At 15 he should be leading the team.
The hidden 5th puzzle was both the hardest to get going on (due to no hints compared to the others), while also being among the easiest once you figured out what it actually was.
I did a little write-up here if anyone's interested: http://senwerks.com/hacktheplanet/Solving-the-Australian-Sig...
It’s just a game for them to popularize code breaking and do some youth recruiting.
Do they really want to do that - considering these talented people might use their code breaking skills against the government? ;-)
Breaking custom encryption is dead in any country smaller than say, the UK or maybe Canada.
Your comment reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/932/
Now, how believable is that?
The only reason the fifth level was "hidden" was that there wasn't obvious hints/clues pointing to it like the first 4, where each specifically hinted at how to solve the next.
It is mostly believable that there is a fifth level.
It is likely that they haven't received a correct solution at the time of the announcement yet.
Which part are you doubting?
Cue Maxwell Smart: "would you believe 5 layers?"
70th Anniversary of ASIO – Marked with New 50-Cent Coin by Royal Australian Mint : https://www.ramint.gov.au/publications/70th-anniversary-asio...
In the early days the Government essentially didn't want the citizenry to know that ASIO and ASD existed but if it did learn of their existence then it was important to keep discussion about them at the bottom of the political agenda.
That's long past and now the citizenry has some basic knowledge about how these agencys operate and that the work they do can at best be described as both 'unsavory' and secretive. That is, even if they're essential, they don't have the best of images.
That's where soft propaganda becomes essential and now steps in, that is it's time to create a 'warm and comfortable' feeling about them in the public's eye.
Coins have always had value, authority and presence not to mention ubiquity, it's why the head of the reigning sovereign is always on them.
To provide these 'questionable' agencies a better image what could be better than to associate them with all that solid authoritative suff?
Right, you've got the picture.
In fact the linguist and politial philosopher Noam Chomsky wrote a book about it called Manufacturing Consent:
Do we still consider that encryption in this day and age? I know it technically is , but..
It's not like the PM is sitting there with a coin in hand, trying to decipher reports from the Australian Defence Forces....
... or maybe they were 15 at the time, can't remember
In the UK it’s one month of all our private communications thanks to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
What is it in Australia?
That looks like metadata (see https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/nat-security/files/dataset.pd..., PDF warning). Which is still private, but doesn't include your private calls and messages.
How long do they keep private calls and messages?
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator...
In response to the revelations of this attack on Australian democracy, launched by an agency tasked to defend it, australia's attorney general focused on declaring Mr Snowden a traitor.
Let’s hope that one of them was, “Australia should be a republic”
Not that far from where I live at the intersection of two busy roads there used to be a tall concrete Besser block wall with spray-painted graffiti scrawled on it in large black lettering which read:
"The Australian people are bloody-minded sheep."
The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
The wall has gone now as it has made way for apartments (I had always meant to photograph it but had never gotten around to doing so). :(
Two observations: that no one had bothered to tamper with the message or paint over it (and, say, the Council could easily have, it being on a public thoroughfare and that removing graffiti was a policy) says something rather profound in that amongst the population there's a general acceptance of the fact.
Second, the Australian electorate is remarkably politically conservative. With the exception of a few minor instances, it has never done anything radical and that's essentially been the case right back to federation in 1901 (that was when Australia became an independent state after Britain gave it its Independence).
Thus, as a nation, Australia has always kowtowed to Britain and after WWII it has done so with the US.
When a law is enacted in Australia one can bet top dollar that it's already been enacted in Britain or more latterly the US (but to a lesser extent). Originality doesn't exist in Australia's political DNA.
That's why Australia is part of the Five Eyes agreement, without Britain and the US it'd behave like a lost child at a country fair.
Trouble is everyone knows it, especially so the Chinese who've essentially enslaved the country economically.
> The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
Everybody who saw it probably thought "yeh, it's a fair cop, mate".
I think of it as a chinese mining province. The long period of growth was merely the long period of Chinese growth. And that growth was good for the country, but also terrible: the "dutch disease" of high commodity prices gutted manufacturing and other businesses.
And de-incentivised governments to really think about what the nation needed, as middle class homeowners continued to see their net worth rise, thus "what, me worry?"
To do that it would've had to have said "Remove this grafitti immediately, sheep!"
Let's not even think about maybe tweaking the powers of the role, or even codifying that any exercise of those powers should be transparently reported to the electorate (as per a recent/current scandal).
The fact that the political class controls the process of defining all these rules, and no-one trusts the political class to do what's right for the country (vs. right for them and/or their backers), means we're stuck with the current system, which is at least a more-or-less known quantity.
