Julian Bajkowski

Australia's Internet service and carriage providers are staring down the barrel of stiff legislative requirements to provide law enforcement, intelligence agencies and other authorized bodies with the capability to intercept IP traffic for lawful purposes, delegates at the Hack 2003 IT security conference have been told.

A precedent has been set in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) allowing companies to block employee access to union e-mail. The ruling has widespread ramifications in the enterprise concerning how companies manage e-mail. It is also a serious setback for unions seeking access to employees in the workplace.

The chief information officer of the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) has hit back at criticism by a recent Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report claiming the beancounter's report uses foggy language, fails to adequately differentiate between information technology systems and business processes and failed to understand the nature of key implementations.

New laws to ban spamming within Australia could fall on deaf ears.

The federal government's report outlining the proposed future framework for the information and communications technologies industry in Australia has been rushed into the public domain three weeks early after being leaked by disgruntled members of its steering committee.

St. George Bank Chief Information Officer John Loebenstein has delivered a peppery wake-up call to business leaders to stop blaming the IT department for project failures and take some responsibility for poor management culture themselves.

Optus, the habitual bridesmaid of the Australian telecommunications industry, has announced aggressive plans to roll out more than 500 Australian wireless hotspots in the next 12 to 18 months using the IEEE 802.11b standard in an attempt to target well-heeled road warriors and fans of American style caffeine.

Money-related concerns top the list of complaints made about breaches under the first 12 months of Australia's Privacy Act.