It was September 1986 and a highly opinionated first year university student felt like expressing his dissatisfaction with The Sydney Morning Herald.
The Royal Australian Navy fleet had just entered Sydney Harbour for a grand 75th anniversary celebration. Thousands of people had turned out to meet the vessels as they cut through the grey water under a rainy spring sky. Our 18-year-old protagonist from Cronulla was there with them – "braving the bad weather" to support the patriotic display – and felt the Herald's subsequent coverage unduly emphasised anti-war protesters in the crowd.
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Cyber hacks are the new frontier of espionage, warfare and a big threat to government, businesses and individuals according to Malcolm Turnbull. Courtesy ABC News 24.
"It was upsetting, to say the least, to not see any mention of the huge crowds which gathered to welcome the allied warships," he wrote in a letter to the editor.
"Your reports also failed to mention that there were quite a few violent 'peace' demonstrators. I had the horrifying experience of someone threatening my life for carrying a US flag," the young man said. "I hope that in the future Australia's media will be less biased."
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Alastair MacGibbon at the Dickson Dumpling House. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Three decades later, Alastair MacGibbon's passion is undiminished. Over lunch at Dickson Dumpling House in Canberra's north, it's clear the special adviser to the Prime Minister on cyber security still holds strong views about the world. If anything, MacGibbon is an evangelist.
He is evangelical about the power of the internet and his professed mission to civilise it. Messianic about the virtue of public service and his "ruthless" need to steer clear of partisan politics. Zealous about taking risks, speaking his mind and the importance of debate and peaceful protest. The government's cyber-tsar has thought about a lot of issues and has a tendency to convey his conclusions not unlike a Hillsong pastor.
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Born in 1968, MacGibbon was raised in the heart of the Sutherland Shire – the proud coastal enclave in Sydney's south – the son of an engineer father and homemaker mother. He studied politics at the University of Sydney, joined the Liberal Club and worked briefly for Liberal senator Michael Baume. Then the Bachelor of Arts graduate joined the blue collar and relatively young Australian Federal Police in 1989.
"I've always been fascinated with how people interact with each other. I'm fascinated by how people take advantage of each other. And I've spent my life – and it sounds really twee so I apologise – but I've spent my entire life trying to figure out how to stop someone victimising another person either individually or at scale," he says.
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MacGibbon at the Australian Federal Police's High Tech Crime Centre in 2004. Photo: Nicole Emanuel
"What are the historical, geographic, political and other drivers that lead to behaviours? I was involved in organised crime stuff for a long time and If you look at the heroin trade you can look at it as a historical and political thing as much as you can a criminal thing."
Joining the AFP also flicked a switch: "I took a real puritanical view about being politically active. Because the police, in my view, can't be active politically and be in a regulatory position ... and I've maintained that since then."
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Alastair MacGibbon in 2004. Photo: Robert Rough
Across a 15-year career with the AFP he held roles across the organisation, country and world. His shift towards cybercrime started as a liaison officer in Washington DC, assisting Australian and American authorities on transnational cases. Returning home, he headed up the newly created Australian High Tech Crime Centre, a response to growing concern by federal and state police forces about the growth of online crime. Then came his first stints in the private sector, at eBay and running a handful of small businesses. In 2015, MacGibbon returned to government's warm embrace as the country's first children's eSafety commissioner.
In May 2016, the boy from Cronulla was handpicked by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to spearhead cultural change within government, across the business world and among the greater public. It's an unusually – and intentionally – public facing role for an adviser in the public service.
They ain't no hacktivists, they're just crooks
He finds himself at the apex of a $230 million cyber-security strategy. Hacking and unsettling online activity have entered the public consciousness since the Russian interference with the US election, high-profile corporate hacks and, in Australia, the census debacle and attacks by foreign intelligence on government infrastructure. Theft of intellectual property is creating corporate and political havoc around the world.
"I'm driving for a dramatic change in the way we run cyber-security in government and in corporates and in our private lives. I need revolutionary change in the way we view that. And if you want to make revolutionary change, you can't be risk-averse. Whether that risk means me losing my job or whatever, I'll wear it. I sound like a wanker but I believe in this stuff. And I'll proselytise about it and I will do it. If people don't like what I do, they can get rid of me."
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Alastair MacGibbon is evangelical about the power of the internet. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Based at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, MacGibbon is a regular visitor to the Prime Minister's office in Parliament House. He has a good relationship with Turnbull and ministerial staff he works with have affectionately dubbed him "Al Mac".
He describes his mission as "remarkably beautiful", and refers to public servants in glowing terms, but thinks working in the system sometimes feels like running in sand. To the "pragmatic revolutionary", the conservative stability of the public service is its greatest strength and greatest weakness.
Along with the new Ambassador for Cyber Affairs, Tobias Feakin, at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, there are now two disruptive "outsiders" shaping and communicating government cyber-policy. They work closely with Paul Taloni, the director of secretive electronic intelligence agency the Australian Signals Directorate, and Dan Tehan, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security.
"It's important to have someone who's not a politician, with the technical expertise but articulate as well, to get out there and explain the threats," one government source says. "Alastair likes to shake things up and he looks at the whole system very differently. That's one of the reasons the PM likes him."
Tehan says he shares MacGibbon's "bias for action" and emphasis on collaboration and transparency.
And while MacGibbon has a strict aversion to partisanship, he clearly maintains a fascination with pure politics and holds a deeply held philosophical view about the world, especially the internet that connects it.
"Somehow with consumer electronics and internet services, we've taken the view that it's totally anarchic – you can't enforce social values and you just take it or leave it. I don't believe it. I subscribe to this concept of an online civil society," he says. Regularly deploying metaphors to make a point, he believes online behaviour and misbehaviour should be treated the same as offline activities: the rights of the individual should be protected and harmful individuals stopped.
"I think we vacated that field without even having the fight. And I want to have that fight."
Following the Snowden revelations about US government surveillance and the Australian government's expansion of its ability to access personal metadata, people are sceptical of the government poking around in the internet. But MacGibbon sees a role for it and backs the courts, media and public to keep overreach in check. It's the same as living freely in our regular offline lives, he says, where there are an awful lot of laws.
He regards issue-motivated hackers with disdain: "They ain't no hacktivists, they're just crooks."
Plenty of people are less trusting of the authorities and disagree "almost violently" with him. Which is fine, MacGibbon says, as long as it's peaceful. "What I love about debate is it refines your views, it sharpens the bits that are good, it blunts the bits that are bad. I say this really genuinely: I love a dispute." Follow us on Facebook
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