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kccqzy
function_seven
Your advice is good, and I agree that you didn't use specialized software to reverse the blur, but this
> I didn't use any specialized software; it was just Mathematica with its built-in ImageDeconvolve function with guessed parameters for the Gaussian kernel.
is one of the most HN comments I've come across recently :)
zwayhowder
Reminds me of the Simpson's 3D episode. Professor Frink's
>"Well, it should be obvious to even the most dimwitted individual, who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology..."
gropius
Professor Frink, Professor Frink. He'll make you laugh, he'll make you think. He likes to run and then the thing with the.. person...
fnord123
Such an underrated character. Thank god for Futurama.
cconcepts
"Gleevin gliven"
1f60c
That reminds me of this legendary comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
function_seven
Ha, I knew what that comment was before I clicked. (“Is it that rsync/ftp comment? Yup.”) ((EDIT: but it was curlftpfs, not rsync))
mroche
> is one of the most HN comments I've come across recently :)
That gave me a laugh. I don't have any experience with Mathematica, but everytime I see it mentioned (usually on HN) I'm amazed at the sheer breadth the system is capable of. The amount of use cases and possibilities blows my mind.
sellyme
The top solution on this Code Golf question is possibly the most comical example of Mathematica's scope that I've ever seen: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/71631/upgoat-or...
astrec
Whatever knocks this exchange off the top spot will be really special: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
gus_massa
If it is in the installable version now, it will be in Wolfram Alpha in 5 years if you can guess the right command, and in 10 year Wolfram Alpha will just automatically select the blurred part and make a fake unblurred versions of the jpg.
batsigner
Yet another example of someone mistaking the quality of a single person for the quality of a platform
lysp
> I personally recommend blacking out (add a black rectangle) instead of blurring, and if it is a PDF, convert to an image afterwards because too many PDF editors use non-destructive operations to add a new object instead of changing what's underneath.
We had a similar issue in Australia as well.
Politicians phone bills are published on the government website in summary form.
Someone in 2017 decided to blank out their phone numbers by changing the phone number text colour to white (same as background).
End result - hundreds of politicians and former prime ministers had their phone numbers leaked.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-20/phone-numbers-of-fede...
mickotron
I used to work in IT for a state based police force in Australia. Traffic reports can be requested by those involved in traffic accidents, which includes parties to the accident and their details.
People used to be able to get the personal information of police officers if they were involved, intentionally or not, in a traffic accident with a police car. They would request for the traffic accident report, and that included the personal information (including home address) of the police officers in the car. I was in QA and I tested the change when it was fixed. It now includes the address of Police HQ when a police officer is involved in a traffic incident.
dheera
Yup. I wrote a blog post about this a long time ago in 2007, and it was republished in Gizmodo in 2014: https://gizmodo.com/why-you-should-never-use-pixelation-to-h...
You can dictionary attack pixelated photos.
With Gaussian kernels, besides deconvolution you can sometimes also dictionary attack them if you have the original font and if the kernel is properly normalized kernel (i.e. most gaussian blurs).
Although I haven't tried, I think there may even be neural network based techniques that can perform even more effectively than a dictionary attack.
Separately, if the image editing tools added sufficient random noise to their mosaic filters they might be able to thwart most of these attacks, or at least make them significantly harder.
jacquesm
Interesting, thank you for the link. I had a hunch this should be possible but I wasn't aware that it was already proven. I used a similar trick on image recognition: turn images into a single 32 bit word by heavy pixelation and then look up a matching description. It's interesting how often that will work once you feed it with enough data. After all, that gives you 4 billion inputs mapped onto 4 billion descriptions, and plenty of those will contain the Eiffel tower with various cloudy backgrounds apparently recognized perfectly.
It's a total cheat but it is funny how close that can get you to something that might be actually useful.
Jugurtha
I wonder if you could use adaptive optimal kernels, AOK[0]? I had used this for work on multiphase flow recognition from an electrical capacitance tomography, ECT, as a proxy for void fraction. We wanted to tinker with time-frequency representations.
[0]: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/20c2/b82eef0809df80a402f125...
dylan604
I once had to provide my employer copies of court documents proving something or other in order to qualify for the benefits plan I was attempting to enroll. The part of the document that contained the info they required also contained other information I did not want them to have, and I was more than irked at having to do this in the first place. I used Photoshop to draw a 99% black box as the redaction, but then using a 100% black font color typed in a nasty little message. Nobody was ever going to see it, but just knowing that if they did it would be a shock. I qualified for the package.
Namidairo
> and if it is a PDF, convert to an image afterwards because too many PDF editors use non-destructive operations to add a new object instead of changing what's underneath.
You'd be surprised at how many times this happens on Government documents with redaction.
:S
Someone1234
That's why some even departments now have policies of printing and re-scanning retracted documents. It is dumb, but yet pretty hard to get wrong.
Both MS Word and PDF have leaked redacted/removed information in the past. Wasting paper given the severity of some of these leaks is minimal cost.
Freak_NL
If it is hard to get wrong, is it still dumb? Being able to verify with your own eyes that the redacted parts are indeed redacted is a pretty strong benefit to that process. You'll need to train staff to properly black out stuff (no idea what they do, heavy cardboard cut-outs or cutting out the censored content and using a black background for the scan?), but once that process is in place, it works.
With software you either need vetted and approved, very expensive software, or you have to accept a much higher error rate, because the operator cannot verify the results of the process with certainty.
techdragon
Then they use the big multifunction networked printer’s built in scanner, which saves a copy to the “little” hard drive they all tend to have in them now, and forget to ensure these things get wiped/destroyed... years later they sell the printer once the lease ends and the surprise inside is months to years of raw scanned documents the new owner gets access to with very little effort.
powersnail
Why don't they convert the PDF to image and convert back? This approach seems to be a lot more efficient, and less prone to other type of human errors (e.g. missing page). Is there still an attack vector?
banana_giraffe
Even when the black box is done right, sometimes there are quasi side-channel leaks of the size. The box covering a name for instances may be discoverable if there are only a few names possible, and it's a small box, meaning it's the shortest name.
Agentlien
A friend of mine once had to review some (Swedish) court document with redacted witness names. It was a word document with history intact. Just undoing a few steps was all it took.
taneq
One of my lecturers did that back at university - they generated an Excel spreadsheet containing everyone's marks, then for each student, deleted all but that student and saved as a different file.
Document history was turned on and anyone who hit ctrl+z got the full class marks.
(The same lecturer initially failed me because they forgot to add my final exam score to my assignments score, and then took four months to fix it. They weren't very competent.)
nikanj
My all-time favourite recommendation is "print, cut out the sensitive parts with an exacto knife, rescan".
Firstly because it's a nice mix of analog and digital, and secondly because it's short enough to fit in a tweet - yet extremely secure.
michaelt
"Information to be withheld should be black highlighted using a tool such as the word highlighter tool like this ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ and then printed off. This print out should then be scanned in and saved as a PDF."
Ministry of Defence redaction policy, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
cgriswald
...shred cut out parts, burn remains, mix with water, encase in cement, explode, divide rubble into four parts, disperse one part each in Lake Superior, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and the Great Salt Lake; assume an alias, move to Alaska...
ponker
This is how military redactions have been done forever. If a soldier writes home to his family and includes classified details (“I watched the sun rise over Mt Vesuvius yesterday but today we are moving west”) the censors just cut out the text with a knife.
irrational
Wouldn’t that mean they were marching into the gulf of Naples?
bentcorner
> I personally recommend blacking out (add a black rectangle) instead of blurring
I've seen people use image editors on mobile and they'll "scribble" out sensitive information, but one of the problems is that if you pick the wrong pen it'll blend your strokes so it's not 100% opacity (but on a casual glance it's close enough). You can zoom in and change the contrast of a photo that has been redacted this way and recover information.
saagarjha
It's unfortunate because that's the "thicker" brush so people tend to choose it first…
TwoBit
A pedophile ringleader was once caught by reversing a graphical swirl he used to try to hide his face in a picture.
DanBC
Yes. Wikipedia has an article about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil
ponker
Nuts. He sexually abused multiple children and distributed pictures of this, but spent less than five years in jail and is now out.
POiNTx
Apart from the really interesting content, this is an extremely good read, strikes me as the right kind of balance of information and keeping you entertained. I really enjoyed this writing style!
warent
Interesting, I liked the story but got the opposite impression you did. At first the humor was amusing but I felt like the relentless, extremely heavy sarcasm dripping off every sentence quickly turned it into a slog and even started to make me wonder which parts were genuine vs. joking. Not great.
mastersummoner
I had a feeling it might be a very off putting style for some people.
However, for me, I found it absolutely hilarious and very intelligent despite being obviously extremely... I'm not sure the right description. Young? Modern internet colloquial? Either way, it worked for me.
giarc
I agree... when you listen to a great comedian, it's not 1 joke/sentence. This article was too much. I still read it all since the overall topic was entertaining but the attempt at humour was overkill.
poutrathor
Have you actually listen to nowadays comedians ? It _is_ one joke/sentence nowadays (at least in my country).
More exactly, they separate each sentence. Each has a tiny bit of funny in it (in the words, in the way they say it, because they stay in character, whatever) and they let audience lol. Rinse and repeat.
Look I just googled "up and coming standupers" and picked the first video (new laptop, not connected to Gaccount) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6uW1odtjPc
Check the 36 first seconds.
Humour changed without you (us) realizing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
dvirsky
For me it was funny at first, then it was too much, but then it became funny again, like a joke repeated enough times.
oh_sigh
It seemed like a lot of words to say "His reservation code is visible on his ticket and I typed that into the website and saw the data they sent me". I do like how you got to see all the false starts though, which is more realistic than just knowing what to do immediately(ie trying to scan the barcode and then finding the data just printed in ascii)
undefined
anon9001
This was really a delight to read. I wonder if the author was raised on 2600. Fantastic stuff.
Also visited his page. Does not disappoint: https://mango.pdf.zone/
CPLX
I was pretty sure after a few paragraphs he was getting his style inspiration from Douglas Adams, but when I got to his line saying “this is widely regarded as a bad move” I became certain.
It is an excellent stylistic choice for documenting interactions with commonwealth bureaucracy, of course.
dwd
Something Adams incorporated a lot into his stories:
"But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
I did chuckle out loud when I read "For security reasons, we try to change our Prime Minister every six months".
NamTaf
Ah, he was the guy who wrote the facebook sleep time stalker script! It hits the same style of prose very closely.
SamBam
Figured the least I could do after reading the article was crack the puzzle, and felt good that I did since I usually fail at these kinds of things.
exikyut
Oh, that was indeed fun.
"Uhh... how many layers deep is this going to g-- oh, ok. Nice :D"
airstrike
Hard mode is an absolute delight
maest
Since we're sharing views on the writing style - I found it off-putting enough that I had to quit halfway through.
It's very tiresome to read, with _way_ too many digressions and jokes.
coldpie
Yeah, same. "Ok, this paragraph is nonsense, skip it.. so is this one... and this one... why am I still reading this?"
chriswwweb
I liked the humor in this piece a lot, I would not have read it until the end if it wasn't for the funny bits
jrochkind1
Yes. I want to subscribe to his newsletter for sure.
sorum
Some Grade A zingers in there:
> The man in question is Tony Abbott, one of Australia’s many former Prime Ministers.
> For security reasons, we try to change our Prime Minister every six months, and to never use the same Prime Minister on multiple websites.
> Harold Holt was another former Prime Minster and we… lost him? He disappeared while going for a swim one morning. This is not a joke. We named Harold Holt Memorial Swim Centre after him. I repeat, this is not a joke.
danieltrembath
"...I called up and was all like “yeah bloody g’day, day for it ay, hot enough for ya?”. Once the formalities were out of the way..."
ralphael
I couldn't stop laughing.
His skills at hacking are only matched by his wit at writing.
fphhotchips
I feel like this buries the lede massively: Qantas' system was run by Amadeus, who also run the booking system for some 200 other airlines [0]. If you could do this with Qantas and get all those notes, you could probably do it to any other airline and get them too. That would be bad enough, but it also appears that this issue (or one very much like it) has been reported widely at least back in early 2019.
So, either Amadeus didn't fix the issue until it was disclosed here (very very bad) or Qantas didn't update their booking system for a security patch (also very bad).
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/amadeus-airline-booking-vu...
robjan
The issue isn't Amadeus, it's that some airlines don't bother to use accounts with lower levels of privileges for operations which don't need full access. There are a number of different levels which are intended to be used for different purposes: for example, the credit card numbers are not visible to booking agents but can be accessed by the anti fraud department.
Some airlines just use a single "god mode" account for their whole e-commerce platform because it's cheaper / more convenient for their developers / vendors.
saberdancer
Could you explain how returning all data to the frontend is connected with "god mode" usage? Is the Amadeus system such that it created/masks different fields in the data depending on the access level you have?
In this case, "hacker" logged in a customer facing portal, this is probably not even an user account in the strict sense of the word.
I am asking as I fail to see how it is not a development issue. If they returned only the data that was needed on the page, it wouldn't expose internal comments or passport IDs.
robjan
There are of course two errors that the developer of the backend made. The first is not filtering what came back from the Amadeus API, but the second one - the one I am referring to - is using an Amadeus API key with too much access.
Amadeus filters the booking record depending on the level of access that the user accessing it has (the user being the backend in this case). In a previous life for another airline, I have experienced this problem before when a vendor tried to get something through to production which was retuning credit card numbers and expiry dates to the frontend (but not the CV3). This was all because the vendor tried to use the highest privilege API key rather than the one with access to the specific info they needed. It never got past UAT thanks to thorough security review in this case.
bostik
The underlying issues have been known for quite a while. There was a fantastic talk in CCC at 2016 about the airline booking systems and the various bits of information you can glean from them.[0]
0: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7964-where_in_the_world_is_carme...
namdnay
The underlying issue is that PNR+Last Name has always been the "secuirty" to access a booking, and no airline or travel agency wants to enforce stronger measures unilaterally, for fear of increasing friction for their customers
bonzini
There was another great talk by a (former?) ITAsoftware engineer, unfortunately I can't find it. Among various things he shares is that there's provision for the passenger being a child at arrival but not on departure. Which obviously can happen if you cross the date line backwards.
It would be great if anyone can find it, I am certain I got it from HN.
tomerico
I found his advice to Tony on how to get better with computers remarkably insightful:
> I said there probably was a book out there about “the basics of IT”, but it wouldn’t help much. I didn’t learn from a book. 13 year old TikTok influencers don’t learn from a book. They just vibe.
> My mum always said when I was growing up that:
> There were “too many buttons” She was afraid to press the buttons, because she didn’t know what they did I can understand that, since grown ups don’t have the sheer dumb hubris of a child, and that’s what makes them afraid of the buttons.
> Like, when a toddler uses a spoon for the first time, they don’t know what a spoon is, where they are, or who the current Prime Minister is. But they see the spoon, and they see the cereal, and their dumb baby brain is just like “yeA” and they have a red hot go. And like, they get it wrong the first few times, but it doesn’t matter, because they don’t know to be afraid of getting it wrong. So eventually, they get it right.
> Okay so I didn’t tell the spoon thing to Tony Abbott, but I did tell him what I always told my mum, which was: “Mum you just gotta press all the buttons, to find out what they do”.
jhealy
A similar anecdote from my family.
My uncle (a sheep farmer) and I discovered that:
1. I was afraid to touch anything in a car engine, but happy to muddle through unfamiliar computer issues
2. He was afraid to click unknown buttons on a computer screen, but comfortable pulling apart and rebuilding an unfamiliar car engine.
In both cases, we were confident because we knew whatever mistake we made we'd be able to reverse it. And in both cases, we were afraid of making a mistake that we couldn't reverse.
dorkwood
That's basically how I taught my father to use a computer. It came down to two things:
1. He was terrified of breaking it, so I told him that there was nothing he could possibly do to it that I couldn't fix. I made sure to sound overly confident -- almost like I was challenging him to break it. That gave him the confidence to do whatever.
2. Every time there was a problem with it, I would Google the answer in front of him, and he'd watch me figure it out in real time. Eventually, he got the confidence to start Googling things himself. The tech support calls dropped off pretty steeply after that.
toyg
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man how to google, and he'll never go a day in his life without being obsessed with conspiracy theories.
znpy
Yeah it's nice and everything but don't tell that to your boss or bosses in general otherwise most of us will be unemployed in a few years /s
Eric_WVGG
This reminds me of a trick I would do when I was the teenage “computer guy” for my family and neighbors back in the nineties.
When I was doing upgrades, I would make the person in question replace a few parts themselves. Usually I would pull out one SIMM chip or PCI card, explain what it did and how it was retained, and then ask them to pull out and replace a similar part themselves.
I found that getting their elbows dirty went a long way toward perceiving computers as things that could be figured out.
stubish
You missed the corresponding footnote:
“Nobody gives the baby a knife. You give them a spoon” - Mum, when I showed her this.
(which is also insightful, because the 'Mums' I've dealt with are mostly worried that pushing the wrong button will permanently break something, as if they used to sell blenders without safety features or something back in the day)
arh68
Yes! I call it cat-like thinking, after watching our cat walk all over the keyboard. She wouldn't look at the keys or the screen.
I can't remember how many times I've heard "I can't log in, the machine is locked", when there is literally 1 button Switch User, and clicking that 1 button does it. "Oh, I didn't think to try that, it said it was locked.."
Entering newlines in a textbox? It's.. shift-enter, or alt-enter, alt-shift-something. Multicursor? It's.. shift-up? Alt-up? You just try 'em. Cat-like
dTal
In fairness, the "Switch User" button is a terrible interface on many levels. Apart from the complete lack of feedback on the actual situation (an active desktop session), it conveys a muddled mental model in which someone who has logged out and walked away from the computer is still considered to be "The User". A better interface would simply have the normal login prompt, along with some information about any active desktop sessions. The computer is no more "locked" than it is on first boot.
abixb
Great post, thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
BTW, on a side note, when you try and visit the blog's homepage[0] and scroll down to the bottom, you find a link to an actual (password protected) PDF file called Mango.pdf[1]. The author 'Alex' says the password for the PDF has been embedded in the page and it didn't take me a lot of time to figure the password out from the HTML source[2].
But when I opened the PDF, I was hit with this random string of characters:
cGJhdGVuZ2h5bmd2YmFmLCBsYmggZmJ5aXJxIHpsIHlodnR2IGNobW15ci4gQCB6ci BiYSBnanZnZ3JlIGp2Z3UgbGJoZSBzbmliaGV2Z3IgcXJmZnJlZyBnYiB0cmcgbGJo ZSBlcmpuZXEuIFZnJ2YgeXZ4ciwgYWJnIG4gaXJlbCB0YmJxIGVyam5lcSBmYiBodQ o=
I tried to decode this using every available decoder, but it only throws up random result. Was wondering if any of you smart people here had any idea about this code.
[1] https://mango.pdf.zone/mango.pdf
[2] view-source:https://mango.pdf.zone/
EDIT: SOLVED IT!
As the commenters who replied to me mentioned, this puzzle is double-encoded. I think the trick is to figure out which decoder to use first.
cimi_
CyberChef[0] has a 'magic' decoder that tries out different encodings for you.
[0] https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/#recipe=Magic(3,false,false...
carlmr
There are two layers to that encoding. When you see a random string of characters and numbers ending with one or two equals signs, think of base64. Then when you see something that seems like word groups with spaces, think of rot* (* = 13 being the most common version) encoding.
abixb
Thank you. I solved it. My decoding sequence was wrong before (I was trying to decode in reverse), but your pointers helped me.
losvedir
I decoded it probably in the same way you tried, but I wouldn't call the result "random" in the space of possibilities. A random result of that kind of decoding would likely involve binary data that can't map cleanly to letters the way this did. You've just gotta go deeper!
undefined
nbgl
Hint: try ROT13.
barbs
Quick posix shell rot13 tip: pipe it into:
tr '[A-Za-z]' '[N-ZA-Mn-za-m]'
ramses0
Also sometimes useful is vim: `g?` ... it's useful to have "scrambled" lines in notes for protection against casual disclosure.
Vim used to have a (terrible) encryption capability, but lately I've been fairly happy with `pass` (passwordstore.org) for basic local encryption.
efreak
There's a rot13 command in the bsdgames package on Ubuntu. Or you could just create an alias. Not sure if the command takes file input.
abhiminator
Thank you. Tried that as well, still throws up a string of letters and numbers. But the frequency this time seemed a bit more consistent, so the trick is to apply some sort of frequency analysis, I guess. Still on it.
BTW, are there any more of such 'puzzle hunt' websites where you could play around and sharpen your decoding skills? Thanks!
ibudiallo
The power of Inspect Element. This is exactly how I found out I was underpaid[1]. A company I worked for used a software called erecruit to manage my contracts. When you click on a clients name, it makes an ajax request to fetch the data. Being a web developer, I inspected the data returned.
I'm pretty sure all the developer did was:
echo json_encode($queryResult);
[1]: https://idiallo.com/blog/how-much-do-you-charge-for-your-wor...
dylan604
I think this is a lesson lots of early AJAX/client-side coders should be forced to learn. When you do a `SELECT * FROM` and return the entire result, that data is visible on the client end in full detail (if you're familiar with how to use the browser's dev tools that is). Maybe you only make some of that data visible to the user in the UI, but the data you didn't use is still part of that AJAX return. Only send to the browser the data you actually need!
bagacrap
Every consulting firm pays their employees way less than the hourly rate they bill clients. That's how the firm exists. Good for you that you were in a situation to dictate your compensation.
vishnugupta
I accidentally discovered a way to get hold of passport details of random people by applying for Visa on arrival to Vietnam. There are these online portals which do some document pre processing which is legit. And on landing in Vietnam we are expected to show that we have already applied for Visa. It so happens that these portals do batch processing. Which means my application is processed along with a half a dozen or so other random applicants.
And so I applied for one. And when I received the confirmation document I received the entire batch file. It included passport number, expiry date and other PII of ten random people which would be super valuable in the hands of criminals and such.
And conversely ten random people know my PII
hdi8534
The same when you apply to give up vietnamese citizenship, all your info are public on the goverment website (pdf files with name, birthday, current addresss...)
rntksi
with the way how the government over there works, even if you have those information... there's really nothing much to do with it.
mannykannot
If you are applying to give up Vietnamese citizenship, I would guess that you are no longer living in Viet Nam, so this information might serve as a starter kit for someone to steal your identity?
jwong_
Foreign visitors to China staying in non-hotels are required to register at the local police station. The police in the city I visit use their personal cellphones to take pictures of your passport, use their personal WeChat accounts to send them who-knows-where, and then store them in paper form on the top of their desks. Anyone who walks in to register can see what kinds of foreigners are staying, where they're staying, their jobs, passport numbers, etc.
city41
I recently bought a used phone on ebay. When I turned it on it had the previous owner's data in tact and no passcode. I opened Gmail and was in their account.
I immediately factory reset the phone. My point being sensitive data leaks all over the place in many ways in today's world.
tschwimmer
This is one the of the funniest things I've read in recent memory. He made an Instagram post 30 second check of Chrome's dev tools into a narrative I couldn't stop reading. Thanks for brightening my day author!
zamfi
I am very impressed by this piece. Something about how “Alex” manages to blend the kind of humor not typically associated with compassion or competence, with a story that is most spectacular because of the very compassionate and competent actions of its protagonist...I literally couldn’t stop reading.
So well done.
aahortwwy
> “You could drop me in the bush and I’d feel perfectly confident navigating my way out, looking at the sun and direction of rivers and figuring out where to go, but this! Hah!”
I mean not to call him out but this did happen and he didn't navigate his way out (although that says nothing about his confidence).
https://www.smh.com.au/national/tony-abbott-lost-in-the-outb...
EDIT: To be fair, it's been a decade. Maybe he's worked on his orienteering skills since having that experience?
chris_wot
Sure, this is the guy who knighted a prince and ate a raw onion. What did you expect?
Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.
mmerlin
Abbott's worst two decisions while PM were, IMHO:
Killing our nascent Fibre-to-the-Home rollout which had just begun after years of planning by the previous government. We now use problematic mish mash of slow copper instead of fibre (Murdoch wanted this so Tony gave it up for him).
Killing the mining tax for his donors. This would would have returned billions for our country. We could have begun a sovereign wealth fund like Norway who have over $1 Trillion in theirs. Australia also makes minimal profit from gas exports. Qatar exports less than us but their country profits 2600% more per year than Australia.
Domestic buyers on the east coast of Australia now pay one of the highest prices in the world for gas. Double the price our exporters are buying it for (and they have liquefaction and transport costs included).
joppy
Don't forget scrapping basically every environmental initiative that the Rudd and Gillard governments put in place, pretty much on his own personal conviction that climate change is not human-caused.
tonyedgecombe
Since hired as a UK trade advisor:
taejo
I had assumed the Tony Abbott in recent UK news was a different person to the former Australian PM. Thanks for the correction!
rswail
I wouldn't say he was our Trump. Our Trump is Clive Palmer, down to the grifting and ripping off subcontractors and employees and suing people.
Abbott was more our McConnell, happy to tear down political norms and standard parliamentary practice while claiming to defend it. He was a "good" opposition leader in that he basically was in opposition to everything proposed by the government, not for good reason, just because.
He didn't last long as an actual leader, because that requires positive actions, not just oppositional or destructive ones.
He won't be missed from our political domain.
prawn
I think your Trump-Palmer comparison is decent, but not sure about McConnell. Something that seemed key to Abbott was his focus on very repetitive and simple statements - the three word slogans (stop the boats, axe the tax; hardly discouraged "ditch the witch"). Not saying there hasn't been similar before, but he was particularly effective with it. Trump has used similar tactics (build the wall, lock her up, etc), which might've encouraged OP's point.
bmarquez
I don't get it, is there something noteworthy about eating a raw onion?
boyter
Yes and no. It was the pinnacle in a series of bizzare behaviour from Tony while he was the Prime Minister. Certainly its the one people most remember of him. Keep in mind he ate it with the skin on as well. I think its also something people look out for, with the previous PM Kevin Rudd being somewhat infamous for eating his own ear wax on live TV.
When I was working on an archive project for the ABC, "tony eating onion" or some variation was the most common thing people searched for in the system when they first started using it.
eskaytwo
The context: he was on a PR tour of a farm (or factory or something), and grabbed it from a pile and just started eating it like it was an apple, whilst continuing the tour. It caught the public attention at how normal he made eating a raw onion look.
nicwilson
When you use it to hide the breath of an alcoholic, yes.
akent
He ate it with the skin on, too.
searchableguy
Yeah same. It's pretty common for restaurants and households to have raw onion in the salad (at least in north India). Unusual for someone to eat them with the skin though.
strken
Prior to becoming prime minister, he was a Rhodes Scholar and then a Master of Arts at Oxford, a journalist for multiple papers, and a fairly effective lobbyist and politician.
His policies were regressive even for the liberal party's right, he was needlessly belligerent as PM, and I didn't like him or vote for his party. However, he wasn't an uneducated or stupid man, and he wasn't an inexperienced political outsider like Trump.
qdiencdxqd
He was a Rhodes Scholar, so he's probably pretty smart.
chris_wot
I’m not saying he is stupid. But he was fundamentally unsuited at being a Prime Minister. He left the government in absolute chaos.
sellyme
The contact form on Abbott's website 403ing is impressively on-brand.
coagmano
I wouldn't be surprised if the staff deliberately sabotaged it. I've worked for a party before and the emails are horrendous
iso947
My MP had several death threats last year - including in the post to her home address inside an otherwise normal looking birthday card.
Polylactic_acid
There are so many website that will automate spamming every politician contact form with prewritten content about an issue so I'm surprised if those contact forms route anywhere other than /dev/null.
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Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient.
A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery. I didn't use any specialized software; it was just Mathematica with its built-in ImageDeconvolve function with guessed parameters for the Gaussian kernel.
I personally recommend blacking out (add a black rectangle) instead of blurring, and if it is a PDF, convert to an image afterwards because too many PDF editors use non-destructive operations to add a new object instead of changing what's underneath.