Australian Officials Want Encryption Laws To Fight 'Terrorist Messaging' (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Two top Australian government officials said Sunday that they will push for "thwarting the encryption of terrorist messaging" during an upcoming meeting next week of the so-called "Five Eyes" group of English-speaking nations that routinely share intelligence... According to a statement released by Attorney General George Brandis, and Peter Dutton, the country's top immigration official, Australia will press for new laws, pressure private companies, and urge for a new international data sharing agreement amongst the quintet of countries... "Within a short number of years, effectively, 100 per cent of communications are going to use encryption," Brandis told Australian newspaper The Age recently. "This problem is going to degrade if not destroy our capacity to gather and act upon intelligence unless it's addressed"... Many experts say, however, that any method that would allow the government access even during certain situations would weaken overall security for everyone.
America's former American director of national intelligence recently urged Silicon Valley to "apply that same creativity, innovation to figuring out a way that both the interests of privacy as well as security can be guaranteed." Though he also added, "I don't know what the answer is. I'm not an IT geek, but I just don't think we're in a very good place right now."

Comments

Encryption is a binary proposition

[Rick Schumann]

Encryption either works or it does not work. There is no middle ground; weakening it is the same as eliminating it's use entirely.

Do they really think that criminals and terrorists aren't going to use their own, non-compromised encryption or cipher techniques, to do their 'business' regardless? Maybe even mislead government officials by planting bullshit on the 'compromised' channels? I'm no criminal or terrorist and I can think of these things, what makes them think that THEY won't think of them and more?

The only possible path to what they want (total and complete surveillance into ALL non-government, non-military communications) is to ban non-government, non-military use of any and all encryption technologies. HOWEVER: Doing so will, in essence, destroy the Internet. No commerce or transfer of funds will be able to take place without being done 'in the clear', where anyone and everyone with the technical chops to do so can tap into it; you'd be nuts to put any banking or personal information of any kind over the Internet if that's the way it worked.

If, here in the U.S., they managed to force legislation requiring so-called 'backdoors' into all encryption, I, for one, would have to go back to getting paper bills in the mail, and mailing paper checks. I'm already back to paying cash for everything I can, because I've reached the point where I'm no longer trusting EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) for day-to-day expenses (too much hacking going on); destroying encryption or banning it will just make EFT hacking problems that much worse.

Really, seriously, honestly: Why are all these politicians so gods-be-damned retarded when it comes to this subject? Do they not have technical experts that they trust advising them, telling them that what they want is not possible without destroying the value of encryption entirely? Do they not understand the disaster they'd be bringing down on their own heads? Or do they just not care, so long as they can peer into anyone and everyone's private business, regardless of being criminal/terrorist or being innocent of everything?