Submission to the Attorney-General’s Department on the Exposure Draft Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As has been stated in previous submissions to Government, the Associations acknowledge Government’s desire to protect telecommunications infrastructure and the information transmitted across it from unauthorised access and interference. Indeed, Australian Carriers, Carriage Service Providers and Carriage Service Intermediaries (C/CSPs) and other industry participants have an active and vested interest in ensuring that the nation’s networks and communications infrastructure are robust and resistant to external attack. Industry is, however, unable to support the proposed Telecommunications Sector Security Reform (TSSR), as described in the exposure draft legislation, for reasons including that it constitutes regulatory ‘over-reach’ in the form of a framework that: will face challenges protecting communications networks, i.e. it will not deliver the increased protection the proposed reforms are aiming to achieve; is out of step with regulatory approaches to protecting networks adopted in other countries, including the UK, USA and Canada, thereby putting Australia at a disadvantage in fighting cyber threats and undermine Industry’s ability to support these important peers; hands unjustifiably significant additional and intrusive powers to Government and places regulatory burdens on Industry that will undermine its ability to protect against and respond to cyber attacks; risks being highly disruptive to the deployment of new network technologies that are more robust in preventing cyber attacks; will be a significant deterrent to technological investment in Australia; imposes additional costs on Industry and (ultimately) consumers undermining Australia’s competitiveness at a time when digital innovation is an important area for growth for Australia; fails to offer protection/indemnity to C/CSPs against the risk of civil litigation through ‘safe harbours’, thereby limiting information sharing and the ability to quickly respond to threats and to jointly engage in preventative action; carries the risk that competition in infrastructure supply will be reduced, to the detriment of all Australians; lacks transparency; and fails to provide adequate consultative mechanisms and avenues of appeal

WEST: A Web Browser for Small Terminals

We describe WEST, a WEb browser for Small Terminals, that aims to solve some of the problems associated with accessing web pages on hand-held devices. Through a novel combination of text reduction and focus+context visualization, users can access web pages from a very limited display environment, since the system will provide an overview of the contents of a web page even when it is too large to be displayed in its entirety. To make maximum use of the limited resources available on a typical hand-held terminal, much of the most demanding work is done by a proxy server, allowing the terminal to concentrate on the task of providing responsive user interaction. The system makes use of some interaction concepts reminiscent of those defined in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), making it possible to utilize the techniques described here for WAP-compliant devices and services that may become available in the near future

Motivating learning through mobile interaction

The acquisition of any goal happens only with the correct dose of motivation instilled in the individual pursuing it. Mobile technology is at the same time providing us with different sensors and technology which allow us to measure valuable attributes around a person who is engaged in a learning experience. In this paper we will be studying what motivates an individual while finding methods on the mobile device which will reach this motivation. The socio-cultural background of the individual undergoing learning will also be brought into context by acting as one of the driving forces of the presented recommendation technique.peer-reviewe

Reaching the Masses:A New Subdiscipline of App Programmer Education

Programmers’ lack of knowledge and interest in secure development threatens everyone who uses mobile apps. The rise of apps has engaged millions of independent app developers, who rarely encounter any but low level security techniques. But what if software security were presented as a game, or a story, or a discussion? What if learning app security techniques could be fun as well as empowering? Only by introducing the powerful motivating techniques developed for other disciplines can we hope to upskill independent app developers, and achieve the security that we’ll need in 2025 to safeguard our identities and our data

Mobile edutainment in the city

Touring around a City can sometimes be frustrating rather than an enjoyable experience. The scope of the Virtual Mobile City Guide (VMCG) is to create a mobile application which aims to provide the user with tools normally used by tourists while travelling and provides them with factual information about the city. The VMCG is a mash up of different APIs implemented in the Android platform which together with an information infrastructure provides the user with information about different attractions and guidance around the city in question. While providing the user with the traditional map view by making use of the Google maps API, the VMCG also employs the Wikitude® API to provide the user with an innovative approach to navigating through cities. This view uses augmented reality to indicate the location of attractions and displays information in the same augmented reality. The VMCG also has a built in recommendation engine which suggests attractions to the user depending on the attractions which the user is visiting during the tour and tailor information in order to cater for a learning experience while the users travel around the city in question.peer-reviewe

TwiddleNet: Smartphones as Personal Servers

TwiddleNet uses smartphones as personal servers to enable instant content capture and dissemination for firstresponders. It supports the information sharing needs of first responders in the early stages of an emergency response operation. In TwiddleNet, content, once captured, is automatically tagged and disseminated using one of the several networking channels available in smartphones. TwiddleNet pays special attention to minimizing the equipment, network set-up time, and content capture and dissemination effort. It can support small operations of emergency responders in the first 48-72 hours of an emergency response by using handheld devices based infrastructure and scale up to handle hundred of users with more robust backend infrastructure