[LINK] Private emails exposing agencies

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Antony Barry
> Sent: Thursday, 24 March 2011 12:58 PM
> To: Link list
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Private emails exposing agencies
> 
> 
> 
> On 24/03/2011, at 7:16 AM, Antony Barry wrote:
> > 
> > To read the story, visit this link.
> 
> Rats. Stupid button in the app I used encoded it as html and 
> the list software converted it to plain text. The link is 
> http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/private-email
s-exposing-agencies/story-fn59niix-1226027025964?from=tigerspike+no+html
_rss

or  http://tinyurl.com/4rdvhjd

Fascinating, the article says...

Quote/
"It is possible that an attacker could target a person known to be
working for a government agency, sending a socially engineered email to
their webmail account," the ANAO report says.
/Quote.

Hm, Government Public Servant. Why would anyone bother to hack their
account ?
As it's the corporations that run the country and apparently have the
money, wouldn't a hacker be better off trying to access the corporations
networks ?

Government cyber security has never been of a very high standard and if
they then proceed to put everything in the cloud, my assessment would be
that Government security would then equal nothing. 

I think the Government is reasonably safe, apart from annoying
irrelevant attention seeking twits like anonymous.

They could of course put the whole of government behind a one way fire
wall and I do like the idea of email kiosks inside organisations.
The other option would be a proprietary mail client that keeps a copy of
all email sent and received on official Government computer systems
[that would certainly decrease the number of private emails...].

It strikes me that persons have their phones for all private
emails/sms/twitterings/im's and phone calls these days. 
Could someone please tell me why employees need to use official
government property for private communications ?

Before you do, the logic of the Jet pilot borrowing an F-111 to pop home
(Gosford) for lunch with his mum comes to mind. 
Same logic, different price tag [especially if a virus hits...[Err, F111
crashes.].


Tom