The War on the Internet event, which was co-hosted by EFA and the Australian Greens, was held at Trades Hall in Melbourne on 21st January 2012. It featured:

Jacob Applebaum - leading computer security researcher and hacker
Bernard Keane - 'Crikey' journalist and author
Scott Ludlam - Senator for Western Australia and Greens spokesperson for Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy
Suelette Dreyfus - author and researcher on whistleblowing

This is a video of the talk by Bernard Keane:

War on the Internet event #1 - Bernard Keane from Electronic Frontiers Australia on Vimeo.

Keane's argument is about the conflict between the internet's interconnectedness and community and the hierarchy of corporations and governments. The latter respond to the challenges thrown up by the former with greater surveillance of internet communities and attacks on the flow of information. In the Australian context we have seen extra powers being given to ASIO in the Cyber Crime bill.

Keane has written e-book entitled The War on the Internet, which charts how the internet wars are impacting people online and examines the impact it is having on individuals, corporations, governments and democracy.

It chronicles the wave of attacks being launched by governments the world over on both the internet and its users. His taxonomy is: those by illegitimate regimes trying to protect themselves, those mounted in the name of national security, those mounted by or at the behest of powerful gatekeepers to protect old business models, and those aimed at cultural engineering.

The talk by Suelette Dreyfus about the surveillance society is here.

Comments

Posted by: Nan | January 26, 2012 12:17 PM