PrimaxAUS

fit

What have you done over the years to stay fit? Sports, weightlifting, walking etc?

crickets

Well adjusted and with the sexiest accent on the face of the Earth.

Sign me up!

What is the biggest cookie you've made? Could be a nice chance for publicity trying it on.

And do you ship to Australia at all? I don't think its unreasonable to ask that the world's best cookies are available worldwide. :)

Hi Scott. Thanks for doing the AMA. I like a lot about you - your work on issues I support, your eloquence, your hair. You're a bit of a luddite on nuclear issues, but then again no one is perfect.

A digital rights commissioner is a good idea - most of the MPs and senators are old fogies who have practically zero hope of understanding the general concepts that they're legislating on when it comes to the internet, let alone the nuances of the issue and the legislation being proposed, or the ramifications of those new laws.

This has been reflected in how the NBN has been treated, like a partisan football to score political points rather than key infrastructure needed to keep this country competitive.

A digital rights commissioner is an important step, but so too is another role in our government which is wholly useless - the office of the privacy commissioner. It's treatment by successive governments has turned it into yet another non-functioning bureaucracy, only to be used as a weapon against the other major party when it serves the interests of liblab. Please also consider ways in which the OAIC can be made more independent, proactive, hungry, and with sharp teeth.

I am 34 and an IT consultant, and I have built my career around cybersecurity and internet startups. I've worked in the past in cybersecurity software startups and the encryption industry, and I'm starting my own security advisory company. In the past ten years the biggest thing I have learned is this - Australians are woefully ignorant about cybersecurity and largely uninterested in learning.

This has cost us in many ways; slow change of behaviours to protect against threats like phishing and ransomware attacks, slow uptake of skills and knowledge to support the industry to deal with attacks, and not enough resources to develop those skills being available. Take for instance the Arizona Cyberwarfare Range. This is a great resource for Americans to test their skills as they learn offensive cybersecurity, but it's not available to Australians, and we don't have an alternative here. This is just one example out of hundreds of deficiencies.

If we are going to improve our lot, and be competitive on the world stage this needs to change, and I encourage you with my entire being to do everything you can to make it happen.

Lastly, I've been thinking about becoming more politically active. What can I do in a manner that uses my skills and abilities to volunteer or otherwise help out on these issues in some government or party facing capacity? I wrote a popular thing about data privacy when mandatory retention came in. This is the kind of thing I'm not bad at.