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Aussie Attorney General's War On Encrypted Web Services
Bismillah writes "If Attorney-General Brandis gets his way in the process of revising Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act, users and providers of VPNs and other encrypted services will by law be required to decrypt government intercepted data. Because, 'sophisticated criminals and terrorists.' New Zealand already has a similar law, the Telecommunications Interception and Computer Security Act. Apparently, large Internet service providers such as Microsoft and Facebook won't be exempt from the TICSA and must facilitate interception of traffic."
The attorney-general can write a law to defy gravity, but putting a signature on such law will not make people fly.
In other words: madness.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
So they would ban the use of Perfect Forward Secrecy. Using PFS it is impossible to decrypt the intercepted content even with the Certificate's private key.
Yes Mr. Contractor, for the new ultra-hardened backdoor with super-duper locks I'd like you to leave the key over there under that rock. No, I'm sure only our RSA, NSA, TLA certified guys will be using it. How would anyone else know it's there?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The department argues the obligation on service providers would merely "formalise" existing arrangements.
This is fallout from the Snowden leaks.
What was once done in secret is now being brought into the light.
I guess I was hoping they'd just stop, instead of legalizing the invasive spying programs.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
People in power trying to stay in power ?
Almost, but this guy doesn't have the brains to think that far.
George Brandis is s sneering scumbag and lying rodent who wants to be Dick Cheney when he grows up, but lacks the compassion, gun skills and wit.
He used taxpayer money to go to a friend's wedding, but has accepted the task of writing a ministerial code of conduct. He's also told the Australian arts community that they don't have the right to refuse funding from corporate sponsors whose ethical values conflict with those of the artists, and plans to punish them if they don't comply.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
You mean, like, say, end to end encryption?
What a novel idea, you should patent it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Above is the whooshiest whoosh ever to have wooshed.
This is actually business as usual. If the population of a country forgets to kick their "representatives" in the face whenever they develop delusions, then the government slowly morphs into totalitarianism. The problem is that ordinary people are highly susceptible to manipulation and governments are getting better at it. The "we did not know what was happening"-excuse that so many Germans used after Nazi-Germany was overthrown will not fly this time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Here's the third: Take your business elsewhere.
The world is a large place. Someone might want to tell Mr. Bigwig that his laws mean jack in all but one country.
Except that this trend towards increased government surveillance of the general populace by government intelligence and LE agencies, often in blatant violation of their nations' own laws and founding documents & principles, is a global phenomenon, particularly in the West, and no longer limited to a handful of dictatorships and totalitarian nations.
Blowing this stuff off because "just switch to a foreign provider" is short-sighted.
Individual freedom around the world, particularly digital privacy/security against intrusive, and often illegal by their own laws, digital spying by governments against their own citizens, is on a downward trend as the US and other Western nations grow increasingly paranoid and authoritarian.
The struggle against such invasive surveillance must likewise be global as these regimes work together both in the actual surveillance and also on the political side to increase their scope and power ever further.
This is particularly true among "Five Eyes" nations like Australia. What good would it do to switch to using services outside the country you're in if all the practical alternatives are just as bad or worse?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You know what? We just about do.
When a Lib/Nat government thinks it has a whiff of a terrorist, it goes crazy apeshit bonkers. The last "terrorist" they caught was Muhamed Haneef. A doctor, born in India. An ordinary, or better than average, guy. His crime? He "recklessly" provided a SIM card to a dimwit second cousin of his, who failed spectacularly at blowing up Glasgow Airport. Haneef was locked up for weeks until a magistrate said "hey police guys, this case is a crock of shit" and the DPP said "Oh my tittyfucking God you're right" and dropped the charges. The government then instantly cancelled his visa and deported him.
Note that, while Haneef was detained, he was cause celebre in Australia. He was the AFP's prize possession. He may as well have been, as you say, an exhibit in a zoo.
And that is the closest thing there is to an Australian terrorist.