Posts by Russell Brown
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Juha's story for Australian IT quotes the GCSB as saying the failure of their website and its backup was "an internal issue". I'm not entirely comforted by the fact that the website of our "mastery of cyberspace" agency can just fall over to that degree.
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
It’s not a lie. Sean is a freelance reporter and photojournalist. He won a 2010 QANTAS Award, and some photojournalist thing from the time he worked at The Aucklander(?) and has also previously worked as a media person for the Green Party. He’s currently a media person for the Embassy. I’m not sure how long his contract is.
Yes, I've dealt with Sean -- nice guy. I'm sure he's not an intelligence operative. But also: public committee hearing, public figure, every man and his media dog taking pictures. It's not exactly spying.
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I very much imagine Key would have preferred not to do it on this occasion.
I'm sure that's true. But his actual conduct in doing it was weird and at times distasteful. He came across as baiting several submitters, and didn't seem well-briefed on key matters.
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Righto. Someone had to win the prizes and there were so many great hacks that I just went with the two things that immediately made me go “oh! Imma try that!”
Jessica Rose with freezing green grapes and using them as tasty little globes to keep your white wine cool.
And Richard Ram with green seasoning.
They both win the Selaks Roast Day goodie bags.
Thanks all, and don’t feel you have to stop now.
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Here’s an embiggened version of that Incapsula error page. Just to note that it the IP address fields weren't empty, I just took them out.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Thank you! I can now win my argument on this issue WITH SCIENCE.
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Wikileaks has just fired off a volley of tweets indicating that Snowden is seeking asylum from pretty much any country that might have him and a few that definitely won't: Austria, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Cuba, Nicaragua ...
What a mess.
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And meanwhile, the Snowden debacle rolls on. He has now been obliged to seek asylum in Russia:
Russia maintains one of the world's most developed intelligence mechanisms and is widely believed to engage in snooping on its own citizens. In stark contrast to Russia's approach to Snowden, whom Putin likened to the Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov, Russian whistleblowers are often attacked – one, the anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny, is currently on trial and another, the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison.
And yet Assange remains a champion of the Kremlin. Earlier this month, the WikiLeaks founder, who had a television show on the Kremlin's English-language propaganda channel Russia Today, said he had advised Snowden to seek asylum there.
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Hard News: Media3: Watching the Fourth Estate, in reply to David Hood,
I think, if parliamentary email records are being provided at the request of the PM's Chief of Staff, MPs have to assume they have no private communication (to be honest, they should be assuming this anyway, it is just the other people in the know are much more local than previously assumed).
As I've just pointed out in a Twitter discussion, the role of the Fourth Estate has long rested on such assumptions. On one level, yeah, don't do your leaking on the Parliamentary email service.
On the other, the executive and Parliamentary Services are supposed to be separate. I find it disturbing that the PM's senior staff member can simply reach into the emails of MPs -- including MPs of other parties, as Dunne was -- for the very political purpose of tracking down leaks to the press.
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Hard News: Media3: Saving the Lab, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Hopefully no money changed hands, and it was seen as the NZ Govt getting a return on its investment in the Warners/Jackson empire…
I think it was of the order of a single dollar. You could say the lab, which came as part of Jackson's acquisition/rescue of the National Film Unit, has been renationalised.
Jackson and Archives NZ have had a good relationship since he gave the use of Park Road for the remastering of 'This Is New Zealand' in 2007.
