Australia Cyber Defence Bolstered by $10 Billion via Project REDSPICE (theage.com.au) 22
Almost $10 billion over the next decade will be pumped into helping Australia compete in cyber warfare with adversaries such as Russia and China in a major funding boost that will nearly double the size of the nation's leading cyber security agency. From a report: In its centrepiece defence budget announcement, the government will make the largest single investment in the 75-year history of the Australian Signals Directorate, the country's powerful and highly secretive electronic intelligence agency. The government said the funding increase -- dramatically named Project REDSPICE (Resilience, Effects, Defence, Space, Intelligence, Cyber, and Enablers) -- will significantly expand the ASD's offensive cyber capabilities, as well as the agency's ability to prevent hacking and other digital attacks.
The government intends to put national security at the centre of the upcoming election campaign, contrasting its latest announcements with reductions to defence spending during the Rudd-Gillard era. In his budget night speech Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described the $9.9 billion in spending over 10 years as the country's "biggest ever investment in Australia's cyber preparedness." It comes on top of the government's previously announced expansion in Australian Defence Force personnel and the purchase of new Chinook helicopters, Abrams tanks and combat engineering vehicles.
The government intends to put national security at the centre of the upcoming election campaign, contrasting its latest announcements with reductions to defence spending during the Rudd-Gillard era. In his budget night speech Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described the $9.9 billion in spending over 10 years as the country's "biggest ever investment in Australia's cyber preparedness." It comes on top of the government's previously announced expansion in Australian Defence Force personnel and the purchase of new Chinook helicopters, Abrams tanks and combat engineering vehicles.
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Their own people are the adversaries. This will be used to spy (more) on citizens.
Re: "Compete with adversaries" (Score:1)
Sure, apart from all the laws that stop that.
Good way to tell us you understand nothing without telling us.
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Yeah, sure, all the safeguards mean they will never spy on us (unless there are special circumstances, of course: https://www.theguardian.com/au... [theguardian.com]). But don't worry, the ASD's powers are only expanded once every two years, so there's not much risk of this being reported by the vast majority of the (somnolent) media in Australia. Media that is not parked by the side of the road, asleep, will simply be jailed for reporting things they shouldn't report in a free democracy ( https://www.theguardian.com/au... [theguardian.com]
Re: "Compete with adversaries" (Score:2)
Doubt.jpg (Score:1)
Hackers tend to be a bit weird, and the clearance process rejects everybody who isn't a straight white christian male who has never committed a crime in his life.
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They also don't know shit about hacking and can't learn. Win-win, eh?
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Statistically speaking, straight, white, Christian males who have never committed a crime are historically the ones who are most likely to be spies.
Of course, that's because that description is pretty much 99% of who was hired historically, but that's how statistics work.
Federal election coming (Score:2)
Australia is due for a federal election in the next couple of months, and the conservative incumbent PM ("that fella down under" to Biden) is on the nose.
So lots of cash being splashed around in the budget - as if inflation was not looking bad enough already!
Fuel tax lowered, cash handouts. And tough on crime, no, illegal immigrants, no, communist hackers. That's it! Tough on commies.
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As long as people don't stay home on election day, it's going to be a Labor victory.
Libs fucked up bad this term
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He also took a holiday while half the country was on fire. Scomo is a piece of shit and the most incompetent and lazy PM of all time.
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As long as people don't stay home on election day,
Tell us you have no idea about elections in Australia [wikipedia.org] without telling us you have no idea about elections in Australia.
The west needs to prioritize defense over offense (Score:2)
The west's intelligence and law enforcement agencies (including the NSA, CIA, FBI, GCHQ, ASIO, DSD, BND and all the others) need to backdoors and being able to hack and spy on everyone and prioritize defense (that is, making the computer systems used by the good guys more secure) over offense (that is, being able to hack in the computer systems used by the bad guys).
Real number is 150M AUD / year (Score:2)
This is coming out of a political announcement, Australia is having a grand budget spendathon in the lead up to an election which will be called next week.
And this particular article pretends analysis but simply provides the government press release and talking points.
The expenditure is mostly loaded into the last six years, often viewed as the political never-never. Forecasts are performed over the next four years, revenue, deficient etc. By putting the expenditure outside of that period they get to claim
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Australian for "Here be dragons".
So in three months ...
They get this year's budget.