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Australian Attorney General Pushes Ahead With Gov't Web Snooping

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-can-trust-us dept.

CuteSteveJobs writes "Australian Attorney-General Nicola Roxon now fully backs a controversial plan to capture the online data of all Australians, despite only six weeks ago saying 'the case had yet to be made.' The Tax Office, the Federal Police and the Opposition all support it, with Liberal National Party MP Ross Vasta declaring 'the highest degree of scrutiny and diligence is called for.' With all major parties on board, web monitoring of all Australians appears to be inevitable."

35 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Information wants to be free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One country at a time, the governments are putting in place the function to collect all data so it can be freed by hackers.

  2. I find this hard to believe by iplayfast · · Score: 3

    Surely there is SOMEONE in Australia that objects to this? Surely there is at least ONE politician that sees how wrong it is to effectively wiretap a whole country.
    I'm just shaking my head, and please don't call me Surely.

    1. Re:I find this hard to believe by iplayfast · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I can't wait for wikileaks to start posting private info from all the politicans that proposed this bill. ALL YOUR BASE and so on.

    2. Re:I find this hard to believe by iplayfast · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem is that it's telco's that are required to retain the info for 2 years. If you've worked at any ISP you know that anyone with any access can look at anything. So suppose your significant other got scammed into buying diamond earrings, and thinking that it was a secure website, posted all her delivery info and credit card info.
      You've got 2 years of possible problems.
      So suppose you get into a rant about some silly online argument with ImATroll and then the guy who's name is ImATroll is murdered. Who in the last two years had problems with him.
      So suppose you supported the liberal cause last year, but this year they are being stupid. Expect plenty of phone calls and emails asking for your continued support....

      Yeah the examples are silly and off the cuff, but you get the idea.

    3. Re:I find this hard to believe by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Two years? Right, like those people with access to this information won't make copies of something useful. ISP data should be treated the same as phone conversations and mail. Why the hell aren't they?

    4. Re:I find this hard to believe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      the capture likely wouldn't include data for "politically exposed persons".

    5. Re:I find this hard to believe by anomaly256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Frankly, I object to the entire notion of letting 1 single person have so much control and sway on our lives. It's completely batshit insane. I have no idea why people even /tolerate/ the office of Attorney General still. SO much awesome would come from this position not existing any more. For example, Australia would have an R18+ rating for video games already, causing mediocre titles like Syndicate to not be considered illegal contraband (yes thats right, video games that are common place and considered 'no big deal' in the rest of the world are actually, to this day, fucking illegal here because they have a bit more blood than some old fuddy-duddy likes. Yet somehow the God of War series, the most violent and graphics games I've ever seen, are ma15+ ??? Guess who's on the ratings review board - thats right, the AG. The AG's office controls the entire classification review board). Policies like this internet snooping would actually be forced to go through an analysis and vetting process, held up for scrutiny by both parties, debated and rationalized before being pushed into binding law. The AU ACTA and SOPA talk minutes would be public knowledge instead of being censored by the AG, who apparently doesn't even need court approval to do such things despite it having an immense impact on our laws.

      Seriously, why the fuck do we still even have an Attorney General position.

    6. Re:I find this hard to believe by slick7 · · Score: 2

      Surely there is SOMEONE in Australia that objects to this?

      Surely, it's not Shirley, it's Sheila.
      g'day!

      --
      The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
    7. Re:I find this hard to believe by Dan541 · · Score: 2

      Members of parliament where caught looking at Child Pornography. But it's legal under parliamentary privilege.

      http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/child-porn-sites-accessed-at-nsw-parliament-audit-finds/story-fn59niix-1225964504174

      http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/parliament-porn-users-id-a-secret-20101216-18zqk.html

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    8. Re:I find this hard to believe by chrism238 · · Score: 2

      Of course there's ONE politician; in fact many. But it takes at least 50.1% of them to stop it.

    9. Re:I find this hard to believe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > The problem is that it's telco's that are required to retain the info for 2 years. ... and this is why it won't work. Politicians may make these laws, but here on Earth someone has to do the work to enforce them.

      Our household regularly uses 150+Gb/month in traffic, both upstream and downstream (much of which is encrypted and essentially not worth capturing). Let's call it a round 3.6Tb that the ISP will need to be captured and retained for just my household over a 2 year period.

      What's the cheapest storage available for 3.6Tb of data? That's presumably the *monthly* cost that will need to be passed onto my ISP (and hence to me), once the system has been up and running for 2 years and there's a full 2-year history of our household traffic stored somewhere.

      Now let's look at the real-time capture challenge. I'm with a large ISP, which may have 500,000 customers (wild guess) - let's guess again that the average customer is consuming 20Gb/month (another wild guess - if it's currently less than that, we all know it's gonna be increasing at a rapid rate and might be beyond that in 2 years' time). The ISP is now having to capture and log 20Gb * 500,000 = 10,000,000Gb = 10,000Tb/month, moving it somewhere (offsite?). If you want to buffer it within the ISP temporarily, that's about 330Tb/day that needs to be buffered and then shipped off nightly; otherwise the ISP will need to be sending it somewhere in real-time. If it's offsite, that means the ISP has to double its total available capacity (i.e. ship every bit of traffic somewhere) just to keep serving the same quantity of data; if it's not stored onsite at the ISP, that's one big data centre that my ISP (and several others) are going to have to build and maintain. Again, I'd assume the costs are going to be passed on to customers i.e. me.

      As I said above, it's probably not worth logging all my traffic, since much of it is encrypted. It'd probably be nice to filter the "stuff" that gets captured, eliminating the non-useful stuff, so that the ISP doesn't have to store all of it, but is it possible to do content filtering of 330Tb/day of network traffic in any practical sense? Probably not, but even if it is, someone (e.g. me) is gonna have to pay for it to be done.

      OK, now all that data's been collected, and Someone Important tags me as a Potential Bad Guy who needs to have his captured data examined. Maybe they can say "let's just look at his last month's traffic", so now it's down to 150Gb. Someone then needs to extract my 150Gb of saved network traffic from the 10,000Tb/month = 360,000Tb that's been captured over a 2 year period. That means my "stuff" has to have been tagged and made searchable somehow, which would presumably need to be done in realtime as the data's being captured - bit of a challenge there.

      Now Someone Important has access to just my 150Gb of traffic. How exactly do they search this amount of network traffic for Something Bad? Do they search for text such as "bomb", "nuke" or "AllDisneyMovies.rar", or is it something a bit more complex than that? I'm gonna hazard a guess that my 150Gb of (largely encrypted) data contains the strings "bomb" and "nuke" purely because these 4-character strings will appear at random in encrypted data; hmm, probably need to examine the context surrounding these strings as well...

      Now consider this all in the context of Australian governments (state and federal) not exactly known for implementing big IT projects well. In fact, I'd suggest they're fairly well known for cocking them up.

      This is starting to sound not quite as easy as a politician saying "this might be a good idea", isn't it?

  3. Thanks, Australia! by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The fiance and I have been considering emigrating for a few years while we're still young enough to be of value to another nation (I'm 31 and she's 24). Looks like you made the decision that much easier. New Zealand is now ahead in the polls.

    --
    "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    1. Re:Thanks, Australia! by Sparticus789 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's something wrong when you have to have an exit strategy for your home COUNTRY. Not with you, but with the useful idiots who vote these people into elected office.

      --
      sudo make me a sandwich
    2. Re:Thanks, Australia! by sdguero · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As an Californian that has spent some time in NZ, I suggest going there for more than a couple weeks before you take the plunge. Things that seem trivial during a 2-3 week vacation (like hardly anything staying open after 8PM, passive aggressive customer service, distaste for Americans, lack of culinary variety, etc) can start to grate on you after a few months. Just my experience...

    3. Re:Thanks, Australia! by sdguero · · Score: 2

      Yeah... Re-reading my post, I feel kind of bad because there is a LOT to like about New Zealand. It's beautiful and there is a lot of open space, the weather is more climactic than Southern California but really isn't that bad and varies a lot depending on which island you are on and which micro-climate you are in. The humor there is different, very dry, but they can be really funny.

      My sister has been there 6 years and she seems to like it more now than ever. She is marrying a kiwi, has picked up the accent, and works as a vet-technician working with mostly sheep so she's pretty much been fully integrated. Being liberal politically helps too, NZ has a large government... Lots of taxes, welfare, and progressive legislation.

    4. Re:Thanks, Australia! by quenda · · Score: 2

      you made the decision that much easier. New Zealand .

      Sure you say that now. But as soon as you get your NZ Permanent Residency, you will jump om a plane to Australia, like every other NZ immigrant.

    5. Re:Thanks, Australia! by sd4f · · Score: 2

      The worst of it is, i need to go to slashdot, a yank site, to learn about what's happening here in skipsville. Where is the media? Europeans rioted over ACTA, yet we got reamed without even a "squeal boy".

    6. Re:Thanks, Australia! by boron+boy · · Score: 2

      Join Electronic Frontiers Australia, they'll keep you posted and are fighting the good fight.

      --
      Yet another blogger begging for an audience.
  4. At least they're doing it in the open by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The US does it but says they aren't. Search for Project Echelon. Welcome to the supposedly-free world.

    1. Re:At least they're doing it in the open by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      Echelon was a quaint old thing compared to what they're doing now but you're right.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  5. That's not what it says at all... by Troyusrex · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is a bill to force telcoms to not dispose of the data they've collected for at least two years. There's nothing in hear about "a plan to capture the online data...". Now the data is being retained to help in investigations but there's a HUGE difference between the telcom having it and the government having to subpoena it and the government collecting it all themselves.

    1. Re:That's not what it says at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Shh, slashdot is trying to compete with fox and CNN for the "who put up the most sensationalist articles" award.

    2. Re:That's not what it says at all... by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 4, Informative
      From TFA:

      The data retention plan - which would force all Australian telcos and internet service providers to store the online data of all Australians for up to two years

      and

      ''Many investigations require law enforcement to build a picture of criminal activity over a period of time. Without data retention, this capability will be lost,''

      Mean they are quite clear on collecting EVERYTHING so that they can build something up later. If it's only 'all Australians who're under suspicion' that's one thing, but it clearly says 'All Australians' without caveat.

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    3. Re:That's not what it says at all... by ByronHope · · Score: 2

      You forget about ASIO, they will not require a subpoena, warrant or any form of court order. Once the data is stored it will be mined. Despite ASIO wiping up fear about terrorists, their main targets are political. ASIO targets environmentalists. The data retention is designed to strike fear into the general population, terrorists (if there are any) and criminals will use secure VPNs, Tor or what have you, to hide communications. The other target of this proposal is copyright infringement, mainly Bit Torrent users. There is no "HUGE" difference, if the data exists, it will be abused.

  6. First there was Big Brother by StillNeedMoreCoffee · · Score: 2

    Now there's Big Mate

  7. Forced VOIP + Web Snooping by Walking+The+Walk · · Score: 2

    So, hot on the heals of a Slashdot story about Australia moving to fibre so they can push VOIP, we now get a story that states that they want to:

    force all Australian telcos and internet service providers to store the online data of all Australians for up to two years

    Yeah, don't worry - they're not related though. Really, we just think VOIP will improve everyone's lives.

    --
    A recursive sig
    Can impart wisdom and truth
    Call proc signature()
  8. Re:Begs the questions... by king_grumpy · · Score: 2

    The last election was extremely close and current government only got into power by making deals with independent and green (earth first not alien) politicians. Personally, I think it was the lack of a decent choice that lead to such a close vote. Neither party had any stand out policies or direction.

  9. Re:Translation by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

    Copyright cartels? I had assumed they were backing most of these pushed for data retention.

  10. Re:Begs the questions... by ByronHope · · Score: 2

    The two major parties are identical with these types of moves. The opposition will come from some sections of the media, but not the dominant Murdoch media, and The Greens and possibly some of the small right-wing parties.

  11. Re:Translation by anomaly256 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You forget that the Australian AG is in the pockets of the MPAA/RIAA who absolutely want this information by any means possible. You forget that the AG office completely own and controls the ratings review board here and makes copyright laws without court oversight.

  12. Re:Australia the Internet Police State by tdelaney · · Score: 2

    Basically, yes. And the worst thing is that IMO the current government is almost complete crap, but they're far far better than the Opposition.

    Economically:

    We survived the GFC with minimal impact.

    We have a tiny amount of government debt (despite the Opposition constantly harping about our "high level of government debt" - an example of them "creating an evil to declare war on").

    We have a budget that is close to balanced.

    We have an ambitious and important infrastructure project underway (the National Broadband Network) that is using largely-borrowed money to pay for the build and is projected to make a 7% ROI (and again, the Opposition opposes this as a "huge waste of taxpayers' money" despite it not being any such thing - neither a huge waste, nor taxpayers' money).

    Socially:

    We have reasonable public health care and education (not brilliant, but it's a pretty good safety net).

    We don't have a lot of unstabilising elements in the community.

    So evils like "illegal boat people" (no such thing - it is not illegal to seek asylum) and all the various justifications for data retention need to be created or blown out of all proportion to create hysteria.

  13. Give him everything right now. by arthurpaliden · · Score: 2

    Cut out the middle man send Attorney-General Nicola Roxon every thing right now. CC him on every email and photo upload and send him your daily web browsing histories, if he has twitter the update him on what your are doing.

    This is what they did in Canada and they crashed the Parliamentary mail and web servers. After a few days of this the bill was effectively withdrawn.

    --
    Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
  14. Obligatory link to the Pirate Party of Australia by pipedwho · · Score: 2

    http:/pirateparty.org.au

  15. They want to keep what? by thogard · · Score: 2

    I deal with security of a payment gateway. Part of my job is to make sure we don't keep any credit card details floating around yet these new laws conflict with that. Years ago it seemed simple, just purge the field that has the card number in it. Too bad that is a naive solution for a far more complex problem and now I may be required to keep logs for years? Do you know how many card numbers show up in logs for stupid reasons?

    Do you know how many people put their card number in the "name on card field"? What do you do about a email address of 5123456789012345@gmail.com when they used card xxx345? What do you do with the message "Did payment to card number 4123... go through?" How about encrypted files that use a credit card number as the file name? How about reference text of "ref_cardnumber" to deal with refunds? How about card numbers in https GET requests even though the data must be POSTed to even work?

    I used cardrecon to scan my DNS personal server's DNS logs and it found people probing what appears to be cardnumber.abnormal.com. I have no idea what that is about. It finds all sorts of odd things that appears to have card numbers in it like deleted text from word or pdf documents.

  16. Re:Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is a Cabinet post, so they are appointed nominally by the Governor General on the advice of the PM, who selects ministers based on personal and factional loyalty, the need to balance factions, seniority, and occasionally even competence. Ministers are selected from the MsP, which in practice means from the winning party of coalition. (IIRC, in Australia you actually have to be in Parliament to be a minister, unlike in the UK where anyone can be made a minister or added to cabinet without a portfolio.) I think there is a requirement that the law officers must be able to practice law.

    Ministers can be sacked by the GG, but that never happens - either the PM will move her to another department, she'll resign, or she'll stay until Labor are voted out.
    Whether a government lead by the Mad Monk would be an improvement is a rather difficult question - right now, I think the best that can be said for the ALP is that they are better than the other mob, but stepping in dog shit is better than having a bird crap on your head.