In Crikey

In any big trial that attracts public interest, a defendant can hope to draw on public sympathy. Except in this case.

In 2024 the social licence of the big supermarkets is utterly broken — their reputations befouled, their brands synonymous with impersonal corporate rapacity. This is an awful time for them to be attempting to mount a defence to a major charge.

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I’m going to share a quote from Chief Justice of the High Court Stephen Gageler, one of Australia’s senior jurists, that ACCC boss Cass-Gottlieb recently highlighted in a speech. It talks about the definition of “unconscionable conduct” and points out that what is unconscionable must depend on society’s values.

“For a court to pronounce conduct unconscionable is for the court to denounce that conduct as offensive to conscience informed by a sense of what is right and proper according to values that can be recognised by the courts to prevail with contemporary Australian society,” she quoted him.

Contemporary Australian society is not interested in giving the supermarkets an easy pass. In this case a tiny fine will not satisfy the public. The customers of Woolworths and Coles include Australia’s most vulnerable people.

It's also worth remembering that supermarket employees include Australia's most vulnerable people.

Aside from the less pleasant aesthetics of American stadiums’ surroundings, car parks are surprisingly costly. “In Australia, each parking space in high-density locations is worth about $100,000”, says urban planner David Mepham, who recently published the book Rethinking Parking. “Yet a lot of that parking is not very well used, if it’s used at all.”

In Melbourne, an estimated 25-41% of parking in apartment blocks in the inner city — which developers are often mandated by law to build — stand vacant. Such unused parking costs Australians more than $6 billion.

For public projects, the cost can be even higher. The Victorian government recently announced a new car park for Frankston station, which will cost approximately $174,000 per space. That money could buy a lot of extra bus services or bike infrastructure, so people wouldn’t need to drive there. But as the Morrison years taught us, politicians still go to great lengths to cut the ribbons on new car parks.

A report soon to be released by architects at Melbourne University spells out the environmental damage of demolishing the towers — including the thousands of tonnes of concrete sent into landfill and carbon released in producing replacement concrete — and details the benefits of retrofit as a tried and tested alternative. Work from the architectural practice OFFICE on estates in Ascot Vale and Port Melbourne demonstrates that refurbishment and infill can take place without relocating existing residents, at significantly lower social, environmental and economic costs.

The big housing demolition is not only costing the state a great deal; in the short term it massively reduces the affordable housing stock. In the middle of a housing crisis, this is bizarre. Contrary to Keane’s argument that our object is to keep public housing tenants in substandard housing, it is to ensure they remain close to home while more public housing is built. Those towers that can be refitted can be done so with minimal disruption to tenants, who move within the blocks while the work is done. Most public housing estates have expansive grounds. New public housing should be under construction on those estates now, so that when it comes time to demolish the unsalvageable towers, tenants can move into new housing next door. In what way is this a difficult idea?

“I thought it would be really funny if a stranger came over asking to do a poo,” explained Will. They never did, and about a year ago Will moved out.

Recently, Will had a look to see if Big Dumpers was still marked on Google Maps. It was. He was getting monthly emails about the performance of his business with information on how many people had viewed it or clicked to see its phone number.

But looking at the app’s listing for the “business”, Will spotted something that he didn’t find as funny. Like many other businesses, Google Maps showed a “Popular times” graph depicting how popular the location is using information provided by Google users who’ve agreed to let the app access their geolocation data. 9AM on Thursday was a busy time for Big Dumpers, according to Google Maps, but completely empty later in the day. 

What clicked in Will’s mind is that he had inadvertently created a public tracker of when people were in his share house — almost certainly without their knowledge. Will quickly voluntarily “closed” his business on Google but the listing remained up afterwards.

After being informed of the exploit by Crikey, founder of Australian information security company DVULN Jamieson O’Reilly said that his review of Google’s technical material corroborated Will’s understanding of the situation.

“My gut tells me you could list any place as a business then if the residents had opted in to location services you could totally use it to measure someone’s patterns,” he said.

Amid the flurry of misinformation and misleading online content about the Israel-Hamas war that’s circulating on social media, these images, too, are being used without disclosure of whether they are real or not.

A handful of small online news outlets, blogs and newsletters have featured “Conflict between Israel and Palestine generative AI” without marking it as the product of generative AI. It’s not clear whether these publications are aware it is a fake image.

Last month the government’s tender website, AusTender, published a contract between the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and ShadowDragon Holdings, LLC. The contract runs for two years and is valued at $563,040.

ShadowDragon Holdings is an American company that sells software collecting “open source intelligence software, unique datasets and training” to organisations, including the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as well as state police forces in New York and Michigan.

ShadowDragon’s products pull data from a range of public online platforms — reportedly more than “200 unique sources and datasets” — to make them searchable for its users.

The full list of places isn’t published but its promotional material lists places including Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, X, Google, Amazon, Tumblr, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Reddit, 4Chan, Skype, Spotify, Twitch, Xbox network, PornHub, SoundCloud, Gab, Foursquare, Tripadvisor, Tinder, Etsy, PayPal, Flickr, Imgur, Disqus, eBay, GitHub, DeviantArt, Blogger, FetLife, BitChute, parenting forum BabyCenter, social network for Black people BlackPlanet and more.