yeah so a 16 year old with a “computer addiction” who stopped a service so he could browse pr0n then told his mates about it is now advising on cyber safety…..yeah I would feel REALLY at ease about the threat of kiddie fiddlers on teh interwebs around my kids (if I have any) knowing this….

I decided to have a skim through “The Wood Verdict” which was linked in the article. My conclusion is that this kid thinks he knows a lot more than he really does. The “bypass” isn’t really even a vulnerability - a security researcher wouldn’t bother. Of course if you’re going to give your kids admin privileges to a system they’ll be able to disable filters running on it.

The main problem with the “verdict” is that the kid seems to assume that he and his school is a full and total representation of every kid in Australia. If he hasn’t heard of it then noone uses it or knows anything about it and it’s not worth mentioning.

He says that they shouldn’t say IM but rather MSN. MSN is just a program - it’s not even the most popular instant messaging client. However, because the kids at his school only use MSN, that’s the only program that’s important to him. Do you want everyone using AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, Trillian, Gaim, et al to totally ignore the advice because they’re not using MSN?

He doesn’t know how to access a newsgroup therefore they shouldn’t be mentioned on the web site (he obviously doesn’t use GMail as in GMail there’s a Groups link at the top of every page).

The reason that the government goes on about chat rooms is that most child abuse begins there. Since they’re specialised they can be targetted, and a predator can, just by logging in, get a list of possible victims. Chat rooms can be dangerous areas. I find it hard to believe that this kid never uses a chat room at all. Chat rooms don’t come in just IRC anymore. How many online games have a lobby?

I actually chuckled at his P2P paragraph. He’s actually asking them to turn off uploading because you’re more likely to get caught infringing on copyright if you upload files “as all it does is increase risk of illegal action”. He’s implying that the Government should tell children how to discreetly break the law without getting caught!

So while he has some good points, he also has some bad advice

Personally I think that if you want professional security advice, get a security professional. If you want cyber-law advice, get a lawyer specialising in IT. That might be a bit too logical though.

It’s pretty disgusting how silly these comments are here.

If you actually were informed and read into the story - they say that this kid has helped draft - not written - he’s provided idea’s and they’ve picked it up.

And along with that, in another Herald Sun article they say they consulted with a range of other Cyber-Consultants - all of which seem to have Tom as their adviser as well. And you have to understand - there aren’t any adults in the nation or possibly in the world with a better, genuine and broad understanding of all the things that this kid has displayed.

Don’t automatically criticize without thinking - or getting informed. And on that blog of his he welcomes feedback so I’m sure if you got in-touch he would take your advice and implement it - as for MSN - ofcourse, I know as well - that wouldn’t be a representative sample of 100% of Aussie kids, but it would be at least 99% - the super-vast majority.

And on the topic of newsgroups - he is spot on, Google Groups isn’t hardly a newgroup - it’s just a take on a forum. If you read how that netalert thingo refers to newsgroups - it mainly talks about emails etc. so him saying no aussie kids would use, and no average ones would have heard of it - is 100% corrent.

To the fundamental cores - this is a lucrative but very positive decision for Australia… and good on him. Sure he’s not perfect but overall he is vastly better than anyone else and possibly should be the comm. minister himself.

Your argument is baseless, SFB.

Spend some more time thinking instead of insulting, and you might come up with something that will compel someone to believe your arguments.

From the looks of things, all he did was recommend educating kids in schools about internet safety, which has now been taken into policy. Sounds pretty good, actually.

@Seth, John

The problem is that he ridicules the government for teaching people things that he doesn’t already know. If he doesn’t use it then it’s worthless.

I would rather have a policy that fits everyone rather than fits one kid who thinks he knows a lot more than he does.

(For the record John, Google Groups is simply a usenet newsgroup reader and search engine, though it also has capabilities for setting up mailing lists. It’s extremely good for getting old archives of messages.)