Smart Phone for Video Conference in India

Greetings from the King & Wood Mallesons' International Arbitration Webinar on India. Amanda Lees is chairing the session. I am not a lawyer, but I thought it might be useful to learn a little about the Indian legal system, as I might be asked to design courses for institutions there. 

KWM are using WebEx for the webinar. This is not my favorite video conference system, but it works well on a smartphone. So I have my 4 Inch Android smartphone held in a clamp which came with one tripod, screwed to the desktop tripod from a light. I am listening, so I have no microphone plugged in. 

Hand holding the phone makes for wobbly video and a phone on a desk is too low to give a good angle. A tripod with clamp holds the phone securely at a good height. It is still possible to pick up the whole unit, if necessary, and move it to another location.

When WebEx started, it offered to call me for the sound, so I accepted this option. One bonus of this is that if you receive a phone call, the conference audio is put on hold, so there is no risk of the conference participants listening in on my phone call.

Taming Cyberspace With International Law

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Professor Fred Cate from Indiana University is speaking on "Taming cyberspace: Applying international law in a new domain" as part of the part of the conference "Securing our Future in Cyberspace". He claimed that on-line systems are not secure. He challenged the audience to name one secure system and no one took up the challenge. The room is full of people from Australian government intelligence agencies, who hopefully have such systems but can't say. ;-)

Professor Cate claimed that 85% to 90% of break-ins to systems are due to human failings, due to phishing or poor passwords, not highly technical attacks. He also claimed that outside banks and a few other categories, there is no legal obligation to secure systems. His conclusion was "We are not taking cyber-security seriously any more", saying US investment in the area is small compared to other security matters. Professor Cate criticized the US Government for only having a "Cybersecurity Coordinator" (currently Michael Daniel).

Professor Cate claimed there were not regulations requiring organizations to have good security. However, he mentioned earlier on "governance". Australia developed the standard "Corporate Governance of Information and Communication Technology" (AS8015), later adopted internationally as ISO/IEC 38500 in 2008. These standards are not mandated by law. However, there are corporate governance laws. I suggest that the standards could be applied though case law, or could be explicitly made mandatory through legislation.

Professor Cate claimed that there was no one in the US Government to shut down a government server which was sending out computer viruses. With the greatest respect to the professor, I do not believe this to be true. Any IT professional with a server under their control has an ethical and legal obligation to shut it down if it is sending out computer viruses (unless of course it is part of an authorized security operation).

Professor Cate asked if any government had a system to deal with a widespread emergency without the Internet. A quick search shows they do. The US military has the Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network (MEECN) and the Australian Defence Force and state police forces have HF radio networks. There are also Australian outback HF networks.

An interesting comment by Professor Catewas that insurance companies are effectively setting cyber security standards in the USA.

There are an extensive set of papers on Cybersecurity by Professor Cate.

On-line Law Degree at Australian National University

The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra has announced it will offer a Juris Doctor (online) from mid 2016. This is a legal degree for people who already have a degree in another discipline.

The new program uses "Problem-Based Learning" (PBL) and has the option of a "capstone experience" designed for online students. The program also uses  what is termed "clustering", to overcome the usual narrow course boundaries.

The program has compulsory subjects and the student can then "select from over 80 elective courses". The large number of on-line courses now being offered by ANU came as a surprise to me. Six years ago, when I was designing the course "ICT Sustainability" (COMP7310) for ANU computing students, there were only a handful of other on-line courses. There were many "blended" courses, which have an on-line component, but few which did not require at least some on-campus attendance. But a quick search shows there are 125 Online ANU Courses for 2016, including, 19 undergraduate, 106 graduate and 22 from the ANU College of Law courses. I have the occasional law student in my course (along with many business students) and will be interesting to see how many from the new program take it up.

A curious aspect is that the announcement says "As an online program, the ANU JD (online) is only available to domestic students.". But one benefit from an on-line course is that students can be anywhere. This is especially curious as the Juris Doctor (on campus), which is equivalent to the online course, points out that students can "... gain real-world experience by ... spending a semester overseas...". If overseas experience is beneficial, why can't overseas students be admitted?

There are Australian visa restrictions on the proportion of on-line courses an international student can undertake:

"Students can study up to 25 per cent of their course by online and/or distance learning, but in each compulsory study period each student must be studying at least one unit that is not by distance or online."

From "Online and distance", National Code Part D, Standard 9 of the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act), Australian Department of Education and Training.

However, as Open Universities Australia point out, these restrictions do not apply to students studying on-line from abroad. These students do not need to be in Australia and so do not need a visa. The regulations make this clear:

"Note that the terms online learning and distance learning do not apply where the student:

• does not hold a student visa
• is resident in a country other than Australia; and
• is undertaking a unit of study with a registered provider in Australia.
  Study of this sort is outside of the scope of the National Code 2007 (as the student does not hold a student visa)."

From "Online and distance", National Code Part D, Standard 9 of the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act), Australian Department of Education and Training.

It happens I am an international student at a North American university at present. There was no issue of visa requirements and the only real complication was in showing my Australian qualifications met the overseas program requirements. Apart from that I just needed a credit card to pay the course fees and Internet access to undertake the courses.