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Of course it's a student who has Vanessa Teague as an advisor. For reference, the Australian government leaned heavily on a major Australian university for her

Of course it's a student who has Vanessa Teague as an advisor. For reference, the Australian government leaned heavily on a major Australian university for her to be fired: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/08/melbourne-professor-quits-after-health-department-pressures-her-over-data-breach https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/08/melbo... as retribution for showing that 'deanonymised' data was absolutely not truly anonymised. Thank god we don't have electronic voting.

mellosouls 4y ago
Reading the article you've linked to, although the government department doesn't come off well, I can't see the part where "the Australian government leaned heavily on a major Australian university for her to be fired".
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  “The letter hints strongly at negative consequences for the university as a whole, particularly if I notified the affected journalist. The university did pass on that pressure, quite unambiguously, but I can’t really blame them.” I suppose they 'hinted' which is what you do in all good threats. In general, the government in Australia is fairly hostile to cryptographers and security researchers that find problems with governmental projects.
  - steve_taylor 4y ago
    After a lost decade of ineptitude and corruption, we've finally had a change of government. Fingers crossed.
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    The pressure was trying to influence the type of work being undertaken. It may not be good but there's no suggestion there they were pressuring the place to fire her.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      Not specifically in that article, but it was understood by her that continued employment was untenable if she actually wanted to keep doing what she was doing, which is why she quit. Remember that for some people actual integrity and honesty is simply part of who they are and they won't accept being muzzled. For what it's worth, here's the letter: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6092/response/16930/attach/html/5/Document%201%20Letter%20to%20Professor%20Glyn%20Davis%20AC%2014%20September%202018%20FOI%201511.pdf.html https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6092/response/16930/a... I think what's most evident and bizarre is they act like there's actually significant research going on here: the researchers in question just pointed out how easy something was, basically (see https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-simple-process-of-re-identifying-patients-in-public-health-records https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-simple-process-o...), and the university got this letter in response. See https://twitter.com/VTeagueAus/status/1235067612318449664 https://twitter.com/VTeagueAus/status/1235067612318449664 with the indication the reason she resigned was entirely due to all of this plus some other stuff. Fair point if you want to still argue they didn't directly have to fire her, I'll walk that back a bit and say that that was pre-empted and we lack the counterfactual of what the Department of Health would have actually done in terms of pressure had she continued.

mellosouls 4y ago

Reading the article you've linked to, although the government department doesn't come off well, I can't see the part where "the Australian government leaned heavily on a major Australian university for her to be fired".

bigDinosaur 4y ago
“The letter hints strongly at negative consequences for the university as a whole, particularly if I notified the affected journalist. The university did pass on that pressure, quite unambiguously, but I can’t really blame them.” I suppose they 'hinted' which is what you do in all good threats. In general, the government in Australia is fairly hostile to cryptographers and security researchers that find problems with governmental projects.
- steve_taylor 4y ago
  After a lost decade of ineptitude and corruption, we've finally had a change of government. Fingers crossed.
- mellosouls 4y ago
  The pressure was trying to influence the type of work being undertaken. It may not be good but there's no suggestion there they were pressuring the place to fire her.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Not specifically in that article, but it was understood by her that continued employment was untenable if she actually wanted to keep doing what she was doing, which is why she quit. Remember that for some people actual integrity and honesty is simply part of who they are and they won't accept being muzzled. For what it's worth, here's the letter: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6092/response/16930/attach/html/5/Document%201%20Letter%20to%20Professor%20Glyn%20Davis%20AC%2014%20September%202018%20FOI%201511.pdf.html https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6092/response/16930/a... I think what's most evident and bizarre is they act like there's actually significant research going on here: the researchers in question just pointed out how easy something was, basically (see https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-simple-process-of-re-identifying-patients-in-public-health-records https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-simple-process-o...), and the university got this letter in response. See https://twitter.com/VTeagueAus/status/1235067612318449664 https://twitter.com/VTeagueAus/status/1235067612318449664 with the indication the reason she resigned was entirely due to all of this plus some other stuff. Fair point if you want to still argue they didn't directly have to fire her, I'll walk that back a bit and say that that was pre-empted and we lack the counterfactual of what the Department of Health would have actually done in terms of pressure had she continued.