Clare O’Neil suggests Labor may legislate fines after Optus data breach – as it happened

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What we learned – Monday 26 September

And that’s where we’ll leave you today. Here’s a little sample of what we learned:

The prime minister Anthony Albanese said the massive Optus data breach should be “a huge wake-up call for the corporate sector” around data protection.

Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil is expected to propose new legislation allowing big companies to inform banks of data breaches earlier in a bid to better safeguard information and bank accounts. She has also suggested the government may legislate fines over the Optus breach.

Meanwhile, Optus has refused to confirm reports that the company’s data is on sale online, with the person who obtained the data offering to sell it back to the company for $1m. The telco has announced it will provide 12 months of credit monitoring to customers affected by the breach of its data, after O’Neil called in parliament for the company to make the service available.

Law firm Slater and Gordon has announced it is investigating launching a possible class action against Optus on behalf of customers affected by the data breach. Class actions senior associate Ben Zocco said it was “potentially the most serious privacy breach in Australian history”.

The attorney general Mark Dreyfus confirmed the national integrity commission legislation will the power to investigate third parties (contracted to do government work) and to hold public hearings.

Health minister Mark Butler said monkeypox infection numbers were “stabilising significantly” in Australia.

The Paralympian and disability advocate Kurt Fearnley was appointed chairman of the board of the National Disability Insurance Agency.

The federal government has tabled its response to the interim royal commission report into defence and veteran suicide.

And the Australian Council of Social Service launched a new report showing just how impossible it is to live on the jobseeker and youth allowance rates.

Thanks for sticking with us. Amy Remeikis will be back with you first thing in the morning. Goodnight.

Updated at 05.07 EDT

Labor MPs warn of ‘vested interests’ and ‘political agendas’ in media diversity debate

Independent MP Zoe Daniel has moved a motion calling for a media diversity judicial inquiry, with the powers of a royal commission.

The idea was backed by Labor and Greens senators in a Senate inquiry in December, but the then Albanese opposition ruled it out ahead of the 2022 election.

Some of the Labor MPs’ contributions to the debate have been interesting though.

Josh Wilson told the parliament’s federation chamber:

We can’t continue to have public broadcasters run down in funding and reputation, when there is a clear political element to those attacks … We can’t have political journalism drift towards sensationalist or trivially combative style of engagement reporting. We can’t have a narrow set of media companies with outlets running what to any sensible person appears to be a coordinated and self interested political agenda on some issues.

Wilson said he wanted a more balanced, more diverse and more independent media – but a royal commission wasn’t the way to go about it.

Julian Hill said “for now the government is right to focus on practical actions” such as improving measures of media diversity and reforming anti-siphoning laws – but he remains “healthily skeptical” that these will be enough.

He said:

It should be uncontroversial to accept in the future that at whatever time a media diversity inquiry is called that it makes sense it be at arm’s length from politicians. The vested interests are too powerful and the incentives all wrong.

Tania Lawrence said Labor had made it clear an inquiry was not part of its agenda and agreed with communications minister Michelle Rowland that there was a “failure to act not a failure to inquire”.

Earlier, Daniel said:

[The Senate inquiry produced a] majority report, supported by Labor Senators, and yet, like the last government, this government refuses to face up to and tackle one of the biggest existential threats to our democracy.

Information is power. Disinformation, unfortunately even more so. We are suffering from a media drought. The contraction of media means that sources of conversations around the country are fewer and less diverse; there is less scrutiny, especially at the local level, with consequences for the quality of governance.

In some parts of the country, there are no local print outlets at all. In others there are several outlets, but they’re all run by the same company.

Updated at 05.04 EDT

It’s time for some First Dog on the Moon.

Bit of rain about tomorrow

Here’s the forecast for NSW, and a flood watch has been issued for parts of regional Victoria.

Updated at 04.44 EDT

Scooter rider dies after collision with car in ACT

A car collided with an electric scooter on Sunday afternoon, killing the rider, ACT police have said.

Emergency services were called to the corner to a site in the suburb of Kambah just after 3pm on Sunday, according to a statement from the police.

The statement said:

Evidence from the scene suggested a car and an electric scooter had collided. The rider of the scooter had been thrown a substantial distance across the intersection. The scooter rider was not wearing a helmet.

Emergency services transported the 19-year-old female to Canberra hospital with serious head and leg injuries however she has since been pronounced deceased.

The territory’s major collision team are investigating and will prepare a report for the coroner.

It’s the territory’s 12th road fatality this year.

Updated at 04.16 EDT

Minister outlines pathway to referendum for Indigenous voice to parliament

Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, has told an education conference in Adelaide this afternoon there are three next steps on the road to the referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament:

One. Getting First Nations representatives together to work together with government by providing advice and guidance on key issues relating to the referendum.

Two. Continue to build as broad as possible support across the country, particularly at the state level.

Three. Harness the goodwill of the Australian people who want the promise of a better future.

Burney told the World Indigenous peoples’ conference on education that a vote on voice to parliament will be the first referendum to be held “in the digital age”, and the “machinery” (legislation) for holding a referendum was in need of updating.

The youngest Australians to have voted in a successful referendum will be 64 years of age next year.

In 1999 during the Republic referendum, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter did not exist. And just 1.5m Australian households were connected to the internet.

Today, around 23.5m Australians use the internet each day.

The system for holding referendums in Australia is set down in the Referendum Machinery Act (1984), which she said is out of date.

The Act currently relies on voters being sent information in print form. It requires a pamphlet to be mailed in the post to each elector describing the proposed change, and giving them a 2,000 word essay from the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ cases – as provided by parliament.

These are issues government is looking at carefully.

The special minister for state, Senator Don Farrell will have more to say on these matters in the months ahead.

Updated at 04.04 EDT

Defence minister spokesperson responds to ADF whistleblower’s allegations

Many of you will have seen a disturbing story from my colleague Joey Watson this morning, reporting allegations that a defence training program is causing unnecessary trauma to participants and involving acts of shocking humiliation. The course is designed to prepare soldiers for potential capture and interrogation by enemy forces.

But a whistleblower, Damien De Pyle, alleges he developed post-traumatic stress disorder after being forced to simulate child rape, among other acts, while in a state of extreme sleep deprivation.

We asked the deputy prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles whether he had concerns about the allegations. A spokesperson said:

Conduct after Capture training is designed to protect and prepare ADF members should they be captured while on operations.

The safety and wellbeing of defence personnel in all training activities is paramount.

As defence has stated, it does not tolerate unacceptable behaviour in any form.

Defence has previously said it provides support to those participating in the program and that participation is voluntary.

Updated at 03.51 EDT

What should you do to protect yourself after the Optus data breach?

After Optus revealed its massive data security breach on Thursday, customers started receiving emails informing them that their personal information had been accessed.

The telco said that while no financial information or passwords were accessed, the breach has seen customers’ names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses associated with their account, and details of ID documents such as drivers licence numbers or passport numbers compromised.

Optus has not revealed how many of its nearly 9.7m subscribers in Australia were compromised by the breach, only that the number was “significant”.

If you are among those affected, you are probably wondering about what your next steps should be. Guardian Australia has asked experts for their advice.

Updated at 03.46 EDT

Albanese government ‘incredibly angry’ over Optus breach and may legislate fines

The home affairs minister Clare O’Neil has been speaking to ABC Melbourne and laying into Optus. She says the cyber-attack on Optus was “not particularly technologically challenging”:

This is a very significant error on Optus’ part – and they are to blame. The truth is: the nature of the cyber hack that was undertaken here was not particularly technologically challenging, and one of the great disappointments for me as cyber security minister is we had a great telcom company left open to a vulnerability of this size.

The Albanese government is incredibly angry – what they’ve done is left a security risk for Australians that has left a very large share of the Australian population [vulnerable], and we have to do whatever we can to support those Australians to protect themselves. Who is at fault? Optus.

O’Neil said it was a “very costly incident” for Optus, but at this stage the government doesn’t have the power to fine them, unlike in Europe where they would be liable for hundreds of millions in fines.

“We’ll be looking at that in the wake of the incident,” she said, hinting the Albanese government may legislate fines.

Home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Updated at 04.19 EDT

New AI luggage scanning tool to detect trafficked wildlife

Scientists have combined artificial intelligence with 3D x-ray scanning in a tool they say can detect trafficked wildlife hidden in luggage or other cargo.

The researchers have used 3D computed tomography (CT) scanning technology and trained an AI to recognise reptiles, birds and fish.

Lead author Dr Vanessa Pirotta, chief scientist at the security screening firm RapiscanSystems, said wildlife trafficking was a global problem and the AI tool would “complement existing detection measures”. She said:

We’ve been scanning a variety of wildlife that we know is usually, unfortunately, implicated in trafficking – such as reptiles and birds as an example. We’re teaching computers to look for these items in mail and luggage pathways.

The AI was trained using several hundred reference images of 13 animal species, including lizards, snakes, turtles and the sulphur-crested cockatoo.

The algorithm had an accurate detection rate of 82% with a false alarm rate of 1.6%.

The wildlife specimens used to train the AI were collected opportunistically from the Taronga Wildlife Hospital in Sydney – either from seized trafficking cases or from sick or injured wildlife brought into the hospital.

The AI was still in development and had not yet been implemented, Pirotta said.

The research – a collaboration between Rapiscan Systems, the Taronga Conservation Society, and the federal department of agriculture, fisheries and forestry – has been published in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science.

Australia is one of 183 signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an agreement between governments that regulates the global movement of wildlife.

Images of sulphur-crested cockatoos were used during the training of the AI. Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/REX/Shutterstock

Updated at 03.33 EDT

Tech giants have more power than the ‘railroads and oil tycoons of the Gilded Age’, Liberal senator says

Further to that economics references committee inquiry into big tech that we mentioned earlier.

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, who put forward the terms of the inquiry, has released a statement about it, saying it is “broad-ranging” and “overdue”, and that big tech platforms “have more power than the railroads and oil tycoons of the Gilded Age”.

Bragg said:

The major technology platforms have amassed more power than any other corporations in recent history. The “big five” international big tech platforms have more power than the railroads and oil tycoons of the Gilded Age.

Australia’s Parliament must form a stronger view on what the enormous concentration of power through vertical integration and meshing of hardware and software means for our country.

The Inquiry will look closely at the consolidation of platforms as well as the use of algorithms and how this affects the public interest.

With all the benefits of technology, it’s important “that Australians are not being exploited by possibly the strongest corporations in history”, Bragg said.

He pointed to media bargaining and online safety as areas in which risks have been mitigated effectively in the past.

We should not seek to turn back the clock or descend into protectionism. Big tech platforms can and should be our partners in protecting Australians and our interests. Liberal senator Andrew Bragg. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Updated at 03.25 EDT

Greens senators call for Pauline Hanson to be censured over tweet

Greens senators Mehreen Faruqi and Larissa Waters have lodged a Senate motion censuring fellow senator Pauline Hanson for saying Faruqi should “piss off back to Pakistan” earlier this month.

Hanson made the comment after Faruqi expressed condolences on the occasion of the Queen’s death “to those who knew the Queen” but said she “cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.

For more background to the story, see the write-up from Paul Karp here:

Updated at 03.23 EDT

The Senate has established an economics references committee inquiry into big tech.

The terms of the inquiry, put forward by Liberal Andrew Bragg, claim big tech exerts “power and influence over markets and public debate, to the detriment of Australian democracy and users”.

It will consider:

a) the market shares of such international digital platforms across the provision of hardware and software services

b) vertical integration, or linking of multiple services, products and/or hardware, within such international digital platforms and resultant outcomes on users’ ability to exercise choice

c) whether algorithms used by such international digital platforms lack transparency, manipulate users and user responses, and contribute to greater concentrations of market power and how regulating this behaviour could lead to better outcomes in the public interest

d) the collection and processing of children’s data, particularly for the purposes of profiling, behavioural advertising, or other uses

e) the adequacy and effectiveness of recent attempts, in Australia and internationally, to regulate the activities of such international digital platforms

f) broader impacts of concentration of market power on consumers, competition and macro-economic performance, and potential solutions; and any other related matters

Updated at 03.21 EDT

UN Human Rights climate finding a ‘game changer’, legal experts say

Legal experts have described as a “game changer” a United Nations Human Rights Committee finding that Australia violated the rights of a group Torres Strait Islanders by failing to adequately protect them from climate change.

The committee handed down the decision on Friday, finding the government had “violated their rights to enjoy their culture and be free from arbitrary interferences with their private life, family and home”.

Fleur Ramsay, from legal firm Environmental Defenders Office, says the case is significant, particularly for legal challenges involving climate change, Indigenous peoples and where human rights are a factor.

It’s a game changer.

It is extremely significant and lays the foundations for other low-lying island communities, such as Pacific communities and Pacific island states to pursue claims for loss and damage against high emitting nation-states potentially through international tribunals like the international Court of justice, and fossil fuel or big energy companies in the courts.

Sarah Joseph, a professor of law at Griffith University, says the decision’s “biggest impact could be two-fold”.

She said the case could be referred to in legal action before Australian courts, such as a challenge being made on human rights grounds to Clive Palmer’s proposed Galilee Coal Project in Queensland.

She says it may also inspire other international challenges from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and pointed to the community of Lismore, devastated by floods, as a potential example.

The decision by the UN human rights committee came more than three years after eight adults and six children from four low-lying islands off the northern coast of Australia lodged a complaint against the Morrison government, claiming it had failed to take adequate action to cut emissions or pursue proper adaptation measures.

The decision found they should be compensated.

David Barnden, principal lawyer at Equity Generation Lawyers that represented school students who challenged the Vickery coal mine in NSW on climate grounds, says the move towards compensation at UN level was encouraging.

That’s being spoken about more and will be spoken about at the upcoming [climate] Cop.

In my view it’s a really good development in terms of access to justice and starts to go in the right direction.

Updated at 02.45 EDT

Optus data breach: AFP working with overseas law enforcement

The Australian Federal Police has said it is “working closely with overseas law enforcement” to identify the hackers behind the attack, with reports of stolen data being sold on the dark web.

In a statement today, the AFP said:

Operation Hurricane has been launched to identify the criminals behind the alleged breach and to help shield Australians from identity fraud.

The AFP is aware of reports of the sale of stolen data and investigations are continuing.

To protect the integrity of the criminal investigation, the AFP will not divulge what information it has obtained in the first few days of Operation Hurricane.

However, the public can be assured that since a report from Optus on 23 September, 2022, the AFP has diverted significant resources to the investigation.

A new partnership between “law enforcement, the private sector and industry to combat the growing threat of cybercrime” is also contributing to the investigation.

Assistant commissioner cyber command Justine Gough said the investigation would be “extremely complex and very lengthy”:

We are aware of reports of stolen data being sold on the dark web and that is why the AFP is monitoring the dark web using a range of specialist capabilities. Criminals, who use pseudonyms and anonymising technology, can’t see us but I can tell you that we can see them.

… Our presence and focus extends outside Australian borders, and AFP specialised cyber investigators are permanently based in the United Kingdom, United States, Europe and Africa.

Gough said the public needed to be “extra vigilant” and “take practical measures to better protect themselves from scams and phishing attempts”, especially from unsolicited text messages, emails and phone calls.

Updated at 02.31 EDT

Karen Andrews criticises Clare O’Neil over Optus data breach response

Karen Andrews taking some swings at O’Neil about the Optus breach. She was speaking to the ABC just now:

Her response in Question Time was laying the blame directly at the feet of Optus, saying it is a data breach and they are responsible for that which I thought was interesting in itself, to do that. She also flagged a couple of things I think were interesting, most importantly was the comment that if these breaches had happened in other countries there would have been significant financial penalties, so it may well be that the legislation they are looking at bringing out whenever they bring that out, that’s not clear, may have that kind of things in it.

My thoughts were that it was a very lacklustre, late response, people are so concerned.

Andrews goes on:

This is now a number of days since the data breach was discovered. Optus has been out making some comments, the minister’s response has been silence, virtually. Three tweets and a dixer in Question Time has been her response.

I think there is a role for government to be out there, reassuring people that they are in control of the situation, and they are on top of what needs to happen. What she does have is a number of levers available to her.

She says the first thing she would have done if she were in that role is “fronted the public”.

Updated at 02.28 EDT

Clare O’Neil crystallising her statements in Question Time regarding Optus, in tweet form: