Risky Business #112 -- Pollie wanna hacker? Special guest Senator Stephen Conroy
Fri, 06/19/2009 - 17:40
This week's show is a cracker -- we have a very special guest, Senator Stephen Conroy.
The senator is Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and I caught up with him in Sydney last week to get his take on what he feels the role of government is when it comes to IT security.
Wed, 07/15/2009 - 12:16
#2
It sounded to me like he was
It sounded to me like he was very tactfully and impressively dodging any and all questions. I'd have to listen to it again a few times, but I don't think he actually did respond directly to anything. Most answers were along the lines of working with industry and advisors, having meetings with them and not taking complete control of anything.
Wed, 07/15/2009 - 13:02
#3
Would you want them to take control?
I'd agree that his answers were a little light on hard information... that said, would you actually want the federal government to take total control of securing the NBN?
Knowing how much power to exercise is tough in this sort of situation. Even if they dictate sensible things from the top, you know it won't necessarily translate into better security -- just a beaurocratic mish-mash of poorly interpreted policy.
And what would you secure at the network level anyway? The NBN is essentially just infrastructure... as long as they don't completely screw up the architecture then they've done their job, as far as I'm concerned.
or did Conroy actually sound like he had some idea of what he was talking about?
am I going mad? or has he actually started listening to advisors? or did he just know his audience well?