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Australian Law Could Criminalize the Teaching of Encryption
New submitter petherfile writes: According to Daniel Mathews, new laws passed in Australia (but not yet in effect) could criminalize the teaching of encryption. He explains how a ridiculously broad law could effectively make any encryption stronger than 512 bits criminal if your client is not Australian. He says, "In short, the DSGL casts an extremely wide net, potentially catching open source privacy software, information security research and education, and the entire computer security industry in its snare. Most ridiculous, though, are some badly flawed technicalities. As I have argued before, the specifications are so imprecise that they potentially include a little algorithm you learned at primary school called division. If so, then division has become a potential weapon, and your calculator (or smartphone, computer, or any electronic device) is a potential delivery system for it."
Your government is the good guys. So, if you want to hide something from us, you must be with the bad guys. M'kay?
To be on the safe side, you should never teach math in Australia, especially not combinatorics!
Governments worldwide that are marching to fascism want encryption banned. God forbid (and you bet they'll invoke God in what they're doing) you should be able to talk to someone in a manner they can't easily listen in on! This is not an unintended effect of sloppy legalese, it's a fully intentional consequence of obfuscated legalese.
Will they nail you for communicating with your bank? No. Will they nail you for communicating with someone they consider "undesirable"? You bet your arse they will.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
What is the 'key length' of one time pad containing 1MB of data? Xoring against properly randomized one time pads is one of strongest encryptions possible, will teaching about XOR also forbidden under new ruling?
We had a chance to be great, but we elected John Howard and it's been all down hill since then.
Thankfully I have multiple citizenships, but NZ or the UK aren't much better. At least the latter gives me an avenue into the EU and Switzerland, though.
How about outlawing the teaching of any religion with a major text longer than 512 words ?
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
The DSGL gives Department of Defence bureaucrats incredible power over scientists and researchers. It's a blatant grab for power by a department riddled with corruption:
http://cla.asn.au/News/defence...
http://defencereport.com/austr...
http://bayesian-intelligence.c...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
... that 512 bit elliptic curve cryptography is still quite good. :D
..and his weapons of math instruction.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Didn't the US government already try to do this, like 2 decades or so ago?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Volume 2 of "The Art Of Computer Programming" contains an excellent description of RSA.
Actually, a decent mathematician should figure out RSA if you just remind them that every prime number has a primitive root, and that primitive roots of about half of all primes can be used to solve x^3 = a (modulo p) for primes p, and to solve x^3 = a (modulo pq) for a product of two primes pq if p and q are known, but not if only the product pq is known.
For large primes (like 1024 or 2048 bit) the number of calculations needed are a bit lengthy, but even a naive implementation on a modern computer is fast enough to implement it. Maybe not fast enough for hard disk encryption, but fast enough to encrypt a few megabytes of documents.
Didn't the US government already try to do this, like 2 decades or so ago?
Yep. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List. Until approx 1997, ITAR classified strong cryptography as arms and prohibited their export from the U.S. So welcome back to pre-97 Australia...
If having XOR is criminal, then only criminals will have XOR.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
AND?
Sadly true, so feel free to entice them over to Australia and you'll have my thanks.
This isn't a good omen for The Legion of The Bouncy Castle..
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
No. All other cultures have already been overtaken by American culture: Burgers, Hollywood, American music, games and software. You just don't realize how much Western culture has already dominated the world in the last decades. And you fear a church from another country? You have been fully brainwashed.
Anyway, congrats on finding a smooth way to introduce your racist/discrimination hatred into a thread about encryption (you and the parent post - if you aren't the same).
Didn't know Abbott was a muslim, he seemed so devoted christian to me. Maybe if we got rid of all the muslims, there wouldn't be any crime or criminals?
I guess ROT2^513+8 encryption is too strong for the Aussies to crack?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Old fart Aussie software dev here, as recently as the early 90's Australia (and the US/UK) considered encryption techniques to be a "munition" for export purposes, it was illegal to export anything stronger than 48bit. Then some bloke put out some OSS called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), he had stayed within the regulations by using something like #define BITLEN 48, but also given the world an algorithm that could be trivially changed to any arbitrary length and re-compiled. This created a legal paradox that drove the customs people nuts, there was a huge fuss about it at the time but eventually the various governments realised the regulations were unenforceable and dropped/ignored them.
Aussies made a huge mistake at the last election. This mob have managed to politically unite Aussies (against them) in a way I haven't witnessed since the downfall of Gough Whitlam (IMO - due to GW's "sore loser" re-election campaign). Trust us, we have mandatory voting and will boot this embarrassing mob out the first chance we get. There isn't a sector of Aussie society they haven't upset in the past year alone, the only chance the conservatives have of winning is if they put Turnbull back in charge and allow him to purge the "tea party" types from the current cabinet, they have way to much power for the tiny slice of Aussie society that they represent.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Let me be blunt:
Fuck 'em!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
No, they use drones instead of losing any of their own lives.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Heaven forbid these politicians ever learn about the one time pad, they'll outlaw addition and subtraction too. Not to mention xor.
On the other hand, we're just a bunch of gutless arseholes that just don't care. In the next election are we going to vote middle left or middle right? Same crap ALL THE TIME and we don't do anything about it.
And how the hell can Uber operate in Australia? WTF! No one is allowed to transport people for money except Taxis and bus drivers and that is highly regulated.
Maybe the AC is right. Another Eureka Stockade anyone?
As for the latest gov. blunder? Well it'll sort itself out. As one poster put it "This makes everyone guilty of something. Then governments can just prosecute anybody they don't like in a completely arbitrary fashion." (et.al.). Just another piece of shit we have to put up with emanating from the dickhead in charge who keeps claiming he has a 'mandate' to make any changes he gets told to do by incompetent cronies who have no clue about anything.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
They mostly simply bomb from 33 000 feet above ground, even their own allies. Before they mostly created wars whenever they wanted to shut up their own democracy.
I know you think this is hilarious, but it's actually complete shit. Sorry.
Seriously I am living in Islamic country right now. You should try it ,hours and hours of ridiculous jiberish blasted through huge speakers straight into your home or where ever you go. Having to watch what you say because some random will just kill you. Seeing poor women being oppressed every where . Seeing huge mosques being built every where when there is a total lack good infrastructure. I couldnt understand how any sane person knowing the alternatives would want this.
No, they use drones instead of losing any of their own lives.
Drones play are part in modern covert war, but in the past fundamentalist 'rebels' such as those used in Operation Cyclone have been employed. Usually these are Muslims, but there's active programs to home-grow their own Christian Fundamentalist Freedom Fighters, that can be used as fodder as well. If Afghanistan their role was to unseat the pro-Soviet government that was in place.
What the government says is a front while real policy decisions are made and executed in secret. It only comes to light years later - in the above case with a movie - Charlie Wilson's War, staring Tom Hanks.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
No, really. This is what it would come down to.
We need encryption for banking, day to day transactions at every store, as well as general communications in industry generally. Banning the study of encryption would guarantee that Australia becomes a second rate country in computer science.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Encryption is but a tiny side-show in the global march towards Collectivism — the coin, of which Fascism and Socialism are indistinguishable sides. As predicted long ago:
It starts with concern for the poor, that inevitably causes the government to undertake support of the downtrodden with various "War on Poverty" initiatives.
A few decades and trillion-dollars into it, there are not only millions of recipients of the dole, there are also tens of thousands of government officials involved in distributing it. The combination makes it impossible to stop the foolish undertaking — it may be reformed and rearranged, but it can not be ended.
And then comes the idea, that, if we must support the unsuccessful among us, we should try to prevent them from doing (what we consider to be) stupid things: take drugs, drive too fast, eat fat (no, not fat, sugar!). Right here on Slashdot, the idea that our self-imposed responsibility for others allows us to control their actions, is alive and well.
And then government types begin to deliberately rearrange things to be able to attach their own strings to various incentives you can not refuse. The first example of this was, probably, the imposition of federal speed-limit by mandating, that States receiving federal Federal highway funds implement them.
The most recent example here is the federal take-over of education loans, which allows the Administration to better control, what the colleges teach and what students do. Because it raises the tuition costs so much, fewer and fewer students will be able to forgo such federal aid and will be forced to accept it — with all of the strings attached to them and the colleges they attend.
Compared to these aspects of the Collective increasingly controlling the Individual's life, use of encryption is of little to no consequence. Maybe, a new Republic in Antarctica, on the Moon or Mars will take the lessons of our errors to heart — the way our Founding Fathers studied those of the Romans...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I guess it's illegal to tell you my ROT-520 algorithm is actually (ROT-13 * 40) now.
Doh! I've just committed a crime in the eyes of the Australian government! So much for that Australian vacation.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
... all about division, how it works, and how to do it without using my calculator?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
These people are even more batshit insane than the government here in the good ole USA...Thats what you get with people writing laws on subjects they have ABSOLUTELY NO knowledge about... And to think I was close to emigrating to Australia back in the early 70s, after visiting there in my youth... May saner heads prevail....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Doesn't this mean that expert witnesses, in criminal prosecution trials, would become harder to procure? After all, you're making the *knowledge* illegal.
The Australians must have got the idea from the nutcase British Prime Minister who wants to make all encryption illegal.... so ban all paper and pens "for your safety".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Take Nobody's Word For It.
"Seriously I am living in Islamic country right now. (snip) I couldnt understand how any sane person knowing the alternatives would want this."
You're saying you know the alternatives, you're saying someone who chooses to live there knowing the alternatives isn't sane, and you're saying you live there. So, you're saying you're not sane...right? And if so, why should I take your word on the rest of it?
When did Australia hop on board the idiot train?
The problem, and it is a big one, is that everybody is living in the same huge bag we call planet Earth. So, to control a bad person we are forced to restrict them for not to use the technology they could use to hide their secrets, and doing so, we restrict everybody else in their authentically rightful rights.
... IMPLEMENTING ... so stupid and retrograde regulations, they need to invest their time discovering what made their current problems to appear and to provide the right solutions to them. Because this will escalate to the complete lost of freedom for everybody in the sake of their safety, when the ones describe what safety is are not the one are suffering for it.
But, as is usual in human history, when you put many constraints to somebody, this person will find a different way to do the things. But later, you keep the constraints and something, that was completely valid for the good ones, will become useless for everybody.
They are not attacking the source of the problems but the symptoms. This is the same as to consider that some people could have fever and, because of that, we would quit all the conditioned air in the planet, "in case" one of them pass through a place with A.C. active, or to forbid the sugar because somebody could have diabetes. No, the right way is to cure the person with fever and to provide treatment to the diabetes sick person, including a healthy food diet and to let all the others to enjoy conditioned air or to consume some sugar.
Instead of being inventing and, worst of all
... I've read in quite a while.
After all, they could be used for encryption algorithms using key sizes in the gigabyte range!
at all costs. Sure, USA is bad but the little cousins are determined to show up everyone else. The UK and AUS in particular are about as bad as it gets.
The extrapolation is simple:
1) Don't use computers.
2) Don't use mathematics.
3) Don't think.
Oh, and don't try to imagine the consequences, this could be illegal also.
They will go away in a few years.
ISIS, the islamist group that Australia government says is bad, also bans math education... Interesting
The yanks smart bomb people instead. Innocent people too if you're paying attention. Seriously, "the muslims" are not bombing people any more than "the christians" or the "the yanks" or "the russkies". If you think an Islamic extremist suicide bomber is the same as all muslims, then why aren't all white Americans the same as Timothy McVeigh?
The difference is that when some nut case looks like you then the gut instinct is to call them an anomaly, but if the nut case looks different from you then the gut instinct is to blame everyone else who looks like the nut case. The same applies even if they look like you but their church has a slightly theology, or they're in a different job, or from a different political party, etc.
Just askin'. Not an expert in encryption and not sure the number of bits employed in HTTPS, but wouldn't this basically ban a secure Internet in Oz? Many important non-Australian sites would not be available there. I'm guessing much, if not most, Internet traffic comes from overseas to Oz; again, not sure.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
It wasn't like this in Malaysia. Sure you could hear the sound of prayers coming from the Mosque, but I found that soothing. Otherwise it was chilled out. And I mean really chilled out - anything goes. I think its the same for other SE Asian countries.
The kind of ultra-conservative fundamentalism (Wahhabism) that is spreading through started is a political tactic started by the elite to preserve power and promote nationalism.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
"Seriously I am living in Islamic country right now. (snip) I couldnt understand how any sane person knowing the alternatives would want this."
You're saying you know the alternatives, you're saying someone who chooses to live there knowing the alternatives isn't sane, and you're saying you live there. So, you're saying you're not sane...right? And if so, why should I take your word on the rest of it?
I've actually lived in a Muslim country, in fact the largest Muslim country in the world.
I lived and worked in Yogyakarta, Indonesia for 6 months. There were bars I could get beer in (in fact they were open longer than bars in Australia were permitted to), bacon was never hard to find. I was never forced to convert, people were friendly, I'd have no hesitation about going back to Yogya despite it being predominantly Muslim.
What the anti-Muslims dont want you to realise is that 99.9% of Muslims just want to get on with their daily lives. They've got jobs, families, homes, friends and dont really care that much about holy wars, much the same as 99.9% of Christians, Taoists, Shintoists, Atheists, LeVeyan Satanists and so forth. Using a few nutjobs as a representative of all Islam is like condemning all westerner by analysing the KKK.
Oh, and before someone trots out the old "well why dont they do something about the crazies, blah, blah, blah". They do speak out against them. I was in Yogya when 7/7 happened in London, every single person, regardless of creed was appalled, the problem with crazies is that they dont listen to sane people. Beyond this, I find those who are the first to point fingers at normal Muslims for doing nothing tend to be the last to act against the radical elements in our own society, mainly because they tend to support that radical element (so pot, kettle, black).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Are their noses that far up Uncle Sam's arse? They seem to be stealing every page from the GOP's playbook.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
To "update" your existing OTP by N bytes, you'd have to burn N bytes of your orginal OTP.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
We went through this crap before and got rid of it about 20 years ago when Bill Clinton was President.
Someone not reading their history again? It hurt a lot of good companies and people.
After all, learning long division is about as much fun as boot camp.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
I've personally never understood the "why don't they do something about the..." argument. Why didn't white westerners stop Timothy McVeigh from happening? Why didn't white westerners stop Hitler from happening? Ok, have to stop asking why, I Godwin'd...but seriously, one has to have a very myopic view of the world to think/say something like that.