Australian 2021 digital Census to be built on AWS - ZDNet

abs-census-2016.png

Island Australia and the IBM omnishambles is no more, with PwC Australia being announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as its IT partner for the 2021 Census.

The Adecco Group also picked up a contract for 30,000 temporary field staff.

"After rigorous selection processes, the appointments of PwC Australia and The Adecco Group are major milestones in delivering a safe, secure and high-quality 2021 Census for all Australians," Acting ABS Deputy Statistician Chris Libreri said in a statement. "PwC Australia brings to the 2021 Census a wealth of experience in managing and protecting sensitive personal information across the government, banking, superannuation and health sectors.

"Keeping people's information secure and confidential is the highest priority for the ABS. It was a key factor in the digital services selection process and a critical consideration in the design of Census activities."

The ABS said PwC would operate the digital census on Amazon Web Services, which was certified to handle Protected workloads earlier this year.

"The ABS and PwC Australia will work with critical agencies including the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Digital Transformation Agency to build a secure solution that manages the high demand anticipated for 2021 Census," the ABS said.

Speaking at the AWS Summit in Sydney this week, AWS senior manager of solutions architecture Herman Coomans said he is routinely asked is how non-government entities can access those certificated services.

"The answer is there is no difference. These are no special editions of the services, there is not a checkbox that you check, there is not a different price, it's the same service," he said.

According to Coomans, the significance of AWS gaining certification is that it validates the virtualisation technology to keep workloads separate and allows protected and non-protected workloads to live and run side-by-side.

"If you go back a couple of years, it was widely believed that the only way to achieve this level of security was by having systems that were dedicated," he said. "Systems that have their own dedicated hardware, have their own dedicated network, were possibly in their own dedicated cage in a [data centre].

"The Australian Signals Directorate and ACSC are OK with the virtualisation technology that separates that instance from its neighbour, which is from a different customer, not even the same classification, it would be from any other customer running on the same hardware."

In April, the ABS was allocated AU$38.3 million over three years in the 2019-20 Federal Budget.

On Census night, August 9, 2016, the ABS experienced a series of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, suffered a hardware router failure, and baulked at a false positive report of data being exfiltrated, which resulted in the Census website being shut down and citizens unable to complete their online submissions.

The Census was run on on-premises infrastructure procured from tech giant IBM.

A month later, the ABS lambasted IBM and said it failed to adequately address the risk it was under contract to provide.

"The online Census system was hosted by IBM under contract to the ABS, and the DDoS attack should not have been able to disrupt the system," the ABS said.

"Despite extensive planning and preparation by the ABS for the 2016 Census, this risk was not adequately addressed by IBM and the ABS will be more comprehensive in its management of risk in the future."

Related Coverage

Australian Budget 2019: Census 2021 gets AU$38m to 'address issues from 2016'

Almost AU$40 million in additional funding will be provided to the ABS that aims to prevent incidents like the 2016 Census debacle from reoccurring in 2021, while the government will continue to digitise its services.

ABS seeks vendor to deliver 2021 Census in the cloud

After the confluence of failure that was the 2016 Census at the hands of IBM, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has again turned to the market to help it deliver the next one 'successfully'.

Government's dumb data disasters demonstrate decaying diligence

The Australian government's habit of losing filing cabinets full of confidential documents is merely a symptom of much deeper problems, in both policy development and implementation.

Censusfail: An omnishambles of fabulous proportions

The Senate inquiry into the 2016 Census shows that everyone is to blame. Rumours that outsourcing has gutted government agencies of real IT clue would seem to be true.

Australian government says Centrelink robo-debt will never log off

A recommendation to halt the robo-debt process has been rejected by the federal government.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/australian-2021-digital-census-to-be-built-on-aws/

2019-05-03 03:37:00Z
CBMiUGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnpkbmV0LmNvbS9hcnRpY2xlL2F1c3RyYWxpYW4tMjAyMS1kaWdpdGFsLWNlbnN1cy10by1iZS1idWlsdC1vbi1hd3Mv0gFbaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuemRuZXQuY29tL2dvb2dsZS1hbXAvYXJ0aWNsZS9hdXN0cmFsaWFuLTIwMjEtZGlnaXRhbC1jZW5zdXMtdG8tYmUtYnVpbHQtb24tYXdzLw

Three-eyed snake found on Australian highway - BBC News

Wildlife authorities have shared photos of a three-eyed snake that was found on a highway in northern Australia.

The Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service described the discovery, which was widely shared online, as "peculiar".

Nicknamed Monty Python, the baby carpet python died just weeks after it was found in March.

Experts said the snake's third eye, on top of its head, appeared to be a natural mutation.

Rangers discovered it near the town of Humpty Doo, 40km (25 miles) south-east of Darwin.

The 40cm-long (15 inch) reptile had been struggling to eat due to its deformity, officials told the BBC.

• How can a snake eat a human?
• Massive pregnant python caught in Florida

'Natural' case

The wildlife service said X-ray scans had showed that the snake did not have two heads formed together.

"Rather it appeared to be one skull with an additional eye socket and three functioning eyes," it said on Facebook.

Snake expert Prof Bryan Fry said mutations were a natural part of evolution.

"Every baby has a mutation of some sort - this one is just particularly gross and misshapen," said Prof Fry, from the University of Queensland.

"I haven't seen a three-eyed snake before, but we have a two-headed cobra python in our lab - it's just a different kind of mutation like what we see with Siamese twins."

He suggested that the snake's third eye may have been "the last little bit of a twin that's been absorbed".

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48130478

2019-05-02 07:09:10Z
CBMiMWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy93b3JsZC1hdXN0cmFsaWEtNDgxMzA0NzjSATVodHRwczovL3d3dy5iYmMuY29tL25ld3MvYW1wL3dvcmxkLWF1c3RyYWxpYS00ODEzMDQ3OA

A Broken Skull, a Dubious Paper Trail: Australian Justice for One Aboriginal Man - The New York Times

DARWIN, Australia — Patrick Cumaiyi boarded a small plane on the airstrip in Wadeye, one of Australia’s most remote Aboriginal communities, and waved to his family with shackled hands.

He was being flown to Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, to face a domestic-violence complaint. But before takeoff, an argument broke out. An officer delivered a sharp blow to Mr. Cumaiyi’s head with a metal flashlight, according to witnesses on board, then another officer dragged Mr. Cumaiyi headfirst onto the tarmac.

In a video from the scene, about 20 people can be heard shouting in distress. “Warrundut pelpith!” — “He landed on his head!” — screams a woman in Murrinh-Patha, the native language of the 2,200 people who live in Wadeye, a tropical outpost in Australia’s far north.

By The New York Times

“I just sat down and cried,” said Stephanie Berida, Mr. Cumaiyi’s aunt, who was present. “What could we do?”

The treatment of Mr. Cumaiyi, which left him with a fractured skull, provides a rare glimpse into an Australia that has never fully shed the dark legacies of its colonial past. Police abuse of Aboriginal Australians, including failure to provide medical care, remains a persistent problem, with nearly 150 Indigenous people dying in custody in the last decade alone.

Mr. Cumaiyi’s experience adds another troubling facet: Medical records and other documentation obtained and verified by The New York Times suggest that not only was he a victim of police brutality, but also that health officials and the police covered up the causes and severity of his injuries, while the courts nodded without question.

In places like Wadeye, this casual disregard for black lives is frighteningly common. The town, which can be reached only by boat or plane during the rainy season, is a world unto itself. Systemic racism and abuse often grow unchecked in remote hamlets like this one, where a white minority dominates the police, health care and other services for a population that is almost entirely Aboriginal.

“There is no scrutiny in places like Wadeye — they can do whatever they like,” said Marcia Langton, an anthropologist at the University of Melbourne who has worked in remote communities. “Aboriginal people are processed, and nobody pays much attention.”

[For more Australia coverage with perspective, sign up for the Australia Letter.]

Mr. Cumaiyi, 31 and described as shy by relatives, was never prosecuted for domestic violence after his arrest. Nonetheless, nearly three years later, he is still in a Darwin prison after pleading guilty to other charges, including assaulting two officers and “endangering the safety of an aircraft.”

Now, Stewart Levitt, one of Australia’s most prominent lawyers, is demanding that Mr. Cumaiyi’s case be reconsidered. He lodged a complaint on Wednesday with the Australian Human Rights Commission, accusing the Australian government of human rights violations and negligence stemming from systemic racial discrimination.

Mr. Levitt said the evidence of a cover-up was clear: The official police account said nothing about the eyewitness reports that Mr. Cumaiyi was struck in the head with a flashlight and slammed onto the tarmac.

Instead, it suggests that he hurt himself the day after his arrest by jumping from a police van traveling at 50 miles, or about 80 kilometers, per hour — a claim that two medical experts dismissed as unlikely given his injuries, and that Mr. Levitt called “implausible, counterintuitive and not witnessed by anyone.”

The Northern Territory Police Force did not respond to requests for comment about the case.

Mr. Levitt, who won a large judgment last year for another Indigenous community confronting police mistreatment, said that “there seems to have been a determined effort to deflect all attention away from the police assaults.”

He added, “This is an example of the racial discrimination that’s so endemic.”

Image

During a meeting with Mr. Cumaiyi’s lawyer in Darwin last month, his aunt Stephanie Berida showed how his hands had been shackled as he was led to a police airplane.CreditGlenn Campbell for The New York Times

‘Duty of Care’

Mr. Cumaiyi’s treatment fits a pattern in Australia.

In 2008, a Ngaanyatjarra elder died of heat stroke in Western Australia after being kept for hours in a prison van where temperatures reached more than 130 degrees Fahrenheit (about 55 degrees Celsius).

In 2014, a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman who had been jailed for unpaid fines died after she suffered complications from a broken rib.

A year later, David Dungay Jr., a 26-year-old Indigenous Australian with asthma, died in a Sydney prison cell after repeatedly telling officers he could not breathe.

And last month, an Aboriginal woman, Cherdeena Wynne, 26, died in the hospital five days after she became unresponsive after being handcuffed by the police in Perth.

In all, between 2008 and 2018, 147 Indigenous people — who make up 3 percent of Australia’s population but 27 percent of its prison population — died while under the care of the authorities.

The deaths have continued to occur even after a royal commission running from 1987 to 1991 investigated the problem and made 339 recommendations to improve the safety of Aboriginal Australians interacting with the police.

“One of the main recommendations of the royal commission involved duty of care,” said Dr. Langton, who served on the commission. “You can see over and over again — in every case since the commission — health officers, hospital staff, police, they don’t abide by the principle of duty of care. They just process people.”

Especially in places like Wadeye (pronounced wad-air), scholars say, Australia’s colonial past cannot be separated from its present. The town, about 250 miles from Darwin, has been a tribal meeting place for thousands of years. But it is also a mission town where in 1935 a Catholic priest gathered 20 different clans to be “civilized.”

More recently, the government’s presence in Wadeye has tended to float in and out. Government housing is in short supply. There often is no full-time doctor. The town’s 13 police officers typically stay for two years, then move on.

[Massacres shaped Australia’s past. Read how one small town grappled with history.]

“For the people flying in, what often gets set in place is an ‘us versus them’ mentality,” said Sean Bowden, a lawyer in Darwin who represented the town in litigation that forced a change to a discriminatory school-funding formula.

Tensions among clans and between residents and the police have often boiled over. In 2004, a police officer fatally shot an Aboriginal teenager in Wadeye; in 2017, an officer fired warning shots after being confronted by residents.

Mr. Cumaiyi’s own run-in with the police came a few months earlier.

Image

Stewart Levitt, a prominent Australian lawyer who is now demanding that Mr. Cumaiyi’s case be reconsidered, said his treatment was “an example of the racial discrimination that’s so endemic.”CreditGlenn Campbell for The New York Times

‘It Was a Setup’

Based on his investigation so far, Mr. Levitt said the altercation on the plane on Nov. 9, 2016, started when Mr. Cumaiyi asked for his wrist restraints to be loosened. An officer refused, leading to an argument.

Two prisoners who were on the plane with Mr. Cumaiyi, Mr. Levitt said, insisted in separate interviews that a police officer hit him with a two-foot metal flashlight.

The official paper trail begins immediately after Mr. Cumaiyi — who stood 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 135 pounds — was dragged off the plane and taken to the Wadeye Health Clinic. A nurse’s report states that he had been “tackled twice” and “subdued with punches to the head and body.”

It noted several injuries, including “swelling to the left temporal lobe.”

But Mr. Cumaiyi was not referred to a doctor, violating protocols for head injuries and potentially risking death. Instead, he spent the night in a cell. By the time he reached Darwin the following afternoon, a new story had emerged.

A referral letter sent to Royal Darwin Hospital points to a separate incident from that morning, on Nov. 10 — “escaping from top of vehicle as it was travelling approximately 80klms per hour.”

The police asserted in court that, as they tried to drive Mr. Cumaiyi to Darwin, he kicked the roof of the van twice before jumping out. The referral letter lists his injuries as “trauma to left ear, superficial abrasions to left skull, left elbow and both knees.”

Dr. Timothy Peltz, a reconstructive plastic surgeon in Sydney, said it was “rather comical” to expect only “superficial abrasions” from a fall at highway speeds. Dr. John Crozier, a trauma surgeon, said that “a fatal outcome would not be uncommon, with a high likelihood of multiple fractures.”

One of Mr. Cumaiyi’s aunts, Christine Cumaiyi, said he had told her “it was a setup.”

Adding doubt to the police account, a CT scan performed at the Darwin hospital found a left temporal bone fracture and damage to Mr. Cumaiyi’s ribs — injuries consistent with those reported by the nurse the day of his arrest.

No new injuries, which would be expected if he had jumped out of a moving vehicle a day later, were identified.

The Northern Territory Health Department, citing patient privacy laws, declined to answer questions about Mr. Cumaiyi’s diagnosis and care.

Even now, Mr. Cumaiyi’s family says he seems different, morose, confused, possibly suffering from a brain injury.

“He was such a happy boy,” said his mother, Assumpta Gumbaduck, recalling a time when Mr. Cumaiyi enjoyed music and dancing. “Until this.”

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/world/australia/aboriginal-police-brutality-wadeye.html

2019-05-01 11:53:49Z
CAIiEL_MH6wGuOwJdzQEECkFDQEqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzww5oEY

Sydney man guilty of plot to blow up plane with meat grinder bomb - Stuff.co.nz

A Sydney man who claimed he was trying to prevent a terrorist attack has been found guilty of plotting to blow up an Etihad plane with a bomb hidden in a meat grinder.

Khaled Khayat, 51, had pleaded not guilty to conspiring - between mid-January and late-July 2017 - to prepare or plan a terrorist act.

But a NSW Supreme Court jury on Wednesday found him guilty of the charge which involved the Etihad bomb plot and another plan to carry out a lethal poisonous gas attack on people in a confined space.

The jury is still deliberating on the same charge for Khayat's 34-year-old brother Mahmoud.

READ MORE:
* Man accused of plot to bomb plane saw children and refused, court told
* Israel helped Australia stop a terrorist attack on a plane leaving Sydney
* Lucky escape for New Zealand man on terror-targeted Sydney flight

Prosecutor Lincoln Crowley QC alleged the bomb was in a meat grinder to be put into the luggage of a passenger who was flying out of Sydney on the Etihad flight.

But the plan was said to have been abandoned because the baggage was found to be overweight.

Crowley said when Khaled Khayat was arrested police found a piece of paper in his wallet that had Arabic words, numbers and symbols written on it.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Khaled Mahmoud Khayat claimed he was trying to prevent a terrorist attack.

He said the paper was examined by a forensic chemist and Arabic interpreters, who determined that one side of the paper included the correct chemical equation for poisonous gas, while the other side had further details relating to the gas.

In his three-day police interview, Khayat spoke of walking into the airport with the concealed bomb.

He said when he saw children at the airport he thought "Don't do it, don't be stupid, don't do it" and removed the bomb from the baggage.

But his barrister, Richard Pontella, told the jury that contrary to what his client told police, he never took the bomb to the airport and actually was trying to prevent a terrorist attack.

He said his client didn't enter into an agreement to do acts in preparation for a terrorist attack.

"The defence case is the polar opposite, " he said. "He agreed to do those acts in order to prevent a terrorist act from ever occurring, which ultimately he did.

"The bomb never made it onto the plane. As far as he was concerned, it was never going to make it onto the plane."

Khayat gave evidence saying he put the bomb in a yoghurt container and buried it in a relative's backyard where it remained for weeks.

The jury will continue its deliberations on Mahmoud Khayat on Thursday.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/112394721/sydney-man-guilty-of-plot-to-blow-up-plane-with-meat-grinder-bomb

2019-05-01 09:58:00Z
52780282462370

Australian court finds man guilty of plotting to blow up airliner - CNA

MELBOURNE: An Australian court on Wednesday (May 1) found a man guilty of plotting to blow up an Etihad Airways flight out of Sydney at the behest of the Islamic State militant group, by hiding a bomb in the luggage of his brother.

Police had accused the man, Khaled Khayat, and another brother, Mahmoud Khayat, of planning two terrorist attacks that also included a chemical gas attack on the flight to Abu Dhabi in July 2017, police said.

Advertisement

The third brother was unaware that he was carrying a bomb, disguised as a meat mincer, in his luggage, as he tried to check in at the airport, police said.

But the device was taken out of his luggage when it was deemed too heavy and the bomb never made it past airport security.

Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat were arrested weeks later after a series of raids in Sydney.

"The jury this afternoon returned a guilty verdict for Khaled and is still deliberating in respect of Mahmoud," a spokeswoman for the New South Wales Supreme Court said.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Police had alleged that high-grade military explosives used to make the bomb were sent by air cargo from Turkey as part of a plot "inspired and directed" by Islamic State.

Khaled's sentence hearing has been set for Jul 26. The charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in November the likelihood of a terror attack in Australia remained at the "probable" level, after a fatal stabbing in Melbourne that police said was inspired by Islamic State.

Australia has a five-level terror threat ranking system and "probable" is its midpoint. The threat likelihood has been set at probable since the system was introduced in 2015.

In December 2014, two hostages were killed during a 17-hour siege by a "lone wolf" gunman, inspired by Islamic State militants, in a cafe in Sydney.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/australian-court-finds-man-guilty-of-plotting-to-blow-up-airliner-11494044

2019-05-01 08:07:12Z
52780282462370

Australian guilty of plane bomb plot involving meat grinder - BBC News

A man has been convicted in Australia of plotting to blow up an Etihad flight in a terror attack, using a bomb hidden inside a meat grinder.

Khaled Khayat, 51, conspired to bring down the flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi in July 2017, a jury ruled on Wednesday. He had pleaded not guilty.

The plot was aborted when a bag holding the bomb was too heavy to be checked in at Sydney Airport, local media said.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Khayat's lawyer, Richard Pontella, argued that his client had in fact been trying to prevent a terrorist attack.

But a jury in the Supreme Court of New South Wales rejected his argument after three days of deliberations.

Khayat will be sentenced on 26 July.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48116998

2019-05-01 06:43:12Z
CBMiMWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy93b3JsZC1hdXN0cmFsaWEtNDgxMTY5OTjSATVodHRwczovL3d3dy5iYmMuY29tL25ld3MvYW1wL3dvcmxkLWF1c3RyYWxpYS00ODExNjk5OA

How Foreigners Helped Cool Australian Housing - Bloomberg

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

How Foreigners Helped Cool Australian Housing  Bloomberg

They were blamed for driving up prices; in fact, they've served to take the heat out of the market.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-30/australia-s-property-prices-are-cooling-with-foreign-help

2019-04-30 21:00:00Z
CAIiEEwjCuKbXziMaDKsVLK06OAqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow4uzwCjCF3bsCMIrOrwM