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NZ Government Pushes For Wide Spying Powers
lim-bim-tim-wim writes: "The New Zealand government is planning to introduce powerful legislation to enable the Police, GCSB and Security Intelligence Service to hack into computers without the knowledge of the owner. Owners will also have to give up cryptographic keys and passwords on demand. ISPs and telecom companies will have to provide backdoors for government agencies. So how does this affect you? It appears this has been brought about by pressure from the FBI. So maybe your country is next. There is a short story at www.stuff.co.nz "
It is right, what you say. It would be a nice way to get those crackers and cyber criminals. But what about the possibility of industry espionage? Who guarantees us that this tool will not be missused? I would not trust in this shit. There are other ways to prevent crimes or catch those who are responsible for it. Cutting in the flesh of "normal human beeings" as you and I is NOT the right way. Once the government has the possibility to do all these things, they will use it. And history showed more than once that they wont stick to the original purpose of this law, it will be extended to be more and more intrusive. No, forget it, this is definetly the wrong way! Have a nice day, I will try to get my breakfast into my body again after I coughed it out while reading the article. cu, otaku
"My personal freedom is an *entirely* separate issue from my personal privacy. I cannot see for a moment how you can say that (if..) my freedom is not restricted, then I should be unconcerned about the loss of my personal privacy.
A non sequitur"
a fair point, and one that i'd hoped someone would make.
"What happens when "my" government re-defines what's legal and what's illegal?
How can I be safe from any future, arbitrary changes in the laws, over which I have *no* control, and probably no knowledge, until the Secret Police are knocking at my door?"
at what stage did we lose our right to vote, our right to protest, and our right to referendums? we have as substantial control over decisions of laws as is possible in the current political system. if you feel that you don't have the power to influence law changes, then you should be doing something about it.
"A utterly naive attitude.
How *completely* aware are you, of all laws and statutes that are in effect where you live?"
i am aware enough of the laws to know when i am breaking one, and when i am not. i am also aware of which ones i disagree with, and am actively working towards having them corrected. the legal system is a system that is supposed to work for us. if you feel that it isn't working, then rather than flustering about in paranoid fits, you should be working to change it.
So, if somebody slaughters your family, and criminal investigators find detailed directions to your house, diagrams of the surrounding landscape, and various observational details (i.e. lights go out from 10:00 pm - 10:30 pm), and photos of the owner's prized rifle, yet they have no warrant, you would want this person to go unpunished? The government isn't using this as a submissive measure, it's using this as a measure to uphold justice and national security.
After all, even if they do snoop around on your computer, so long as you have no child porn or anything, what do you have to fear? They'll read your school notes?
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
Already proposed. Any person convicted of a crime gives up DNA. Man, woman, child.
Hello, Big Brother.
Yeah,
a friend of my girlfriend always covers up the webcam on her boyfriend's computer when she goes to stay round his place. I think she has watched 'American Pie' a few too many times, rather than read 1984 too much.
The principle: Without special, judicial permission the state and her representatives should enjoy exactly the same rights as its citizens (except that in the UK, NZ, Aus etc... technically we aren't citizens depite what it might say on our passports, we're subjects of the Queen). The way it should be is that the citizens ALLOW the state certain powers to investigate criminals and make legislation etc... whereas the politicians seem to have forgotten this.
Elgon
While it may seem a bit dodgy from human rights perspective, really it is not much of an issue really. The fact is they don't know what they are talking about, and they are never going to get anybody working for them that know's what they are talking about... I mean, take the case of the NZ Police and their new system... They went to IBM. Hmm.. and surprise surprise the whole project was a flop, got nowhere, and lost the government tons. I think the same thing will happen with this... They hire idiot Commerce graduates who know how to make buttons work in VB and expect them to crack into an high security system. It's not going to happen.
Nevrar
The article appears here.
"...is if your personal freedom isn't being restricted any more, then does loss of personal privacy with regards to the government really matter?
My personal freedom is an *entirely* separate issue from my personal privacy. I cannot see for a moment how you can say that (if..) my freedom is not restricted, then I should be unconcerned about the loss of my personal privacy.
A non sequitur.
"...if you're not doing anything illegal, then does it really matter if the government knows about all your legal activities?"
What happens when "my" government re-defines what's legal and what's illegal?
How can I be safe from any future, arbitrary changes in the laws, over which I have *no* control, and probably no knowledge, until the Secret Police are knocking at my door?
Honestly!
"...if you're not doing anything illegal, then does it really matter..."
A utterly naive attitude.
How *completely* aware are you, of all laws and statutes that are in effect where you live?
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Here it is:
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The majority of the press are pretty lame, just like most places. However, there are a few around who have a history of being able to bring this sort of thing to light, and presenting in a way that makes everyone understand.
Everyone keeps asking "If you don't have anything bad on your system, what do you have to fear?" What?!?! Okay, let's try this. "I've just cracked into your computer. Do you care?" Most likely, you'd call the police. Suppose I didn't do anything but read everything on your system? Would you think that was okay? I hope not!
The point is that, even though you may not have anything illegal, you should not turn your head the other way and allow this to happen. The government has no right to do this - they are, in my opinion, just trying to gain control. The people who sit there and think "I have nothing to fear, so I'm okay with this." are the same type of people that didn't stop the Holocaust when Hitler was just some wacko with an idea. I did a big study of this last year, and the only reason the Holocaust got off the ground was because the people who thought it was wrong didn't stand up to it, because they hadn't done anything wrong. If an entire country were to have stood up to Hitler, then he would have just been regarded as a laughingstock. People need to stand up to things like this, even if they're not going to be adversely affected by it. For all of those in New Zealand, fight this. And for those of you not in New Zealand, fight this. Because if we let it get started in New Zealand, then it's that much harder to stop when your country sees that it's going on, and that it worked in New Zealand.
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
This reminds of a story I heard (can't remember where). Anyway, some people were discussing privacy and one person said just what you said "What are you trying to hide?"
Another person, whom she was arguing with, picked up her purse and begin looking through it. She immediately snatched it back.
The person who took her purse said "Get the point?" She did.
--
It's pretty obvious that our governments have been reading our mail and tapping our phones whenever they felt like it, for years. After all, they own the post office and the phone companies own them. We'd be pretty naive to think that there hasn't been a lot of winking and nodding going on when it comes to spying on citizens. The recent use of the net to organize demonstrations against the World Bank and the IMF, not to mention corporate boycotts, has led us to the spot we're in. That and the fact that governments and police agencies see our net as a power tool, for them. I don't know what the answer is but we better come up with one quickly. One possibility is that we treat countries with regressive privacy laws as ill and quarrantine them. Refuse to communicate with their citizens. Drastic I know, but if we don't take dramatic action soon we will all be in quarrantine. We all know that the net was a force for good, enabling the exchange of ideas between citizens of the world, and we damn well better do something drastic to protect it or we'll lose it.
Keyboard loggers are an easy way to get around encryption, and we've got a product of our own which apparently has been very popular with the US TLA's - KeyGhost.
When I say we, I say we as a Kiwi, not as someone from KeyGhost. That might have been a little ambiguous. I don't work for them.
Cheers
rediguana
I wasn't talking about people who are smart
enough to use a "secure by default my ass"
BSD instead of easily rootable Linux RH 6.x
okay? So relax. I hope you don't have any
non-audited daemons running. I was talking
about the growing pain-in-the-butt-crowd of
"installed linux yeehaa cool" people, who
constantly manage to annoy me because they
give script kids an unattended playground.
Um, dude, in a relative sense when comparing to major world cities I suppose you could say the major cities in NZ were towns, but don't take it too literally. 600,000 people (in Wellington, close to the same in Christchurch) is WAY too big for everyone to know each other as you seem to be suggesting with your "no anonymity" comment. :P
They don't. It's called pre-pay.
Oh yeah? Try being hispanic in the US. Or even worse, hispanic with Canadian passport, like me. First, you get stopped a lot more than the average WASP, because of racial profiling police practices. Second, they don't believe your documentation ("This guy has Canadian ID? Must be fake."), and call the INS on you.
The people at the Canadian consulate in L.A. know me very well-- they have to confirm I am who I claim I am all the time.
Are you adequate?
That's not from Handel, it's from Isaiah 53:5. Check it out.
It was also where the 80's rock band Stryper got its name.
The idea is to waste their time sifting garbage so it isn't worth the effort. Sorta like trying to kill all the DECSS stuff out there to find a bunch of it is referring to cacading style sheets. Web pages mentioning DECSS attract attention. FTP sites with noise would do the same time and take much longer to verify if any content was there. The idea is to make snooping unproductive.
The truth shall set you free!
One of the wonderful things about the US is that their are no guards along state borders, no documentation is needed to travel inside our borders, and other things along these lines. I think that this is part of the reason why we do not see many terrorists attacks in the US. Blowing up a building where there is no security and hurting innocents does not make for good relations with the people whose opinions you are trying to sway. However, some people think that terrorist activities in places where the government is supposed to protect them will make the people feel less secure about their government. Having said this, I think that there is an important lesson here - how people behave is usually directly related to how they are treated. If you let people have their freedoms and privacy chances are they are going to do the right thing. Of course, there will always be a few jackasses who will do bad and destructive things, but I feel that this is inevitable. What I hate about are politicians and some of the general public is that they feel that they have to protect us from anything and everything. I would much rather have things they way that they are now, and run the chance of accidentally getting caught in a terrorist incedent (which are probably less than winning the lottery), than live in some nazi-like Orwellian future. People never realizing that things really are not that bad, and the fact that we have a bunch of jackasses running around trying to scare people into justifying their jobs now that the cold-war is over, is not conducive to the public well being. street sweeper 2565 reporting from the land of anthem
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Someone needs to write a pgp-driven encryption tool that works as follows:
It take a file to be encrypted, encrypts it, appends it to either another encrypted file using a different key, or a noise file encrypted using a random and discarded key, then merges the two and encrypts again using the first file's key.
Use this tool all the time whenever you encrypt anything. It will result in files twice the size of the original, but you can legitimately say you only have the key for one half of the file, and the other half is noise, as demonstrated by examining the open-source encryption program. However, it's entirely possible that the person could choose to merge in another, 'secret' encrypted file instead of the noise file, and this could only be proven if that key is discovered or cracked.
If such a program went into widespread use, the Enzed gov't would either have to prosecute everyone who used the program, despite the fact that they're breaking no laws, or they would lack any means of obtaining keys (which they can't prove even exist) to uncover data they similarly can't prove the existence of.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I think I mis-spoke. I'm sure I saw this proposed in the Omaha World Herald(dead-tree edition) within the last two weeks, but now I can't find it in the online archive. Hmmm, strange.
I prefer the freedom to life over the freedom to privacy. I am not a criminal, and therefore have nothing to hide!
If you would actually be willing to die simply because a government official looks at your computer, you certainly are a fool.
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
I finally found the link I was searching for. The article originated in the Washington Post, and was carried by the Omaha World Herald. The article, as published by the OWH can be found at http://www.om aha.com/ind ex.atp?u_div=3&u_hdg=3&u_sid=26996.
I'll go ahead and get the stupid responses out of the way:
1 - This is good. It will catch paedophiles. You do you want your children safe, don't you?
2 - So what if it means the government has access to your encrypted files. You shouldn't have any illegal files inthe first place, and by encrypting anything you might as well be sticking up a flashing light and big flag above your house saying "Woo! Mr. Policeman! I am a criminal and wish to harm others!"
3 - Only dirty evil hackers want privacy. If this prevents fæRym4n from hacking into the missle control systems using your grandmas stolen credit card numbers...then good! Joe Citizen has nothing to fear since we only want to protect you from yourself.
4 - All Kiwis are backwards anyway. Who cares?
With that said, discuss!
,
faeryman
Er....Norman Kirk continued in popularity until the day he died of natural causes in hospital in 1974, two years into yet another term of office...got a point? :)
Here in The Netherlands, there was also a plan to ban encription and force anyone who wants a license to hand in both his public and private key. Naturally, widespread protests arised around the country, and it never came through. Had it came through, though, I don't think many people would give up their PGP or give away the key.
One interesting information in addition: here in Germany there also was a similar approach that would have forced any telecommunication provider (phone, mobile and internet) to implement an interface for surveillance institutions. Sure, they wouldnt have get any bucks for implementing it. Well, the law did not pass, but it is interesting to see that there are similar tries in other countries. I await the moment that this law will be brought back into discussion, then they will argument as following "Hey, guys, look at NZ, there it works. Look at , there it works. We have to do it also, in order to be able to catch that bad bad guys". No, thanks. :(
cu, otaku
I'd love to see an election (in the USA) where 70% of the voters turned out, and the Republicrats only got sixty-some percent of the vote.
That would mean that the Replicrats _did not_ have a "mandate", and that some worthy third party will be on the ballot in '04.
Remember, your vote is only wasted if you don't vote.
and, of course, I am moderated down for my political viewpoints. this is on-topic!!!! the article asks what will happen in our country...being from america, the election will affect us. as for gwb saying we have too much freedom, i would like to see where you got that from! if you have a link, post it.
That is what the U.S. is. I'd leave this fascist shithole, if I could find a place that wasn't gasping for air from the weight of it's heavy hand.
Hell no. wakeywakey, I personally can't believe that the Government of Good'ol Aotearoa could maintain a secure network. Imagine having a database of everyones ISPs and Passwords hacked? I prefer to look after my own security thnx.
--- LOTR!!!
Don't forget that NZ has been going after private gun ownership. I'm sure life in NZ will be so much happier and safer sans guns and privacy!
To be fair, Gore might not be much better than Bush anyway, so that's why I'm going to vote for Nader
No, I don't think I will. Perhaps snail mail should be censored and monitored to prevent potential criminals from conversing through snail mail? Maybe we should tap all phone conversations to prevent possible conspiritory activities. Hell, why don't we implant a device in every person that transmits every word spoken to the proper authorities so that criminals won't be able to converse.
"But our children will be drawn to porn!" Well, as a 13 year old, I was not drawn to porn. I don't look at porn now. Maybe my parents raised me correctly (and no, I didn't live in a censored police state of a home), maybe I just got lucky. Anyway, I learned more dirty words/jokes/stuff from the other 13 year old boys than all those nasty porn sites that [failed to] suck me in. Maybe it's time to stop conversations in grade school and even high school too?
Can't you realize that anything can be used as a tool of criminals/terrorists/groupofpeoplethatscaresyou?
--
I bought my player back in January and the store I got it from (big chain store from Aussie) had multizoned all of the players it had on sale.
:)
If you didn't ask for multizone, they wouldn't have told you and it would have been a nice surprise when you found out!
--
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
"If the FBI indeed pressured the NZ government to do this then a similar plan is in effect here. I mean we do have carnivore, but to have a backdoor to everyone's PC? That is an Orwellian nightmare! What about fourth amendment protection against searches and seizures?" Except, of course, this being New Zealand, the 4th amendment to some American laws doesn't really apply.
WTF? Where the hell does the FBI get off deciding they have any right to push this sort of law in my country! As a kiwi now living in Vancouver, BC, I was mortified to read this, its not bad enough that it was passed in the UK, but to now read that they are trying to push this on my little nation not only enrages me, but makes me wonder just how many countries in the world these government agency freaks seem to want to have control over.
Kiwigirl
Ignoring all the issues of the role of government, etc. this is the usual response of a government. To wit: You are behind the times by about 5 years. In a peer to peer high speed interconnected world, something that I wanted to keep from others eyes might not even be on the same continent as my computer. Indeed, it might not be on any one computer, but on several computers in seemingly meaningless pieces. Thus this sort of action will only "catch" the small fry. The governemnt will (of course) trumpet this as a grand examaple of the sucess of the action, but the folks who are running the real crimial exercises (and for whom such draconian measures might possibly, in the wildest imagination be justified) will conduct business as usual.
I wish more people read William Gibson. Maybe then we'd believe where the corporations and governments are eventually headed. Technology is neither good nor bad, neither are corporations and governments. It's simply that what a corporation and government wants is very different from what a person wants. Sigh...
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Are you playing devils advocate? Or are you really that stupid? Why not put a camera in the bedroom of your house and connect it to the police station (ala 1984). I mean what do you have to hide.
My Weblog
Hey. I'm kind of new here, but I don't see the problem with all of this. What if they catch a terrorist or pedophile? Governments NEED to be able to do things like this for the protection of the citizens.
-CoG
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
imagine a beowolf cluster of these laws! i'm sorry, i really am. there goes some karma, oh well.
I think the Kiwi can't count.
Wellington was 158,275 in 1996.
Chch is about 324,300.
In most parts of the world those are towns.
refs 1 2
re the German Enigma code..
come on, give credit where credit is due.. Poland was the one that initially cracked Enigma. It was only when the Germans took it from 3 encoding wheels to 5+, and the Polish intelligence agency couldn't afford to build the larger Bombes that would crack Enigma, did they give it to the Allies. Then, yes, at Bletchley, Turing was able to break these larger key'd Enigma ciphers. Check out The Code Book by Simon Singh for a great read on cryptology!
The defense that the NZ government is using; Swain says the driving force of the law changes is the wish to protect privacy because there is no legislation to say "wandering into someone's internal communications system is illegal If the government is to use this; what would stop a hacker/cracker in that country from using it as well? AND Relating to a story a few days ago; if this were to pass, it would mean NZ couldn't sign the 'anti-hacker' treaty they were proposing..
Your statistics are incorrect. Wellington is substantially larger than Christchurch, which is one of the most minor of the "large" (relatively speaking) citys in the country, being in the south island (which also contains the significantly lower portion of the population compared to the North). I suggest you check your sources. And your point about those being towns in most countries is something I agree with, but it's also irrelevent to the point I was making, which was that there *is* anonymity in a city of several hundred thousand - people don't all know each other in a town unless you're talking about some hick shanty of about 10,000 people at most.
The Wellington CC website is a matter of some local embarassment, as well as being out of date I believe some errors were mentioned on it, which would explain the discrepencies in population figures - if one of them is right, the other must be wrong, since Wellington (the capital city) has a much larger population than Christchurch.
Swain says the driving force of the law changes is the wish to protect privacy
They actually present those laws as way to protect privacy! First the make electronic eavesdropping etc illegal, which is a somewhat good thing.
But after those laws are voted for, they introduce massive spying powers to various govermental agencies. Now, it would be nice if anybody from NZ could give us some more insight.
Is there a "public discussion" about those things? What about oppositions parties?
I know of personal experience that it is pretty hard to explain why you are against such laws.
Most People are willing to accept some cuts at their privacy as long as it seems to them that it's a effective way to fight crimes Where I live(Austria) we currently are in the midst of a major political scandal because as it seems various political forces have abused police data
Still a lot of people say "Why should I care, I have done nothing wrong".
So I guess a lot of people in NZ curently think "Hmm, doesn't affect me, I don't want to crack computers, actually it's a good thing that tghe goverment protects me of those filthy cyber criminals". It's hard fighting against invasions of privacy when they are hidden well.
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
NZ might be introducing laws like this, yes, but at least the NZ gov't has the balls to say that region protected DVD players can't be sold in NZ :)
If this gives the police the right to demand cryptographic keys, then encyption wouldn't help. You get a choice: give them the key and go to jail for warez distribution, or refuse and go to jail for obstruction of justice. Man, I can't wait for freenet to become usable (not that I'm a big fan of warez, but it would just be very satisfying for me to know that despite the laws passed, the FBI still can't control us).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Hey, there's exceptions to every rule. =)
Forgive my ignorance regarding the political workings of New Zealand.
end communication
You see, I live in New Zealand. So let me tell you a bit about it.
First of all... New Zealand is a small province off the coast of Australia. Not a seperate country as some people think. And, there are lots of sheep. They're everywhere. Infact, most familes have a sheep as a pet (no need to go into detail here). Sheep are infact considered a native species here in NZ. And they are allowed to roam freely amongst the villages and gravel roads.
Occassionaly... we do have power outages. But this is usaly only in Auckland. And is casued by a bird or something getting sucked in to the one and only two-stroke generator.
We do have some nice skiing though... according to Bill.
We are also well knowen for our kangaroos.
Seriouly though... it does kinda piss me off that this has gone though. I was kinda hoping that our country would be last for something like this.
But then again. There arn't that many terrorists in NZ anyway. so I spose the guy is right really. Damn, all that witty sarcasim for nothing.
Question is though, which country is going to be next?
And what other new laws are going to be passed? Should I be supprisd when I see an SIS agent wandering through my house, and sitting down to use my computer like he owns the place? Will locks have to be removed from toilets? What about frosted windows in the bathroom? Won't me and my sheep have a place where we can go to be alone?
*sigh*
Usually Resident Population, 1996
. ........325,250
Wellington........................334,051
Upper Hutt Zone.............35,192
Lower Hutt Zone.............95,381
Porirua Zone....................46,492
Wellington Zone...........156,986
Christchurch.............
source: www.stats.govt.nz
Given that our SIS can't get into a house without being caught
I have doubts. Incompetant as they clearly are, luck played a significant factor - it would have looked like just a normal burglary otherwise. I know people who have been persecuted by the SIS (for apparently "terrorist" activities like opposing nuclear weapons while the Bomb was still trendy), and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they were busy violating civil rights left, right and centre. The only times they even have to admit possible involvement is when the victim happens to have the money, time, and evidence to achieve the half a dozen successfull court verdicts and appeals needed to wring an admission from them. You don't need to be competent when the full force of the law places you above the law (even if, in theory, you're not above it, but it seems that that theory is really just a fairy tale to satisfy the citizens).
Friends of mine sat outside their offices and took photos of everyone entering and leaving .... someone came out and destroyed their camera .... of course any 'real' lawyer would know that to be an assault for which they could be disbarred
This isn't a flame - this _is_, at least in terms of population, a low density backwater.And that's the way we like it. Less people, less pollution. And we've got a high rate of per capita technology uptake.
... and today's pet project has
For those of you that don't want to bother going to the link:
Bush bristled at the extensive parody site, saying "there ought to be limits to freedom." His campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and delivered a cease and desist order demanding the parody material be killed.
However, this may be slightly OT, but no matter...
Laws are crazy - here in the States, they get so convuluted, arbitrary, and strange - esp. from state to state!
I was recently looking up a California law regarding a speeding ticket I got (I rightly deserved the ticket). In the process of looking up the law on the net (as well as checking the Arizona equivalents - AZ being my home state), I came across an interesting Cali law:
Did you know, that in CA, if so much as a single spark leaves your vehicle, you are "breaking" the law? The law was designed (I presume) to prevent smokers from throwing lit butts out their windows while going down the freeway, setting the dry, drought stricken land on fire. Which sounds OK - however, the way the law is worded, a simple, single spark would be enough to "trip" the law. IOW, say you light up a cigarette in your car, and the flint on your Bic breaks, and a trailing spark flies out your window. As soon as it does - you are breaking the law, regardless of whether the spark is still burning (or even hot) by the time it hits the ground...
Crazy, huh?
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
That is historical bullshit. The Nazi's were socialists, since socialists aren't typically typically thought of as conservative, I don't understand why you would classify the Nazi's as conservative. The whole left-right, conservative-liberal gov't classifications are all bullshit anyways. The best way to classify gov't is on an anarchy-totalitarism scale. The Nazi's were a totalitarian system. The Communists are a totalitarian system. New Zeeland by passing laws like this is moving towards totalitarian society. I would encourage any Kiwi reading this to throw the bastards out when next given the chance.
My Weblog
Harry Browne (www.harrybrowne.org) Would definatly veto it, but like HE STATES on his own site, he has a very, very small chance of winning. Second best choice: Havent decided, Nader is a moron, and Bush is con-abortion rights, and I feel strongly that abortion should be free for everyone, and bush is rather computer illiterate and somehow has gotten the idea into his head that everyone with a keyboard is evil and sinical (though I am, MUHAHAHAHAHAHA) Gore on the other hand is a robotic reject from the planet DONTELECTME. He is openly pro-censorship and, even though he invented the internet, he uses fuzzy math which is very, very bad. Um yeah.
--- -Dan -Sex is the best thing money can buy.
Terrorist in NZ were targeting Aussies. You know its true 'cause its on the news.
At least there hasn't been a major power outage in a long time.
If you want to migrate to NZ you need to buy this first.
So you tell me whose running the show - it sure ain't the FBI.
I think you're idea of international diplomacy is a little off the mark. The coercion you talk of is far in excess of what is needed to pressure a small nation like NZ. It's done in the name Maintaining Good Relations. Blackmail is unwarrented. This doesn't mean that pressure cannot be applied. (Though as you suggest, it appears to be a case of the pressured party being reasonably willing to head in that direction to begin with...)
Like what? Write your congress-person? Vote for Al "The father of Internet" Gore (he is these days for "privacy," right)? Or go whine on messsage boards dedicated to "stuff that matters."
New Zealand is seeing a steady erosion in privacy and individual liberty, all in the name of crime prevention and detection. We host the Echelon system, we have passed laws restricting freedom of association with known criminals (tough shit if you're a social worker, eh?), we've made it easier for the police to obtain telecomms interception warrants, and we have a proliferation of cameras whose main effect is to drive street crime onto the fringes of cities instead of the centre.
This has happened with the best of intentions, aided by people who would be horrified at the suggestion that they were bit by bit contributing to the apparatus needed for a totalitarian state.
Unfortunately, privacy violation has no direct physical effects on people - it enables other abuses - so it's hard to muster public opposition until the abuse of power leads to some outrage. Of course, by that stage it may too late.
Therefore, I don't see much hope of a mass movement supporting privacy rights, especially when the inflammatory issues of paedophila and gangs get dragged in. Rational debate is futile in the face of Paul Holmes. (Overseas readers: The Holmes show is a popular television programme masquerading as a current events show but specialising in the pornograpphy of emotion). Abused children are a concrete wrong people can get upset about, invaded privacy is an abstract hurt that doesn't motivate sympathy.
However, every concerned Kiwi reader should think about joining the political party of their choice to try and make this an issue in their own party. This is an issue that crosses party lines. It's cheap to join any of NZ's mainstream political parties, and now that membership is so low in most of them, individual participation can have more effect than it could in the 70s or 80s.
I don't think crypto is the answer, since even when it is easily used, most people cannot protect their keys, and behave in ways that compromise security. In any case, I want to live in a society where I can assume I am not being monitored, not one where I have to consciously protect my communications.
Personally I feel despondent about checking this trend. We're seeing more instrusive "news" (how did you feel when your husband was shot), a rise in gossip and scandal, and shows whose whole rationale is snooping. The more and more we use invaded privacy for entertainment, the more we become inured to the idea that our private lives can be fodder for other people, and our privacy of little value. But I can't sit still.
--I'm sure any president would veto something like this; if not the courts would likely strike it down.--
Like they'd never authorize a national ID card? BUZZ...that law was passed in 1996, and went into full effect this month. Now you can't even get a fishing licence without it. (AKA social security number)
But this is not the point of my post...
The reason the US is pushing these countries is two fold:
#1 It wants to control the world
#2 There is a 'loophole' in the federal U.S. constitution stating all treaties must be fully recongnized. So what you ask? It allows congress to pass a treaty with another country, that if it was put into effect as a normal law, would be subject to the courts knocking it down as unconstituional. But instead since the treaty is an 'extension' to the constitution, the courts won't touch it.
Dereliction of the courts? Of course...but any excuse they get to weasal into your rights they take.
Well, it's a spelling error, actually...
Cashslot, er... Hashclot, um... Slashdot is a veritable oasis of improper spelling and bad grammar, and often the Slashdot _staff_ is guilty of this: it's arguably normal. I'd like to have a dollar for every instance of seeing "then" meaning "than" or "loose" instead of "lose" that appears in Slashdot story heads. (It wouldn't make me rich, but it might come close to paying my DSL bill every month.)
There's a reason that the _ahem_ legitimate press employs people called "editors" - it has to do with correcting such deadline-driven spelling and grammatical errors. Why do they do this? Well, there are basic standards of literate writing, and news publishers generally uphold these for the sake of readership credibility.
The fact is - if you can't spell the right word, or make glaring grammatical errors, you will not be taken seriously by literate people! Slashdot is near realtime, so some latitude is warranted. Also, non-native English writers do deserve some license. But, what passes (too liberally) for literacy here too often demeans posted messages.
There's no excuse for really poor spelling or grammar, except perhaps neglect on the part of browser/email vendors and websites to integrate the widely available tools into their products. Ten years ago I had Grammatik integrated with my word processor. It was helpful for improving the quality of my professional writing. Oh, well...
Over 30 years ago, I wrote a "letter to the editor" defending my Senator's sole dissenting vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (this was the green light for Lyndon Johnson to get a lot of my contemporaries killed by expanding the US presence in the VietNam War). Well, the Editor of the Editorial Page at the time just happened to be my girlfriend's father. (I do not believe this influenced his decision to print my letter.) He had her hand me a little set of editor's rules for grammar - all couched as opposite examples, such as "do not thy infinitive split." Of course the girl is long gone, but the lesson lives on...
Slashdot - let's have spelling/grammar checking!
That said, every store I know of (that's *every* store) will 'multi-zone' your machine for about NZ$100 (US$40). I don't know anybody with a DVD player still stuck at Region 4.
The rest sounds pretty damn dodgy tho. Time to brush up on stenography I think.
How many people out there with a computer are actually terrorists? How many people have been caught plotting a terrorist activity by the FBI using something like a network sniffer or Carnivore? Pedophiles, on the other, have been caught under certain circumstances. I would love to see pedophiles and terrorist get thrown in jail, but to give up everyone's right to privacy and to make potential criminals out of everybody is not the way to do it. I will NEVER consent to this type of fascist orwellian abuse of power. I will stop surfing the net alltogether should this happen. I know what you're thinking... "yea yea, whatever dude." However, I'm dead serious on this one. I value my freedom and my privacy more than anything and no I don't have anything to hide and I'm no criminal, however I do believe I am entitled to certain rights! On the other hand, I can only stand in horror and dismay at the eroding freedoms in the US. I posted a rant on Kuro5hin called Has the US government become to hungry for power? In this rant I pointed out some abuses by corporations and government both overseas and on the local front. I encourage you to read it.
If the FBI indeed pressured the NZ government to do this then a similar plan is in effect here. I mean we do have carnivore, but to have a backdoor to everyone's PC? That is an Orwellian nightmare! What about fourth amendment protection against searches and seizures? If they can go into your computer at will, the fourth is standing on it's last leg. Wait, civil forfeiture laws already have the fourth amendment on it's last leg. Well, so much for the fourth.
My point here is, if you give the government and inch, it will take a mile. This is an attempt by government to make potential criminals out of it's citizens. If everyone is suspect then the police don't have to justify a warrant. This is the end of your civil liberties buddy! It is sad that governments are using this technology to spy on their own citizens. What is more sad is that you buy into their lie and believe that government is doing this for your protection. It is doing this to have more control under the guise of "protecting the innocent." Sorry, I don't buy this and neither will anyone else with half a brain. Whether we can do anything about it is another story alltogther.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
the government knows more and more about what individuals are doing, which allows them to quickly focus on the dangerous ones
Unfortunately, for reasons of "national security" the SIS are above public scrutiney, which means there is no accountability or safeguards (the legal safeguards are effectively useless - you need to prove involvement before you can use them, and you need to use them to prove involvement) - a one way ticket to incompetance and abuse.
As happened in the past, and happens today, the SIS will be too busy pursuing those who deviate from their preferred ideology to ever actually get the real threats.
The classic example: The SIS is charged with defending NZ from enemy intelligence agents. The Rainbow Warrior was bombed by said foreign intelligence agents, and the SIS didn't do squat because they were too busy watching their ideological threat - the anti-nuclear protesters whom the agents bombed. To the SIS, French intelligence were the good guys because France had the Bomb, and anyone who opposed nuclear weapons was either a dumb housewife, a commie terrorist bastard, or both.
The closeted, inbred, secretive, paranoid culture of the SIS precludes them ever being effective, or ever not being a threat to average Joe-on-the-street.
Well, well.
i nt should do the trick :)
My MP ("Well I didn't vote for you!"), the Honourable Anette King, both Minister of Health AND Minister for Racing (!), a Labour MP (which means she's probably either an ex-schoolteacher or an ex-trade union official) doesn't have email.
Bah.
Prehaps after tomorrow's math exam I might write a letter (!), find an envelope (!!) and post it.
Of course, Wellington does have a tpc.int node... remote-printer.Annette_King@64444958445.iddd.tpc.
--
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
The leftist attitude is we are all...
You've missed most of the picture. Intelligence powers are beloved by governments across the spectrum. Leftist ones don't like surveillance powers, but like those on the right, quickly discover how useful it is to keep the dirty laundry under "national security" and away from the public.
You should also note that many of these laws you claim come from the left actually came from the right. New Zealand for example, is acting on laws drafted by the previous, right-wing government.
I think you're making a mistake in twisting and interpreting the events to support your ideology.
I'm working in the UK right now. On Friday, I made the mistake of telling a meeting full of Englishmen that their government was bad and stupid, and how things were better back in New Zealand. After all, we have a Bill of Rights, a Privacy Commissioner, and the most uncorrupt administration in the Southern Hemisphere.
I'm going to take it all back on Monday.
If I wanted to assassinate someone, I'd take advantage of an existing condition. There are untraceble drugs that induce heart attack.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
The first thing that occurred to me is "how the
.08 blood alcohol level law. It matters
hell does the FBI pressure New Zealand?" Having
read the referenced article, it sure seems to me
like the NZ police, spooks, and politicians are
chomping at the bit to get this done of their
own volition. The FBI can "push" a standardized
intel scheme, but that certainly doesn't pressure
or coerce any sovereign nation that isn't in our
"welfare state grasp" to implement it.
Real pressure can happen only when we export our
"welfare state" to other nations. Case in point:
when the Bahamas wanted to adopt Grand Caymen's
private banking model (which is even more secure
and private than the infamous Swiss banks,) the
U.S. used its foreign aid (direct and indirect,
like the Carribbean Basin Initiative) to coerce
the Bahamas into compromising the privacy of
account holders. Grand Caymen, unlike the
Bahamas, is a very wealthy island nation and can
afford to tell the U.S. to kiss its tanned ass
without hesitation.
Closer to home, how about this one: the federal
government gets the states deeply dependent on
highway dollars, and then tells them that they
either pass a piece of legislation or they'll
lose the federal "aid." Don't think it can
happen? It just did and by 2004 all states will
have a
not whether you think this is a good law, but
the important thing is to study how they can
control the states in a manner the U.S.
Constitution doesn't allow. If the feds want to
control public schools and how your children are
educated, they simply have to give them lots of
"free" money and get them highly dependent on
that money - oops... they've already done that,
too.
But let's not stop there, because the politicos
themselves are debt-ridden to the corporations
and special interests that fund their campaigns.
So you tell me whose running the show - it sure
ain't the FBI.
Probably the low figure is Wellington City, and excludes the Hutt valley, Porirua, Johnsonville, etc.
It is typical that that we are the first chosen to have our electronic rights minimised - hell, if NZ screws up, what does it matter to the rest of the world?
It is truly your choice to make, but when you have no freedoms and the government can dictate your actions, expect little help from others when they stop looking for terrorists and pedophiles and start looking for whatever enemy they desire.
Ok, here's a question - does anybody have a link or links to the actual text of the proposed amending bills? I'd like to see what we're actually dealing with here. I've looked, but the only place I can find that might have text wants to charge me NZ$25 for the privilege of finding out whether they have it or not.
(Besides, how can NZers attempt to dissuade our elected representatives from this if we can't tell them precisely why it's a crock of shit?)
Give me liberty. There is no "or". -- Unknown
I bet they're not going to be very good at it .... you wait - pretty soon they'll be licensing private firewalls ... and demanding their own backdoors ...
I remember them at a political demonstration in the early 80s - they stood out like sore thumbs - they were all ex-military and still looked it .... they opened a 'secret' office in my home town to watch the russian fishing boats .... disguised as a 'law office' of course all the local lawyers figured it out right away .... and they had their phone number in the phone book .... if you stood outside and called them you could hear the phone ring inside :-)
Well, I'm not convinced you even know what "Steganograhy" means. H*ll, I'm not sure _I_ know what it is, except real good encryption.
I've been to New Zealand... have you? They're generally a bunch of really nice people, sort of like one might find in Vancouver, BC. And they are sensitive enough to ask whether one is from the US or Canada (Canadians are touchy about it).
However, NZ is an interesting political study. They have a near-fascist government run by some near-socialist politicians. (Hmmm, it makes one think about socialist/fascist congruences, does it not?) But it's a low-density backwater, after all. (NZ flamers, don't even bother, that is reality of your actual irrelevance.)
I was really thinking "New Zealand must be a great place" - the whole multi-region DVD thing, the government that _cares_ about the poor, the (until recent) lack of encryption bullshit.
:-] Seriously tho, can somebody *please* tell me why countries insist on introducing legislation they can't hope to enforce widely (ala Aussi filtering) but can just be used as "technicality" clauses.
But nope, New Zealand has now also joined the ranks of those countries that I deem "officially fucked up" with this sorta shit. First was Australia with their backwards filtering legislation.. and then Britain with something similar (might be in the other order, whatever). Now New Zealand. The whole commonwealth is crumblin'.
What's next? I live in Canada, so it's prolly us
If you don't know what a technicality clause is, it's what they use when they don't have a warrant but they want to arrest you. For example, it's illegal to drink and drive (anything, at least in Canada). So if the cops here thought I were guilty of something, but didn't have a warrant, they could pull me over, and upon seeing that I was drinking iced tea (for example) arrest me for drinking and driving.
So, getting back to the point, does anybody else think that all this stuff is essentially that? I mean I find it very hard to believe that any government organisation, no matter how large or well-funded/well-equiped/etc. could use backdoors and _effectively_ search through its entire population's stuff.
So yeah, I dunno, I prolly sound like a conspiracy theorist in training, but it's 4am so gimme a break.
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
Behind Winston's back the voice of the telescreen was still babbling away about the pig-iron and the overfullment of the Ninth Three year plan. The Telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low wisper, would be picked up it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you where being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in ony any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched acerybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from the habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Have a look at Rubberhose.
I looked at this at Rubberhose.
It makes grisly sense. I'd prefer though truly vicious guerrilla war, with flaming gasoline-soaked tyres placed forcibly and irremovably about the necks of the subhuman vermin that populate such "security forces" (known in plain English as "torturers").
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
You are, of course, quite right about the Polish involvement. They also gave it to the British because they had been somewhat rudely invaded. Forgive my oversimplified account which was for the sake of brevity, and because the majority of the kids that seem to read Slashdot either (a) don't read anything and/or (b) seem to think that computer programming began in about 1995 with them (or shortly before with Linus Torvalds). I haven't yet read Singh's book but have been told that it's excellent.
I thought we were safe in a country where you can send a politician an email on which you must include a postal return address.
1984 style laws (to be) passed under a Labour(/Alliance/Green) government _sigh_.
OK, one thing Paul Swain (the fascist trying to push this crap through) has to remember, is that the current NZ government is a coalition of Labour and the Alliance, and is a minority government. The coalition must have the support of at least one other party to get any legislation passed. At the moment, that party is the Greens. The best (most effective) thing would be to convince the Greens that this is A Bad Thing to have in law, and it's chances of passing become much less. The Greens are also the party most likely to be sympathetic, especially given the paranoia their MPs like Sue Bradford have. Send her (and Nandor Tanczos) a letter saying how this will be used by the SIS to track their campaign against the multi-nationional corporations, and watch her go mental at Labour.
Try reading the Constitution Act rather than believing your own hype. Constitu tio n Act 1986
-- In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.
This will work for exactly as long as it takes to pass a law forbidding the practise. No longer.
Example 1: France for a long time forbade strong crypto. It was possible to use it to protect information, but the risks of being caught doing so must have often outweighed the benefits of privacy.
Example 2: Australia now requires ISPs to be responsible for Internet content, even though they can not effectively monitor or filter content. No doubt some poor ISP will find themselves prosecuted under this law.
Essentially, we have a political problem here, and the best solution is also political: to prevent such laws being passed, and to repeal existing ones. This is hard to swallow for people who would rather hack on computers than society, but I think it's the only long term way.
This whole post is forwarded (with permission) from the ISOCNZ members email list:
Don Stokes <dont.spam@don.co.nz> Wrote:
--- QUOTE from Sunday Star-Times ---
The first legislation expands the interception powers of the police and the
Government Communications Security
Bureau to cover all forms of electronic communications (including email,
faxes and text messaging) and, for the
Security Intelligence Service as well, to cover hacking into computer
systems to view and copy people's files.
This would be achieved by amending the Crimes Act to make it illegal to
intercept emails or hack into computers -
and then exempting all the intelligence and law enforcement agencies from
the new law.
The legislation will also increase the status of the GCSB, moving its
existing powers into the Crimes Act.
--- END QUOTE ---
This bit needs to be read with one important fact in mind. That is that
there is *nothing* stopping intelligence agencies, police, teenage
script kiddies, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all from attempting to break
into a computer, unless in doing so they commit some other crime such as
fraud.
Breaking into a computer and stealing the information on it is not
illegal in this country. Even destroying the data on a computer is
difficult to bring charges for.
(I've heard criminal damage being suggested as a crime to prosecute some
young vandals that have seriously broken into and damaged systems, but I
don't think criminal charges have actually been brought. I've
personally been involved in bringing fraud charges against a couple of
little ratbags; this required proving direct financial loss.)
Thus adding legislation in this area can't do anything but improve the
situation.
If this is tightened up, then evidence gathering by police & security
forces becomes more difficult, since the current situation is that they
can do it with impunity. The obvious way around this is to create
exceptions in the legislation, with suitable judicial supervision.
That this legislation is being proposed is not news. The Law Commission
produced a report on the subject (Baragwanath et al, Computer Misuse,
May 1999), suggesting that law changes are required to address computer
misuse, and such provisions were made in the Crimes Amendment Bill (No.
6) which is currently going through the legislative process. Sections
305zd to 305zf of this Bill address computer misuse involving damage or
modification to computer software and/or data, and obtaining information
for pecuniary gain. It does not cover the act of accessing a computer
or snooping its network connections.
Interception and access are addressed in the Law Commission report, but
I understand got put in the "Too Hard" basket (partly over the question
of exceptions) for the Bill as first read. I gather this is now being
addressed.
In short: *everyone*, including Police, GCSB, SIS et al, can currently
break into and/or snoop on computers with impunity. Changing this,
including adding judicial supervision of evidence gathering, can only be
a Good Thing.
No, we don't have a constitution.
m phlets/bill_of_rights/bill_rights.pdf
What we do have is the Bill of Rights Act 1990.
We also supposedly compose our laws with respect to 'Natural Law', or some such concept that presumes the right to privacy is undeniable.
This has obviously just been pitched straight out the window with this new legislation and its really starting to piss me off even more now.
you can take a look at it the Bill of Rights Act at the URL below, and see that it clearly states you have the right to remain silent.
http://www.justice.govt.nz/justicepubs/other/pa
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Of course, they'll just make this software illegal like they did with DVD decrypting software. If you would have asked me five years ago if there would be a law against a piece of software, I never could have imagined it.
But why is the rum gone?
And you would be very wrong.
m phlets/bill_of_rights/bill_rights.pdf
you can take a look at it the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act at the URL below, and see that it clearly states you have the right to remain silent.
http://www.justice.govt.nz/justicepubs/other/pa
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
i'm going to play devil's advocate here and go completely against the grain. these aren't necessarily my views, just speculations. flame at will.
personal websites are moving more and more away from being private affairs, and turning into exhibitionist extravaganzas. web cams, journals, photos of people and their friends, details about their love lives, etc etc. people seem to be quite willingly giving up their privacy on the net, more and more.
now certainly these are people that are doing it by choice, and knowingly, whilst having the government spy on you is certainly far more covert and lacking in choice, which is a key difference.
but what i guess i'm getting at, is if your personal freedom isn't being restricted any more, then does loss of personal privacy with regards to the government really matter? if you're not doing anything illegal, then does it really matter if the government knows about all your legal activities?
perhaps one senario is this: the government knows more and more about what individuals are doing, which allows them to quickly focus on the dangerous ones, whilst allowing everyone else get on with their lives. this could possibly lead to people actually being granted greater freedoms, due to the government's ability to direct their attention more precisely on where the trouble lies and do so swiftly.
as i said, this is just wild speculation, and an invitation for debate. so no need to get your knickers in a twist.
Either you are an American with a sense of humour (so rare as to be unlikely) or you live somewhere like Denmark. There are now very few countries left that do not spy on their own. America, UK and Canada started it although Eschelon was designed to spy on others it is more effective at internal intrusion. The UK has now strengthened its powers and France, Australia and others are following.
The Russians are cutting funding of their projects and as the system decays they become one of the better places to be. They may start funding again though that cannot be trusted. Most sensible EU countries (like Denmark) are the best because they actually believe in Human Rights instead of just claiming to like the US, UK, et al.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Keep in mind that network engineers, security specialists and programmers don't make these laws, bureaucrats do. They're not particularly the smartest type, although they can bullshit well...
With backdoors into everybody's machines there is still hope. Where will they look, if they have access to every computer they will try to look in every computer on "fishing expeditions" and is there any government outthere with the time to look inevery computer. They will find themselves unable to decide what machines to searchand will probably only search those where they have suspitions. Just don't make them suspicious.
Evil lurks the 'net in the guise of Protocols
You're assuming that they need to prove that the key exists.
As a computer programmer living and working in New Zealand, I have to say this makes me pretty mad..
Theres no way i'll be providing the passphrases to my encrypted filesystems to anyone. Whatever happened to the right to remain silent?
They'll be pushing this because the government is apparently paranoid about organised crime being coordinated through encrypted channels by gangs and others.
Whether there is currently any encrypted communication being exchanged by said gangs is something nobody can provide any data on, so personally i find this reasoning rather hard to swallow.
Basically, they are relying on the fact that nobody in this country actually gives a flying fuck about anything but rugby. I doubt there are very many people in this country would have any idea just how much personal freedom is being lost by a move like this.
This really sucks, and they've been planning it for a while. Some parliamentary commission made similar recommendations a few months back.
It's not like you couldn't just use a computer in another country to store your encrypted data.
Somehow i doubt that there has been any call by the citizens of New Zealand to implement this law, or any like it.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Of course the UK, NZ, Oz, Canadian and US governments are all doing the same thing -- they agreed to do so in 1947 when all 5 countries signed the UK-US Security Agreement (UKUSA for short). This formalized the cooperation that took place during WWII at Bletchley Park in the UK where the German Enigma code was broken and the world's first digital, programmable computer was built (Colossus).
They were real h/crackers. And they're still at it in the name of protecting freedom and democracy. You may disagree with that, of course, or disagree that this is necessary, but others are entitled to be concerned. For example, the Northern Ireland Omagh bombers are believed to have been identified by their used of cellphones and the British government's analysis of 15m (yes million) cellphone calls. This will have been traffic analysis, I doubt whether they bothered attempting to record/listen to every call.
Now, where's the balance, that's the question.
what's scary about this sort of article is that the plotline from 'deus ex' is sounding more plausible every day.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
So where is this going to end? Who is going to have access to the information gathered? I'm wondering what exactly this is really for. I can see that the 'idea' could be seen as good, slowing crime etc, but the realistic impact on terrorist activity or crime rates is likely to be negligible imo. What I find more worrying is thinking about how long it will take for these 'backdoors' to be found and manipulated.
"Owners will also have to give up cryptographic keys and passwords on demand" - but if someone is sending encrypted information that could be of interest to these governmental agencies, what are the chances that they'll just hand over the key? Get thrown in jail for failure to release the key, or for the content of the mail, tough choice... Imo, the only people that could seriously be affected by that are organizations who are 'trying' to keep their new ideas to themselves, and how likely is it that they are going to be a threat to the nation (well except maybe microsoft).
But maybe I'm just missing something, wouldn't be the first time.
-t
This big dome complex is in the South Island near Blenheim (picture from GCSB web site) monitors satelitte traffic over our part of the globe. The North Island station (picture from GCSB website) is for high frequency South Pacific traffic.
For a description of the roles each of these stations play, once again, try looking on the GCSB web site.
Cheers
rediguana
I'm a Kiwi living in Australia. In the last few years I have seen the Aussies pass a similar law allowing their police and intelligence services similar, if not identical powers, and there's a bunch of data-warehousing jerks somewhere here that have been given the go-ahead to build profiles of everyone in the country, for god knows what uses. If this was a concern to me, then the fact the my bloody homeland is following suit certainly is. I thought with the whole anti-nuke thing and the Kiwis being one of the first to blow the whistle on Echelon (from hazy memory) we were showing a bit of backbone.
Circumventing ISP monitoring in NZ
The requirement that ISPs in New Zealand must provide a means of monitoring traffic for surveillance can be circumvented really easily.
Use a foreign ISP.
The price of international telephone calls has dropped dramatically in the last decade. Using a foreign ISP is now cost-effective, particularly if the only traffic is e-mails. A drug cartel that has $300 million of drugs to import won't care about a $3 international telephone call.
Circumventing decryption keys
To circumvent the requirement that a person sending a suspect e-mail divulge the key on demand is also simple. Separate the sender of the message from the author of the message, and have no direct contact between them. The sender could collect a message left on a floppy disk at a drop-point and send it, and even if questioned they would not have a decryption key to divulge.
Circumventing e-mail
The legisative presumption that a message is always sent via encrypted e-mail can also be used to send a message in an unusual way. For example, sound and image files can be used to send a message, as has been demonstrated in the past here on Slashdot where the DeCSS source code was encoded in this manner and posted to a web site.
By legislating in this manner, governments only make their job of law enforcement more difficult as various criminals find new ways of hiding their communications. What technology can reveal, technology can also hide.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Who cares?
or will that not affect whether you are a troll or not?
Unfortunately, it's not just a matter of what folk would rather do. Different people have different skills. I may have uncontestable right on my side, but if I can't convince someone that it won't work that way, they may still decide to do it. And I frequently can't. I don't have the needed skill.
I think that there is a strong tendency for people to become geeks because they don't have the skills for social hacking. To expect them to magically acquire the skills just because they have learned to program is not realistic.
We look for technical solutions, because those are the ones that we can hope to manage.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
England, under the Labour party, is working towards the same thing in GB.
Germany just wrapped up their "Cybercrime" convention, attacking individual "hackers (sic)" as the biggest threat to the Internet and ecommerce.
Clinton holds his emergency summit with Internet companies and wants billions for a "Cybercrime" law enforcement centre in cooperation with the FBI and NSA with broad sweeping powers to prevent Amazon and Ebay from being taken down again - oh, the horror!
And now NZ does this.
Ironically, nearly all of these governments are left-leaning and make claims to be soooo concerned about the rights of the individual citizen, but look who is penalized and whose liberties are at stake here.
The leftist attitude is we are all just cattle to herded and sand to be shoveled and they use their patsies the news media to fan the flames of misinformation and hype.
There is nothing these people hate more than our ability to think for ourselves, move around as we please and question their motives.
*sigh*
On a somewhat positive note Australia-wise, less then 2% (and I'm sure that number is still too high) of net users have actully downloaded and installed the 'filtering' software their ISP provides (typically NetNanny). And word is finally spreading to the less technically-oriented that our laws are unpoliceable.
That makes me thing of one thing - they mention that in NZ the ISP's must make backdoors open. Could they possible want it done, like with Australia's filtering laws, client-side? Self installed 'trojen' 'viruses'. (Although, a trojen isn't a trojen when you know it's there....)
They could make people MAKE their computers open to ISPs/the law. Now THAT is scary. Goodbye privacy....
I am sick of arrogant and ignorant governments. I've watched my own pass, to put it bluntly, fucked laws, and it's bad watching others do the same.
Looks like Orwell was out by about 16 years...
This is going to be a reality everywhere sooner or later. Get used to it.
I'm not saying anyone should lie back and let it happen, but whoever yells the loudest and has the most money is always "right".
I truthfully see this from our end as a loosing battle. Amerikans (sorry non-amerikans, but we do influence your governments) are too busy giving up their rights for "protection" that we don't even notice anymore. Not that most Amerikans even understand or have even studied the Bill of Rights. Plus, one cannot fail to point out the general police mind state...
end communication
who thinks this is really cool? i mean, i could move half way around the world get a job working for the man, hacking into pc's, i could repeat myself but why don't you just read that again. a job.
sure you could get your ass hacked everytime you do anything, but hey, it isn't america or anything.
"Sorry, but I don't there's anything charming about ignorance and carelessness." -LordNimon
I dont Matter any way The US already monoters all the satelite communications in and out of New Zealand Via a Big Dome Complex in Central North Island any way so im guessing they are doing it in most other countiries it seem that the US FBI and CIA and the Govt for that matter cant keep there sticky fingers out of everyone elses chocolate cake.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
We have the right to search your anal passage, oh - and your children's anal passages too.
If you've got nothing to hide why are you being so annoyed. Just let us do whatever we want - we're searching for criminals!
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Sorry this post is slightly biased towards NZ'rs, but then so is the story.
First, go here and find out who your local Member of Parliament is. Yes, even if you didn't vote, they still represent you. If you're not sure what electorate you're in, look at one of the maps. (North Island or South Island or Maori Electorates)
Next, go here and find the email address and postal address of your local MP. Write them a polite email or letter stressing why you think that this legislation is bad. Try to summarise the main, interesing points in the first paragraph or two and then break into more detail. Use a spellchecker and if possible get someone to proof-read it. Wait for a couple of hours, re-read it, and if it still looks okay then send it.
Writing a letter is better, but since many IT people haven't written a normal letter in several years, email is better than nothing. Remember, you don't need a stamp when you're sending a leter to someone on Parliament. Just address it to "[Name], c/- Parliament Buildings, Wellington" where [Name] is the name of the MP you're writing to.
If you don't get a response from your local MP within a couple of days, resend it and apologise - suggesting that it might have gotten lost in the mail. If you still don't get a response, phone (04)471-9999 and tell them that their email relaying might not be working. Whatever you do, don't let it rest if nobody answers and don't be impolite.
===
Does anyone remember the page of exploding heads? No big deal, really. It was online, like, 4 years ago, maybe. It was a pretty simple page with six "animations", i.e. four pictures. Each animation displayed a famous person (Bill Gates, Bob Dole, etc.) whose head did explode in a way or another.
Absolutely nothing spectacular, and those "animations" were totally simple too (just some crude Photoshop filter crap done on top of pictures of those guys).
However, several months after that page went online, the author of the page was visited at his home by FBI agents. He was given a date when he had to show up for "interrogation". They asked him whether he had a shotgun in his home and whether he'd been in a mental instituion.
Is this a good thing? Where's the line? When should the government take action? When they see someone posting a fun page about exploding heads?
Many, many years ago I wrote some hate article about a certain European country (which incidentally got me several death threats). Now I wouldn't want to have authorities interrogate me on grounds of that article.
I appreciate government and law enforcement trying to prevent crime rather than cleaning up the mess afterwards, but there is a line that should be drawn, and if I feel that someone is constantly watching me with a spying glass or if I feel that I have to watch what I say in public (i.e. if my opinion has been given to me by someone else), I can't really see that much freedom anymore.
shut up, troll with large User Info #.
Our gov's gunna do something, cuz we don't liek to be laughed at and called "pu**y's"
These laws have got to be made by some old fart who turned on the net one day, looking to see if latex paint would bond to stucco and got "LATEX BONDAGE". Its by people who know nothing of the net. why do they make the laws?! oh right... democracy *chortle*
It's not for everybody
Whenever I get portscanned I hack back and do
a chkconfig --del network, change root passwd
to some shit, and then shutdown -h now the whole
damn thing. If you did that too, the Internet
would be a much nicer, and quieter place!
I am happy the NZ government intends to help me.
GW probably can't even grasp the significance of such a law. The man can't even compose a proper English sentence. But GW aside, I'm sure any president would veto something like this; if not the courts would likely strike it down.
I would be more worried about interacting with systems that are in jurisdictions with laws like these. The 'net doesn't know any geographical boundaries, but I wouldn't want my data passing through any systems that are governed by laws like this.
The internet, why 2000 is like 1984. Big brother is watching, and there is nothing we can do about it. The goverment is going to spy on us no matter what we do, and the internet is just an easy way to do it. But look at the bright side...they are at least TELLING us about it, they could be hiding it.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Wow. What a concept. 'Cept it ain't new, it's featured in Orwell's book 1984.
Given that our SIS can't get into a house without being caught (though I believe they've introduced laws to get around that as well), can you imagine what success their attempts to crack passwords would be met by? More seriously, yay for American pressure which turns us into a security monitoring station and anti-republican pro-treaty bollocks which stops us getting a written constitution.
What great timing--I'm in the midst of an argument with a friend as to why encryption is important to the average user. The funny thing is, he's a serious warez pirate, yet he doesn't see how anyone would care about what he does...
Anyway, this just goes to show that we should all encrypt everything...
I'm more worried about what kind of backdoors. Introducing a known backdoor in a large number of systems (a whole country!) is never a good thing. It doesn't matter how secure it is or if we know exactly what it is, it matters that we know it's there. So not only will you have the NZ government, and possibly the FBI spying on you, but also anyone who figures out how to use the backdoor. So why have any type of authetication at all and just let people, governments, agencies, companies, groups, etc. do as they please -- it's going to happen anyway.
ISPs and telecom companies will have to provide backdoors for government agencies.
I see at least 1 problem with that; ISPs and telecom companies dont make my operating system? How are they supposed to 'provide backdoors' that are not there? Sounds like a bunch of clueless people there in NZ... and even if there were these supposedly backdoors, what would be keeping all the 13337 kiwi script kiddies from using them? I think this is all a bit absurd...
Haven't you heard? NZ is a nation of 20 million sheep, 3 million of which think they're people.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Wow, check these GCSB guys out, scary stuff.
:( Sometimes I wish Japan had won :( I'd still be living under Imperialism (in Australia), but it'd be Tenchi Muyo, not Britanny Spears.
The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is established to provide information, advice and assistance to the New Zealand Government and government departments and organisations. The Director GCSB is responsible to the Prime Minister for the efficient management and financial performance of the Bureau and for its operational control.
The functions of the GCSB are:
Communications Security;
Computer Security;
Technical Security; and
Signals Intelligence.
No military, foriegn affairs, law-enforcement or statutory responsibilities, but they have a signals intelligence brief! In other words, the pollie's personal spy branch!
Being in the UKUSA pact sucks
Good little sheep, Christ-O-Geek.
This is the clarion call of every secret policeman everywhere. So while we're about it, why not have TV cameras in everybody's houses which can be monitored by the security services - after all, if it catches a criminal or two it can't be bad.
Go read some Alexander Solzenizyn and some Primo Levi, followed perhaps by The Shoah if you want to know what a lack of privacy can do for peoples' freedoms. I recommend Maus too, while you're at it.
Elgon - "But it doesn't make sense. Why would they want to kill off their own workforce." - Schindler's Ark.
If noise files are illegal then only criminals will have noise files.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Is it too late to work within the system, or just too early to start killing the bastards?
They may catch some people downloading a pirated copy of Photoshop, viewing child pornography, but none of these, in my opinion, justify having the right to crack every computer in the country.
Also, if they are concerned with pirated software floating around, why don't they just pass a law mandating the use of only GPL'd software? ;-)
So, in summary - they're not going to catch anything major. I am yet to hear of someone who plans to commit some major crime, like blowing up the White House, by plotting it over the Internet. And if someone did, they would most likely have the common sense to encrypt it. And, now that they know that they are required to provide authorities with their private key, they will have to take an extra five minutes to download something like Rubberhose. In my opinion, laws like this just come down to the government's desire for power, dominance, and complete control of everyone.
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
However, NZ is an interesting political study. They have a near-fascist government run by some near-socialist politicians. (Hmmm, it makes one think about socialist/fascist congruences, does it not?) But it's a low-density backwater, after all. (NZ flamers, don't even bother, that is reality of your actual irrelevance.)
Y'know being from New Zealand I really should flame back with some hackneyed Yank bashing; but it's just that sitting here in Sydney savoring a glass of Maker's Mark bourbon and Coca-Cola, wearing a pair of Calvin Klein underwear under a pair of Levis jeans, typing this on my Compaq SP700 with a Buzz Lightyear sitting on it, and watching a zone-1 copy of Titan A.E, getting ready to go to bed so I can get up early to go to work in an industry created by Americans (3D CGI), working on an American project at an American studio (Fox) - I don't know, it'd just feel hypocritical somehow....
It would make an interesting twist to the torture scenario described in the above link if Rubberhose, at the outset, had a way of specifying that this given data file must contain at least 15% (or 5%, or 50%, whatever) noise, and this number could somehow be encrypted into part of the noise in a keyed fashion that even the user wouldn't have access to. This way the torturers would feel even more uneasy because they'd realize that just because there's still 15% of the data left unaccounted for, that 15% could easily be Rubberhose's allocation.
Interesting stuff. Just another example that when you think of a cool software idea, you should check google and see where you can download it.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
If Bush is perfectly happy to take away your rights to choose whether to carry your own fetus to term, I'm sure he's not particularly concerned about taking away your rights to privacy.
It makes me sad to think my vote has to be wasted to counteract the vote of a chump like you.
The only certainty is entropy.
Who's next? As someone else has mentioned, it will be the UKUSA countries (US,UK,Canada,Australia,NZ). And it won't stop with a change of government. These alliances and treaties have been going for 50+ years now, I hardly think a change of govt in one of the member countries will affect a change in the SIGINT treaties. For example here in NZ, this change is coming in under the Labour govt, the least likely to implement it. National are far more likely to keep the alliance running smoothly, as they are the more conservative country when it comes to international politics.
As to the SIS being thugs? Yeah well thats true. But remember that everyone makes mistakes and that we only hear about their mistakes. We often don't hear when they are successful, for that would advertise sources etc that they have. And odds are it won't be the SIS going through the offending computer, but the GCSB. And they will be pretty smart. They trade places with other UKUSA orgs to learn tips and tricks and this includes rotational trips to the NSA. Odds are you won't notice them.
Do we need this legislation? Probably, as long as we have trusted people to supervise the proper use of the granted powers. Currently there is little protection against cracking into computers - I think you'd only get caught on wire fraud - so the law does need to be updated. Pedophiles and terrorists don't deserve the right to hide behind technology. OTOH individuals are entitled to protect their information and communication. We know this arguement, and I'm not going to bring it up here. We do need good oversight and clear reporting and control by elected officals though to ensure proper use of this tool should it be implemented.
Re ISP/Telcos role. Remember that NZ is a fantastic testbed for new technology. We currently have one of the largest VoIP installations in the world completed by Cisco (outside of CSCO itself). With the potential for VoIP, don't you think we would also make a great testbed for signal analysis testing of this new tech? Also, everyone knows that the Internet is an untrusted medium and should be treated as such, you should already assume that your ISP/Telco is logging and analysing your traffic. You'd be foolish not too, which means that the ISP/Telco role potentially changes little. Your traffic is travelling over a commercial service, and they have control. Don't like it? Get off our pipes, they'll say. Oh, and the Southern Cross Cable? Half owned by New Zealand Telecom, and a quarter owned each by Optus Cable and MCI Worldcom, it is going to carry a large amount of data between Australasia and North America. Odds are it will carry much of the South Pacific data. Of course they want to legalise access to this bandwidth.
It comes down to this. Use a firewall. Use special machines to access the net. Dumb them down. Remove the services that aren't required. Companies should completely segregate their trade secrets and critical info anyway, so the excuse of crackers using the proposed systems to perform industrial espionage just doesn't cut it. The corporate secrets shouldn't be on Internet connected machines anyway. This mirrors to individuals also. Keyboard loggers are an easy way to get around encryption, and we've got a product of our own which apparently has been very popular with the US TLA's - KeyGhost.
But most of all, ensure accountability and responsibility of the organisations involved. They better not criminalise the tools though - that would be going way too far.
Cheers
rediguana
phone (04)471-9999
Eeek! That is so close to my phone number, it's just not funny. BTW - Search for 'GCSB' on Mojonation.. Interesting, but is it true?
Oh wait...it happens all the time anyway.
Gimp.
Was it Paine or Franklin that said he who is willing to give up liberty for security should have neither?
It's something like that anyway- point being, if you're willing to give up all of your rights one by one to buy added "security" from the State, you don't deserve to have them in the first place.
People died to give you this freedom. don't throw it away!
EOM