have already been blocked to public access, which could easily be fitted out for this purpose without endangering people.

Also with the plant being on the Western side of the Pacific Highway, these fully loaded trucks that are all going north will not have to cross the busy Pacific Highway but instead only need to merge with traffic. This would also solve the problem

Davild Wilson, Iluka

Oi! Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and every dumb-witted member of his federal government as well as every premier and member of a state or territory government – when are you all going to wake up to the fact that digital is bloody dangerous?

For literally hundreds of years now, first in colonial, then in dominion and later in federation periods, Australia has relied on a 'paper and ink' processes to decide major political votes by its eligible citizens.

By and large this system has produced reliable results with regards to the people's will.

However, in the 21st Century government's blind infatuation with digital 'innovation' is now dangerously out-of-control.

This is evidence of just the latest red flag that Australian governments have ignored ……

The Mercury online, 30 June 2018:

The personal information of about 4000 Tasmanian voters has been leaked after a data breach on a third-party website linked to express votes, the state’s Electoral Commission has revealed.

Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey said hackers had access to the names, dates of birth, emails and postal addresses of those who applied for an express vote at the recent state and Legislative Council elections.

“Early today, the Tasmanian Electoral Commission was informed by the Barcelona-based company Typeform, that an unknown third party had gained access to one of their servers and downloaded certain information,” he said.

“Typeform online forms have been used on the TEC website since 2015 for some of its election services. The breach involved an unknown attacker downloading a backup file.

“Typeform’s full investigation of the breach identified that data collected through five forms on the TEC website had been stolen.”

MORE: STATEMENT BY TYPEFORM

The breach was identified by Typeform on June 27 and shut down within half an hour of detection, Mr Hawkey said.

“The Electoral Commission will be contacting electors that used these services in the coming days to inform them of the breach,” Mr Hawkey said.

“The Electoral Commission apologises for the breach and will re-evaluate its collection procedures and internal security elements around its storage of electoral information for future events. The breach has no connection to the national or state electoral roll.”

Mr Hawkey said some of the stolen information had previously been made public, such as candidate statements for local government by-elections.

Typeform said it had responded immediately and had fixed the source of the breach to prevent further hacks.

“We have since been performing a full forensic investigation of the incident to be certain that this cannot happen again,” a statement on the Typeform website read.

“The results that were accessed are from a partial backup dated May 3, 2018. Results collected since May 3 are therefore safe and not compromised.’

Typeform reportedly provides services for some pretty big names, including Apple, Uber, Airbnb and Forbes.

The hack comes after up to 120,000 Tasmanian job seekers may have had their personal information compromised following a data breach reported by human resources company PageUp in early June.

That site was linked to the Tasmanian Government and the University of Tasmania.

The State Government is still waiting for a further response from PageUp but it is believed the breach was limited to names, addresses, emails and phone numbers.

So what has Facebook Inc been up to lately?

Everything from admitting to further data breaches, to altering images, to supressing legitimate content, to considering payment for access, to shareholder revolt, it seems......

The Herald Sun reported on 9 June 2018 at p.59:

Facebook is ­embroiled in another data privacy scandal, confirming a software bug led to the private posts of 14 million users being made public.

According to Facebook, the bug was active from May 18 to May 27 and changed the privacy settings of some users without telling them.

“Today we started letting the 14 million people affected know — and asking them to review any posts they made during that time,” Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said.

“To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before, and they could still choose their audience just as they always have.” It was unclear yesterday how many Australian users were affected. Facebook said the bug occ­urred during the development of a new share function that ­allowed users to share featured items on their profile page, such as a photo.

“The problem has been fixed, and for anyone affected, we changed the audience back to what they’d been using before,” Ms Egan said.

Facebook has urged affected customers to review posts made between May 18 and May 27 to see if any private posts had been automatically made public.

The latest issue comes as Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg faces the prospect of a public grilling before the Aus­tralian parliament’s intelligence and security committee.

Facebook admitted this week it had struck data partnerships — where it shares the personal data of people on the social media platform — with at least four Chinese electronics companies, including Huawei Technologies.

Huawei has been barred from a series of major projects in Australia over concerns about its close links to the Chinese government.

Members of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee want Mr Zuckerberg to come to Australia and answer questions about the data-sharing pact.

On 18 June 2018 The Sun reported that Facebook Inc had begun to manipulate images – effectively producing ‘fake images’ that were being passed off a real.

Then on 20 June 2018 Facebook Inc. declared its intention to charge certain private group users for participation on its platforms:

Today, we’re piloting subscriptions with a small number of groups to continue to support group admins who lead these communities.

This world-wide social platform apparently expects that if it formally launches this access fee (reportedly up to $360 a year) then these costs to be passed on as subscription fees – with Facebook  letting administrators charge subscription fees from $4.99 to $29.99 each month to join premium subgroups containing exclusive posts.

Presumably, if the market responds in sufficient numbers then Facebook will change the rules and demand that private groups hand over a percentage of subscription fees collected.

The Guardian, 24 June 2018:

George Orwell wrote in his essay Politics and the English Language: “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues.” 

When Facebook constructed a new archive of political advertising, had it thought a little more about this concept of what is “political”, it might have more accurately anticipated the subsequent Orwellian headache. As it is, journalists are finding their articles restricted from promotion because they are lumped in with campaigning materials from politicians, lobby groups and advocacy organisations.

The new archive of ads with political content, which Facebook made public last month, has become the latest contested piece of territory between platforms and publishers. The complaint from publishers is that Facebook is categorising posts in which they are promoting their own journalism (paying money to target particular groups of the audience) as “political ads”. Publishers have reacted furiously to what they see as toxic taxonomy.

Mark Thompson, the chief executive of the New York Times, has been the most vocal critic, describing Facebook’s practices as “a threat to democracy” and criticising the platform in a recent speech to the Open Markets Initiative in Washington DC. “When it comes to news, Facebook still doesn’t get it,” said Thompson. “In its effort to clear up one bad mess, it seems to be joining those who want to blur the line between reality-based journalism and propaganda.”

At a separate event at Columbia University, Thompson and Facebook’s head of news partnerships, Campbell Brown, fought openly about the initiative. Thompson showed examples of where New York Times articles, including recipes, had been wrongly flagged as political. Brown emphasised that the archive was being refined, but stood firm on the principle that promoted journalism ought to be flagged as “paid-for” political posts. “On this you are just wrong,” she told Thompson.

Publishers took to social platforms to question the labelling and representation of their work. One of the most egregious examples came from investigative journalism organisation Reveal. Last week, at the height of the scandal around the separation of undocumented migrant families crossing the US border, it published an exclusive story involving the alleged drugging of children at a centre housing immigrant minors. It was flagged in the Facebook system as containing political content, and as Reveal had not registered its promotion of the story, the promoted posts were stifled. Facebook did not remove the article, but rather stopped its paid circulation. Given the importance of paid promotion, it is not surprising that publishers see this as amounting to the same thing.

And trust issues can be found both inside and outside Facebook's castle walls.....

Business Insider, 24 June 2018:

A Survata study, seen exclusively by Business Insider, asked US consumers to rate big tech companies from one (most trusted) to five (least trusted). Survata surveyed more than 2,600 people in April and May. It’s the first time Survata has carried out the survey.

The results show that Facebook is nowhere near as trusted as Amazon, PayPal, or Microsoft – but that people do trust it more than Instagram. Instagram, of course, is owned by Facebook.

Here’s the top 15 in order of most to least trusted:

1 .Amazon

2. PayPal

3. Microsoft

4. Apple

5. IBM

6. Yahoo

7. Google

8. YouTube

9. eBay

10. Pandora

11. Facebook

12. LinkedIn

13. Spotify

14. AOL

15. Instagram

Business Insider, 26 June 2018:

Shareholders with nearly $US3 billion invested Facebook are trying to topple Mark Zuckerberg as chairman and tear up the company’s governance structure.

Business Insider has spoken with six prominent shareholders who said there was an unprecedented level of unrest among Facebook’s backers following a series of scandals.

They are in open revolt about Zuckerberg’s power base, which gives him the ability to swat away any shareholder proposal he disagrees with.

 One investor compared him to a robber baron, a derogatory term for 19th-century US tycoons who accumulated enormous wealth.

Facebook says its governance structure is “sound and effective” and splitting Zuckerberg’s duties as chairman and CEO would cause “uncertainty, confusion, and inefficiency.”

Finally, it was reported on 29 June 2018 by IT News that, you guessed it, yet another Facebook sponsored personality test was allowing data to be extracted without the users knowledge or informed consent:

A security researcher has found that a popular personality test app running on Facebook contained an easily exploitable flaw that could be used to expose sensitive information on tens of millions of users.

Belgian security researcher Inti De Ceukelaire joined Facebook's bug bounty program, set up by the giant social network after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal and tried out the NameTests.com's personality test app developed by Social Sweethearts.

De Ceukelaire discovered that when he loaded a personality test, NameTests.com fetched his personal data from Facebook and displayed it on a webpage.

He was shocked to see that users' personal data was wrapped in a Javascript file by NameTests.com, which could be accessed via a weblink over the plain text HTTP protocol.

This meant that any website that requested the file could access the personal information retrieved from users' Facebook accounts.

The security researcher tested this by setting up a website that connected to NameTests.com and was able to access Facebook posts, photos and friend lists belonging to visitors.

Information leaked included people's Facebook IDs, first and last names, languages used, gender, date of birth, profile pictures, cover photo, currency, devices used, and much more.

Worse, De Ceukelaire found that NameTests.com doesn't log off users which means the site would continue to leak user data even after the app was deleted.