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Australia To Compel Technology Firms To Provide Access To Encrypted Missives (reuters.com)

Australia on Friday proposed new laws to compel companies such as U.S. social media giant Facebook and device manufacturer Apple to provide security agencies access to encrypted messages. From a report: The measures will be the first in an expected wave of global legislation as pressure mounts on technology companies to provide such access after several terror suspects used encrypted applications ahead of attacks. Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, is on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities have said they have thwarted several plots, although Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said law enforcement needed more help. "We need to ensure the internet is not used as a dark place for bad people to hide their criminal activities from the law," Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. "The reality is, however, that these encrypted messaging applications and voice applications are being used obviously by all of us, but they're also being used by people who seek to do us harm."

230 comments

  1. Not going to happen by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    Ever!

    1. Re:Not going to happen by j-b0y · · Score: 4, Funny

      Will happen, eventually. But it will not solve the underlying problem of encryption technology being widely available. That stable door has been open for so long that the horse has bolted, galloped, cantered and eventually settled down to raise a family somewhere in Wyoming.

      --
      Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
    2. Re:Not going to happen by Desler · · Score: 2

      And it's also silly to think they won't just use an encrypted messaging program outside of Australian jurisdiction.

    3. Re:Not going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, they could file a court order, but they are too lazy to do this, or don't trust the courts.
      They want a fishing expedition. They want to undermine the market capitalization of brand reputation, such as Apple. But without the gag order Britain has now passed, so Defence can't see where this alleged evidence came from. They will NOT be given private keys, or tool kits. In Australia -this is not so - the tech company will be exposed and held as the source, damaging market perceptions and brand worth.

      They are welcome to ask nicely, and if the request is specific, backed by real judge warrants (not some flunky extra non-judicial administrative bullshit body) with defined scope - they usually get that information. If the request is all legal and valid - Google and Apple already comply with all relevant laws.

      Google and Apple will determine what passes the sniff test. One suspects they all know where the bar is set. They can pass laws, but it does not extend to other countries.
      We do know Australia has bugged and harassed journalists and people leaking politically sensitive documents and other witch hunts.

      Thankfully the US has a few constitutional rights where such requests will be flatly denied.

      Which is why - it won't happen.

    4. Re:Not going to happen by fustakrakich · · Score: 0

      But it will not solve the underlying problem of encryption technology being widely available.

      Unauthorized encryption can be trivially blocked by your ISP.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    5. Re:Not going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Unauthorized encryption can be trivially blocked by your ISP.

      Father once told me "a man without religion is nothing".
      Although I disagreed with him, I still respected him.
      Like it or not, he is my father.
      So many people might disagree with that.
      "Eat me" is my reply to them.

      Now go back and read the first letter of each sentence.

      I think most people would view your claim as involving no or few false-positives, but even if your method of blocking involved a white-list of acceptable things to send (complete with the numerous false-positives that that will block), it still would not stop my message from getting out.

    6. Re:Not going to happen by Marisaze · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes and no, while an ISP can trivially block certain traffic they wouldn't be able to block encryption as a whole so easily. It would be a never ending game of cat and mouse as ISPs struggle to figure out every possible way to obfusicate encryption.,Not only does it not solve the problem, it's a huge expense to the ISPs to maintain if it becomes their legal obligation to do so, and if they're not required to maintain the law then it's simply ineffective to begin with. Even using a whitelist of "approved traffic" wouldn't fix this as there's simply too many ways to wrap unapproved traffic, and a blacklist is equally easy to circumvent.

      There's no true solution outside of manually monitoring every single piece of traffic for new ways of getting around the law, and as we all know: criminals don't care that your law exists and will get around it.

    7. Re:Not going to happen by nctritech · · Score: 2

      GET /c51f657cd28a29a207d827267934226b59bf44e8.html
      Host: slashdot.org
      User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
      Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
      Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
      Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
      Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
      Keep-Alive: 300
      Connection: keep-alive
      Pragma: no-cache
      Cache-Control: no-cache

      c51f657cd28a29a207d827267934226b59bf44e was actually a piece of encrypted data. How would an ISP block this without blocking the entire IP, server name, or banning all HTTP transactions not to a machine on a whitelist thereby killing access to most of the web? Assume that c51f657cd28a29a207d827267934226b59bf44e8 can be replaced with any string of characters, including paths or even further "encoded" as recognizable dictionary words, i.e. GET /alphabet/monkey/snorkel/crotch/scam/dead/muppet/orgy.php

    8. Re:Not going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, using a HOSTS.TXT file, I believe?

    9. Re:Not going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here, we 'encrypt' messages by down modding them in the hopes fewer people will know the truth

    10. Re:Not going to happen by Travelsonic · · Score: 1

      Unauthorized encryption can be trivially blocked by your ISP.

      - considering that bit patterns can represent all sorts of things, from words, to images, to numeric data of various types of which requires software that interprets specific bit fields as said pieces of data, how do you actually do this efficiently, and without false positives?

      --
      If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
    11. Re:Not going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how do you actually do this efficiently, and without false positives?

      Idiot politician: "We don't care, just do it minion. You're also not getting funding to research it, but if MY connection to Netflix gets any slower than it already is, I'll have you killed."

      Do you think they actually care if the system works decently or not so long as they can get dirt on anyone that they want? If so, you're a bigger idiot than the politicians.

      The only thing they will care about is whether or not THEIR connection still works correctly. Push come to shove, they'll probably mandate that politicians (and the people they designate) are exempt from the filters and mandatory monitoring if it becomes too much of a pain for them. Hell, they may even create an "encryption allowed" network just for them to use if it becomes too much of a hassle, and they'll have the people who aren't allowed to use it to pay for it.

      All of this just shows we need to move away from the ISP model ASAP. All of this centralized crap is only going to get us all on the fast track to dystopia.

    12. Re:Not going to happen by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      Or

      host c51f657cd28a29a207d827267934226b59bf44e.slashdot.org

      No need for http

    13. Re: Not going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is just the start, after they will outlaw trucks, planes, mail, clothes, telephones, hammers... the only way out is nuking Washington, D.C.

  2. The roads by fredrated · · Score: 4

    are also being used by people who mean us harm. Shall we shut them all down?

    1. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, just ask everybody for their clear-text papers to pass.

    2. Re: The roads by ljw1004 · · Score: 1

      Your analogy makes no sense. They want intelligence agencies to be able to see what's going on over the internet, and they can already see what's going on over the roads.

      It is a car analogy.

    3. Re:The roads by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Give them time. We've been warned for decades now that the full-on Police State is coming, and now I'm starting to think that's what's going to happen. Then all the terrorists in the world will throw a big party, because they will have won.

      Apropos of nothing, I see why Humans can never be immortal: After you put up with a hundred years of the continual BULLSHIT that your own species perpetrates on itself, you just don't want to see any more and WISH to die.

    4. Re:The roads by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I've heard that terrorists consume dihydrogen monoxide. We really need to ban this horrible substance once and for all!

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    5. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is like making it illegal to have a van with all the windows painted black. Because you're probably doing something bad in there!

    6. Re: The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your alteration makes no sense. They can't already see what's going on over the roads.

      Sure, they can see that a car with license plate 1234567 is on I95 traveling north, but they cannot see wtf I am transporting.

    7. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, the police shut down roads sometimes because criminals are using them (see: roadblock), and this is fine.

      You take it to the extreme, shutting down _all_ roads would definitely not be fine.

      Likewise, I am fine with a court ordering a company to turn over information about suspected criminals with due process. I am not fine with companies being ordered to hand over _all_ information on all customers because a few of them might be criminals.

    8. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Humans can't be immortal because they rely on their environment for sustenance.

      Immortality is when a living entity is fully self-sustaining. Something can live forever and not be immortal, technically.

    9. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut down the roads? Don't be ridiculous.

      What we need to do to stop the terrors and protect the children is simple:

      Each road becomes a toll road, with a small use fee. Cameras, booths and other technologies will be placed along all roads to track road usage.

      With roads costing a bit more, it'll make it cost prohibitive for the poors while at the same time allowing tracking of every-single-person traveling in real time.

      Add in some "random" check point with cops and dogs and we can search anyone found to be traveling suspiciously.

      -----

      Having the ability to break all citizens encryptions isn't about "catching terrists", it's about the state knowing everything about everyone at all times.

    10. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please do one of two things: Either TAKE YOUR MEDS so you're not your usual obsessive-compulsive uber-pedantic pain-in-the-ass self, or kill yourself, preferably in the most painful way possible. Either way we won't have to put up with your pedantic, too-literall bullshit anymore.

    11. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      U wot mate?

      Terrorists have specific political agendas. Maybe they want to install their religion (or at least Eastern Orthodox Semibaptist variant of it) as a state religion. Maybe they want a foreign country to stay out of their business for a few decades. Maybe they want to ban Muslims or gay people or miniature poodles.

      That sort of agenda isn't helped by making civilian encryption less secure.

    12. Re: The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, they can see where cars are going, just like IP packets. They want to look inside the packets much like they currently not allowed to easily do with vehicles.

    13. Re:The roads by Rakarra · · Score: 1, Funny

      Please do one of two things: Either TAKE YOUR MEDS so you're not your usual obsessive-compulsive uber-pedantic pain-in-the-ass self, or kill yourself, preferably in the most painful way possible..

      He CAN'T kill himself, he's immortal. That's why he got annoyed with incorrect uses of the word 'immortal.'

    14. Re:The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, FUCK!

      I thought he said "immoral".

    15. Re: The roads by tendrousbeastie · · Score: 1

      No, but they (law enforcement) can get a warrant from a court to search you and your vehicle, and thus become informed about your identity and the contents of your vehicle.

      With the current setup of technology the same cannot be said of internet traffic. With encrypted communication no court order can allow law enforcement to become informed about the identity or content of the communication.

      Obviously certain encryption systems have a weak point - usually when the communication goes through a central server owned by the company providing the service (who will decrypt and analyse it for various commercial reasons), and so a simple subpoena to the company will do the job.

      But with end to end encryption the analogy to road traffic does not work. The only working analogy is if the road traffic in question is a tank or APC, and so law enforcement cannot gain access even with a search warrant. (the analogy breaks down pretty quickly, as the army would be called in pretty quickly in such a case, which would not happen if I happen to send an S/MIME encrypted email).

    16. Re: The roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not necessarily.
      However, New York State has taken the first step on reducing the use of roads for terrorist activities by requiring back windows in cars allow at least 70% of light, thus eliminating the visibility-encryption utilized for these giant package carriers.

  3. If there's no place for terrorists to hide by HalAtWork · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If there's no place for terrorists to hide then there's no place for *anyone* to hide, and that is unacceptable considering how valuable it is to hide from oppression or the abusers of the system used to ensure there are no hiding spots, those who operate the system are disproportionately advantaged and with access comes the capability of concealing themselves, censoring, framing content and concealing context, etc.

    This idea is ridiculous and imbalanced off the bat.

    1. Re:If there's no place for terrorists to hide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Terrorists don't spout their plans all over Twitter's mail like a Trump family member. It won't make any difference to them.

      If they backdoor encryption, they backdoor their own security. Putin's boys must be laughing their cocks off at these idiots. All of those backdoors would soon be in their hands, and with it control of Australia. Do they really think only *they* the 'good' guys will use the backdoors they put in?

      Do they also want to leave some of the border unguarded?

      Why not move their elections online and be done with it?

    2. Re:If there's no place for terrorists to hide by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      Terrorists don't spout their plans all over Twitter's mail like a Trump family member.

      Yes the do, but law enforcement takes no notice.

      It won't make any difference to them.Correct.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    3. Re:If there's no place for terrorists to hide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't believe this to be a serious plan, the goal here is to continue to let info out on how much the government of "insert name of your Country here" is able to intercept anything you do, think or want. Weather it is actually doing it at all is beside the point. You will limit and censor yourself just based on the fear of being watched. The terrorist are just an excuse, just like pedophiles are sometimes.
      In a time where AI will further reduce the possibility for regular people "to bring home the bread" the biggest worry of the people in power is how they will maintain things under control.

    4. Re:If there's no place for terrorists to hide by gweihir · · Score: 1

      It is a fundamentally fascist idea: The individual does not count and the state-ideology is perfect, hence everybody has to follow it or be a traitor to be eradicated. And because the state-ideology is to great and perfect, of course nobody needs to hide except evildoers.

      This of course ignores the little fact that states are the most evil and immoral constructs known to man and need to be kept tightly under control. That control has slipped recently, and what happens as a consequence is not a surprise.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    5. Re:If there's no place for terrorists to hide by Rakarra · · Score: 2

      Putin's boys must be laughing their cocks off at these idiots.

      I guess that's a round-about way of fighting the Russians and reducing their population.

  4. Fix your link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The link doesn't match the summary.

    P.S. Malcolm Turnbull is an idiot.

    1. Re:Fix your link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the asshole knows this legislation will be unpopular that's why he releases it on a Friday: when many people go out for drinks after work, or just generally go out on a Friday night, thus not follow the news.

      Disgusting, mongrel politicians playing the news cycle.

      When the assholes want maximum coverage they make their announcements on Sunday's, thus making the Sunday evening news cycle: when people are more likely to stay in for dinner and watch television.

      Bastard politicians.

    2. Re:Fix your link by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      No he just made a promise to Trump.

  5. Australia is nanny state / police state. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apparently Australians are a bunch of pussies, despite their macho posturing, because they allow their government to fuck them regularly.

  6. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hi Mr. Dutton,

    You're drunk again. Please go back to your hell hole with Pauline.

    Thank you.

  7. Funny this is from Australia... by rkhalloran · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IIRC, the Bouncy Castle crypto package , developed to get around the 90's US export controls on strong ciphers, originates from Down Under. Funny their govt is now expecting developers to install Magic Good-Guys-Only Backdoors into their software so the Five-Eyes Panopticon can snoop as wanted.

  8. if privacy is outlawed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    only outlaws will have it? cease fire stand down,, there's moms & babys in every town..

  9. Exportability by U8MyData · · Score: 1

    Anyone remember when it was illegal in the US to export encryption technology? This really needs to stop. From a bird's eye perspective, governments are trying to throw out the baby with the bath water. Or, is it all about $$$? I just want to live in peace please.

  10. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oooh, how original. Which piece of shit Abrahamic faith is your favorite? Let me guess. Christianity.

  11. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get rid of the Muslims. Deport them all to the sharia hell-holes they come from and richly deserve

    That's a good idea. Too bad all the pussy-assed liberals will stop it from happening.

  12. Jean has a big moustache. by houghi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I repeat:
    Jean has a big moustache.

    Aunt Marie is doing well.
    I repeat:
    Aunt Marie is doing well.

    These where the message from Radio Free Internet.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    1. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Package was delivered, but to the wrong address. Hay will be made when the sun shines.

    2. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Informative

      Exactly. Or a simple book cipher, or steganography. It's just too laughably easy for REAL terrorist types to communicate in perfect secrecy. What measures like this are about is for Law Enforcement(TM) types to trivially easily spy on the general populace.

    3. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What measures like this are about is for Government Types(TM) to trivially easily control the general populace.

      FTFY.

    4. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      5 17 3 3 89 2 14 88 63 0 118 999 88199 9119 725 3

    5. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      pretty sure the phrase was "Jean has a long moustache."

      you are referencing the codes being delivered to the French resistance?

    6. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Or a simple book cipher [wikipedia.org], or steganography [wikipedia.org]. It's just too laughably easy for REAL terrorist types to communicate in perfect secrecy. What measures like this are about is for Law Enforcement(TM) types to trivially easily spy on the general populace.

      This is the US intelligence services using the Australian intelligence services and Australian law as a monkey's-paw to do an end-run around US restrictions on their collection abilities. The '5-Eyes' sharing agreements means that US 4th-Amensment protections mean squat.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    7. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by houghi · · Score: 2

      If I where to communicate with others and I do want it to be secret, I would use a combination of things.
      1) Post images every day to a Usenet group(Wait, I already do that)
      2) Use steganography to add info to the image or just add a comment like a quote in the comment section of the image. (Wait I already do that)
      3) Read another group like alt.test to see replies (Wait I already do that)

      Why Usenet? Because then there is no provable connection between two people. It is broadcasting and the different servers will be distributing everything. So no logfile of one specific website to verify. And even then it would not be clear if you are just downloading my wallpapers on news:alt.binaries.pictures.wal... because you like them or ....

      And they can also use people to say what the message is, like they did with Osama Bin Laden. They had to pose as a red cross breaking several international laws and setting back aid for several decades to find him.

      Messages will be send, regardless of the difficulties you put in the way.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    8. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You got it! You can't help but feel sorry for all the anti-luddites that will be lost without their insecure phart-smones containing all their dubious "encryption apps".

      I, for one, welcome the return of five-letter code groups. Secure on Slashdot. Secure on facebook. Secure on twitter. AONSU KLEIW KDNDI PDNDU, y'all!

    9. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by uberdilligaff · · Score: 2

      A "long mustache"? But I thought you said a "big mustache"??? Damn! I've blown up the wrong bridge!

      --
      Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
    10. Re:Jean has a big moustache. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "Messages will be send, regardless of the difficulties you put in the way."

      Its nice to create and read plain text messages on a smart phone.
      Interesting people will soon understand the difference between privacy and anonymity.
      The communication was seen between person A and B. Both accounts are been watched by a gov. No more anonymity
      The hardware is sent some gov malware or gets a code to start police storage.
      That will remove any privacy.
      Person A creates a nice long message in plain text and then has a trusted app create a secure code. Person A send the very secure and totally trusted encrypted message to person B.
      The message person A has created is captured before any encryption.
      Person B gets the secure message from person A. The app decrypts the message and person B reads the text.
      The message is captured after decryption.
      Both person A and B have had their smart phones altered. All messages are collected from both. Any app to keep messages encrypted is junk thanks to how encryption and decryption is done by the OS and app.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  13. Good luck with that... by drew_92123 · · Score: 1

    because it's not gonna happen...

  14. Re:better idea by Chrisq · · Score: 0

    Oooh, how original. Which piece of shit Abrahamic faith is your favorite? Let me guess. Christianity.

    They're all pretty terrible, but if I had to pick one of the major ones I'd pick Judaism, simply because it doesn't aim to convert everyone else.

  15. Re:better idea by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oooh, how original. Which piece of shit Abrahamic faith is your favorite? Let me guess. Christianity.

    You know, when we have radical Presbyterians running around, driving trucks through crowds on holidays, gunning down co-workers on Xmas party days, and bombing outside of concerts and just generally shooting and blowing up groups of innocent people....we can start worrying about those damned jihadist Christians then....but, until then, why don't we try to address the problems folks at hand now, eh?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  16. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

  17. Sad State of Affairs by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    I have often remarked that no nation would ever really tolerate free speech. Here we have government offering an excuse to eliminate free speech completely. Frankly there are numerous issues mixed in with this. Criminal activity is now so common that we simply can not detain, arrest or imprison more people. There are already problems concerning which laws get enforced and against whom they are enforced. if we had high quality investigation of all our people the nation would collapse due to the vast number of people who would be in the justice system. For example how many people have cheated on their income tax or made false statements to insurance companies? How about hunters or fishermen who cheat a bit on size or number of animals taken? Frankly most small businesses also commit crimes. For example even some McDonald's chain stores alter time cards to make certain no worker can get full time status. That is criminal fraud but who knows of a single case of such a store being padlocked? Arrest and prosecution has a lot to do with who you are.

  18. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny. Were you holding your gun for protection while you professed how much of a pussy others are?

  19. Re:Here's a thought.... by haruchai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quit letting people from terrorist prone countries or parts of the world into YOUR country...where they refuse to assimilate and become pots of festering terrorist ideology waiting to unleash itself into the host country.

    Someone should have told the Aboriginals & Native Americans that a long time ago

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  20. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why? Are pussy-assed liberals going to threaten me with violence for calling them pussies? If they do, then yeah, they will be shot dead.

  21. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

    I've never understood this argument, that a guy who murders someone now is an OK chap really because someone else's great great great *20 grandfather murdered someone. It seems very popular among muzzeis and appeasers

  22. Re:Here's a thought.... by Desler · · Score: 2

    Sure, if you ignore the fact that most terrorists attacks are being done by native-born citizens or people not from countries on Trump's ban list but instead were radicalized years after immigrating.

  23. What kind of access? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

    Does the Australian government know that even if they could compel companies like Apple access to their systems, they won't get access to what their users send especially if users are using end-to-end encryption.

    And then there's the issue of once they get access to one thing, another app would soon appear that would thwart their suvelliance

    Short summary of the issues

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    1. Re:What kind of access? by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      Per device low level access will get past any user app layer thats doing the encryption or decryption.
      If its plain text at any time on the device, thats what gov/mil malware will keep.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:What kind of access? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Only if the message is ever stored in plain text locally. Otherwise that requires malware to be installed and surveillance software from the device. That's more than access. For example if a user is using end-to-end encrypted messaging app done well the message shows up only as plain text is within the app on the screen. In order to access that text, either the phone/device has to be capturing what is happening on screen. The app could also be set to never save the message once it's been shown.

      The other alternative is the device knows where the app is storing the key and using it. Again that requires more than simple access.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    3. Re:What kind of access? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In order to access that text, either the phone/device has to be capturing what is happening on screen.

      You're forgetting that Apple has complete and total control over the device at the firmware level and could easily add a keylogger component to capture all input from the screen keyboard while simultaneously banning from the App Store any app that attempted to bypass the built-in on screen keyboard or re-implement their own to get around the keylogging. Of course, I don't believe that Apple will do that but I point out that it is technically possible.

    4. Re:What kind of access? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      But that's not "access". That's surveillance software. The law that way I read it is forcing Apple and others for "access".

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    5. Re:What kind of access? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For example if a user is using end-to-end encrypted messaging app done well the message shows up only as plain text is within the app on the screen.

      You're forgetting that your magical end-to-end encrypted app has to call Apple's APIs to be able to display that plaintext message on the screen. Oh dear, String.Draw() exports my encrypted messages!

    6. Re:What kind of access? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "And then there's the issue of once they get access to one thing, another app would soon appear that would thwart their survelliance"

      Not if they make it illegal to manufacture these apps.
      After all, everyone knows that criminals would never dream of violating the Law regarding the manufacture of 'illegal' items in the course of their other illegal activities.

    7. Re:What kind of access? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Making them illegal requires a different piece of legislation. This particular legislation does not thing about that. However if we are talking about making strong encryption software illegal, the world has been down that road before. It didn't work out then; it's not going to work out now.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  24. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean like people such as professed Christian Timothy McVeigh?

  25. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, you'd pick the inherently supremacist one.

    All the while calling other people "supremacists"

    We all know how jews operate

  26. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but.. people that actually indoctrinate and recruit idiots to commit most if not all of the organised terror, are sponsored by the military, and the political-industrial elite... With their quiet blessing, Mujahedeen and Al-qaeda and now Daesh have prospered.

    You are advocating shunning the United Corporations Of America and/or the mighty American State. That is actually illegal, and is punished by drone :D

    Also, how would not letting them into a given country stop them...They'll just use diplomatic communication channels and financial pressure.
    I don't get it. And as for festering ideology, it's too late, the American "culture" is everywhere, even on /.

  27. I don't know if this makes sense. by Sique · · Score: 2
    For now, it means that end-to-end-encryption will be more common. If you use the chat app only as a means for encrypted input and output, you could have a second app on both ends that does the cryptographic work for you by sending your text encrypted and scraping the answer from the output screen and decrypt it. Then the messenger app firm will not be able to decrypt what you are sending, as they are just providing the dumb pipe your communication flows through.

    We had similar encrypted channels already in IRC, where some clients provided facilities to encrypt a query with a shared key on both ends.

    Currently, with the centralized messenger services running through the infrastructure of big companies, there is a big attack vector on the privacy of communication: Go directly to the provider of the infrastructure. If the encryption runs totally on the client side piggy-backing on the "official" infrastructure, a big single point of failure is removed, although it is still easy to determine when and with whom you communicate.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  28. Re:better idea by Desler · · Score: 2

    This post is a joke right? American-born, non-Muslims kill more people in a year in mass shootings than all Muslim terrorist attacks combined.

  29. Re:better idea by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

    Bad example...the Crusades were a reaction to the Muslims overtaking the "Holy Land"...and not letting Christians in....it was a defensive move back in the day.

    Once again, the Muslims were the initial aggressors.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  30. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The crusades were in response to islamic aggression.
    Also, the crusades happened from 1095-1291. It's now 2017. Try to stay current.

  31. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ah, a crusade idiot. You do realize that Islamic nations started their jihad against Europe four hundred years before the crusades, including conquering Spain and the first crusade was the result of the Byzantine emperor asking for assistance against invading Turks who were Muslim.

    Try learning some history before spouting your anti-Christian talking points.

  32. Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The obvious response of technology firms is to structure their encryption so that it becomes impossible for them to decrypt the content because they don't have the keys themselves. The security guys at pretty much every such company would prefer to build such systems anyway. They generally don't because doing so adds some additional layers of complexity. It's simpler and more cost-effective to instead build a key management system that is secure against compromise even by internal attackers, relying on the typical tools (secure hardware, affirmative control, responsibility splitting, etc.).

    But... it's not *that* much harder to build a system in which no one but the parties communicating have the keys. Compared to the legal and administrative costs involved in having to deal with an unending stream of government requests for data (which governments almost always expect companies to comply with at their own expense, as a cost of doing business), it's a no-brainer. Much cheaper to build the more complicated decentralized security model, enabling the company to respond to government requests with "Can't. Here's our security design. You can see that we have no access to the decryption keys."

    Of course, the obvious response of legislators is then to mandate government-accessible backdoors. That, however, creates an entirely new public perception of the request, making it a very different game, politically.

    --
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    1. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by clonehappy · · Score: 1

      I thought, from the way I understood the system, that Apple's iMessage already worked in this manner. I'm not under any delusion that any electronic communications are actually secure and I operate accordingly, but the publicly released documents seem to point to Apple not having access to the keys.

      There are other ways around this, of course, such as allowing access to your account to an adversary so they can get their own copy of the keys, etc. This method, at the very least, keeps out the script kiddie hacker types and other low-hanging fruit. But again, the system is already designed in such a way that Apple should just tell Australia to go fuck themselves. Shut off any and all Apple services to the entire country and let them sort it out internally. Only turn things back on once they've regained senses.

      Of course, a large American company actually taking a stand for anything is unlikely to happen so we'll probably just see more workarounds like the aforementioned one while the company keeps up the illusion of security.

    2. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by sims+2 · · Score: 1

      Now if I remember correctly lavabit had a setup like this so they couldn't access the information so the gov't demanded their SSL key so they could pull a MITM and intercept the user's key.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    3. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 2

      Now if I remember correctly lavabit had a setup like this so they couldn't access the information so the gov't demanded their SSL key so they could pull a MITM and intercept the user's key.

      Sort of true. Lavabit did have access to the data the government wanted, but avoided logging it so they had only ephemeral access, and no ability to provide the historical records being requested. They could have worked out a deal to provide the future information about the one account in question (Edward Snowden's as it turned out), but were uncooperative, and fairly stupidly so. After Lavabit's obstructionism, the government didn't trust them to selectively provide the information, so the court agreed to the -- very unusual, in fact apparently singular -- step of ordering Lavabit to provide their private key, so the government could analyze all traffic itself to find the messages they had the legal permission to see.

      Lavabit, of course, decided to shut down instead, because obviously their service would no longer be secure if anyone other than them had the private key.

      What they should have done is hire a lawyer immediately when the first request came in and respond to court requests in a timely fashion. They might still have ultimately come to the conclusion that they had to shut down but I suspect they probably could have simply shut down Snowden's account, ensuring that no more information of interest would be available, rather than shutting down the whole service. It would have required some thought to find a way to disable the account without tipping off Snowden that it was due to an investigation (though Snowden obviously knew he was being investigated, and was probably smart enough to stopped using the thing by then anyway). The question of the TLS key would never have come up if they'd handled it right.

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    4. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 1

      But... it's not *that* much harder to build a system in which no one but the parties communicating have the keys.

      Of course, the obvious response of legislators is then to mandate government-accessible backdoors.

      Jesus Christ. Backdoors, smackdoors. Simply have the NSA produce their own public key and force all message suppliers to keep on doing whatever they're doing AND ALSO encrypt the original message with the NSA key while appending it to the coded message. That way "ONLY" the NSA or proxy can decode the 2nd message while leaving the application-normal routines in place.

      Of course it'll be illegal to remove the alternate key and most people won't know how to do that to start with. Thus
      (A) you can read any normal messages (especially the ones from stupid terrorists), and
      (B) people sending messages you CAN'T read are the people you're really interested in.
      (C) People with differing encoded message sizes (user vs NSA) are also interesting.

      Oh, overseas from the US? The 5, 6, or 20 eyes can coordinate application enforcement, and other governments should be willing to jump at the chance.

      Then we can start wars over key access, not message access.

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    5. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 1

      But... it's not *that* much harder to build a system in which no one but the parties communicating have the keys. Of course, the obvious response of legislators is then to mandate government-accessible backdoors.

      Jesus Christ. Backdoors, smackdoors. Simply have the NSA produce...

      Um, what you described is a backdoor. Pretty much exactly the one proposed in 1993, intended to be implemented in the Clipper chip. Notice how well that succeeded. That's what I meant when I said:

      That, however, creates an entirely new public perception of the request, making it a very different game, politically.

      --
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    6. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Apple does that already. It was an engineering solution to a legal problem. Now matter what the government can demand, Apple can't crack an iPhone. As such, can't fulfill the request, nor can they be held liable (because it's physically not possible). About the only thing they can do is reset an iCloud.com account password.

      Really, if Apple had a backdoor, or was forced to make one for the Gov, I guarantee that Apple would be forced to build an entire building that holds nothing but staff to respond to these requests 24/7. Now, why in the fuck would they want to pay for the salary of those people!!?

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    7. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apple does that already. It was an engineering solution to a legal problem.

      It's the obvious and predictable response of a security engineer.

      However, I don't think Apple has actually fixed that "hole" yet. What the FBI was asking them to do was to provide an updated version of the firmware which bypassed the brute force mitigations on password checks. There was much discussion back then about which iPhone versions have the "secure enclave" and which don't, but the secure enclave also has updatable firmware.

      However, there are ways to fix this, and I suspect that Apple is working on one for the iPhone8. I think the best solution (and I should note that my day job is Android crypto security, so I've given it more than a passing thought) is to make the firmware update process require that the user first unlock the device. There are a variety of ways to do that, and make the requirement cryptographically strong.

      It should be noted that this is a general-purpose security feature, not one specifically targeted at securing against law enforcement. Without it, the security of user data can never be stronger than the internal access controls around the firmware signing key. Any employee or group of employees who have access to that key (or anyone who can bribe, extort or otherwise coerce said employees) can sign new firmware that can erode the security. The fact that it was a government attempt to coerce them to do it doesn't mean the government is the only entity who could. It's much better for user security if no one can.

      Really, if Apple had a backdoor, or was forced to make one for the Gov, I guarantee that Apple would be forced to build an entire building that holds nothing but staff to respond to these requests 24/7.

      Not true. If Apple (or any other company) were forced to build a government backdoor, most likely it would be the government that holds the keys, so Apple would never be involved in any of the government accesses.

      Honestly, if you had a government agency that you could trust enough, such as the courts themselves, maybe, this might not be such a bad approach. That's a really, really big "if", though. The technical challenges in securing such high-value keys are not insurmountable, but they're very high, and if the keys leak, the damage to the companies who make the affected devices would be huge. Further, at least in the US the organization we would most trust to get the technical design and implementation right, the NSA, is the organization we'd want to keep furthest from the whole thing. And even if all of the technical infrastructure was perfect, then the agency would also have to make sure that its processes for approving access are airtight and have adequate oversight to prevent abuse.

      Yeah... let's just not go there. Police work is only easy in a police state, and we don't want a police state.

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    8. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Not true. If Apple (or any other company) were forced to build a government backdoor, most likely it would be the government that holds the keys, so Apple would never be involved in any of the government accesses.

      It's quite possible they could do that, but then every other nation-state on Earth would be demanding the same type of access. So in effect, when you choose what region you live in (or traveling too) in iOS, it encrypts with that nations certificate that would allow said nation to access the content on the iPhone upon request. It might be one of the many reasons Apple is building a datacenter in China in fact.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    9. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 1

      Not true. If Apple (or any other company) were forced to build a government backdoor, most likely it would be the government that holds the keys, so Apple would never be involved in any of the government accesses.

      It's quite possible they could do that, but then every other nation-state on Earth would be demanding the same type of access. So in effect, when you choose what region you live in (or traveling too) in iOS, it encrypts with that nations certificate that would allow said nation to access the content on the iPhone upon request.

      Perhaps. I don't think that could happen secretly, though.

      It might be one of the many reasons Apple is building a datacenter in China in fact.

      That makes no sense. They wouldn't need to build a data center in China to include a Chinese backdoor public key in their devices, assuming they were willing to do that.

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    10. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      FYI, in case you haven't been paying attention to what's going on in China, the authorities are slowing clamping down on Internet access to the point of going full-tilt whitelisting of publics IPs (both individuals and in blocks). I shit you not. Also, it makes sense for logistical reasons that iCloud storage and iOS device backups occur locally and not flung across trans-pacific fiber. Oh, and ease of access to data. Why not right? it's in their backyard now.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    11. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The obvious response of technology firms is to structure their encryption so that it becomes impossible for them to decrypt the content because they don't have the keys themselves.

      The smart response by users would be to stop relying on technology firms. Encryption software is a free commodity. Putting some "firm" in charge of your software is just a way of adding a point of failure.

      it's not *that* much harder to build a system in which no one but the parties communicating have the keys.

      It's easier. The problem is that users don't do it / use it. See my first paragraph? I gave great advice, but nobody follows it.

      Not even me.

    12. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 1

      The obvious response of technology firms is to structure their encryption so that it becomes impossible for them to decrypt the content because they don't have the keys themselves.

      The smart response by users would be to stop relying on technology firms. Encryption software is a free commodity. Putting some "firm" in charge of your software is just a way of adding a point of failure.

      it's not *that* much harder to build a system in which no one but the parties communicating have the keys.

      It's easier. The problem is that users don't do it / use it. See my first paragraph? I gave great advice, but nobody follows it.

      Not even me.

      That's because it's actually not so easy. Key management is hard.

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    13. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      I think its likely that Apple will be asked to provide a back door into the OS so that plain text can be captured before it is encrypted.

    14. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by bug1 · · Score: 1

      And what about messages that go outside of NSA jurisdiction.

      The Internet doesnt respect borders.

    15. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      Publish a readonly chain of all firmware builds that you have ever produced. Equivalent to a adding the firmware blob of every release version to a git commit history. Encourage other people to monitor that log.

      Then have the current firmware verify that its own hash, and the hash of the new firmware is in the commit history for the release log.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    16. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 1

      Indeed, I run a small business https://matador.cloud/ which sells Tahoe-LAFS grids. And I'm not the only one; https://leastauthority.com/ is another. I take pride and solace in how I cannot read my users' uploaded files.

      --
      ~ C.
    17. Re:Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 1

      Cool. I contributed a bit to Tahoe for a while. It's been a while since I talked to Zooko, I should email him...

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    18. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 1

      Publish a readonly chain of all firmware builds that you have ever produced. Equivalent to a adding the firmware blob of every release version to a git commit history. Encourage other people to monitor that log.

      Then have the current firmware verify that its own hash, and the hash of the new firmware is in the commit history for the release log.

      Not useful :-)

      It doesn't matter how many people are verifying that the official log of releases contains no funny business. It only matters that the device can be convinced to accept an update. The attacker just needs to force the device to download a log of his own creation, with his blob's hash appended. You can try to prevent this by having the device check the TLS server certificate when it downloads, or by signing the log, but the assumed attackers have access to internal, restricted private keys, so we have to assume they could get the TLS or log signing key as well.

      Hash chains / blockchains are good for maintaining secure distributed logs, but that's not the problem that needs to be solved here.

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    19. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly, if you had a government agency that you could trust enough, such as the courts themselves, maybe, this might not be such a bad approach.

      Judges are typically appointed by politicians - most of whom are corrupt. It is a very, very, very bad idea to trust judges.

      It is especially a bad idea to trust judges in the USA. A study of US legal history will quickly demonstrate to anybody with a functioning brain that the US legal profession has longstanding problems with ethics - and the US judiciary has done nothing to fix this. These aren't minor problems, these are problems on a massive scale that come with enormous negative social and economic impacts. Many prior Slashdot discussions go into this issue at length with respect to specific issues, so I won't belabour the point here.

      If you think about it, the whole reason for having a Bill of Rights as the highest law in the land is mistrust of government - including judges. The fact that that US Bill of Rights is open-ended is even more telling. The fact that the US Bill of Rights is routinely violated is simply appalling.

    20. Re: Obvious response of technology firms by swillden · · Score: 1

      If you think about it, the whole reason for having a Bill of Rights as the highest law in the land is mistrust of government - including judges.

      This makes zero sense. If you can't trust any branch of government, including judges, who will enforce the application of the Bill of Rights?

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  33. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, you know, the Protestants are the radical 'Christians' to watch out for. If it weren't for them, true Christianity (as only the Catholics can be, all else are pretenders) would be truly harmonious.

  34. Re:Here's a thought.... by Daniel+Franklin · · Score: 2

    Compare and contrast the number of terrorists from Iran (on "The List") vs. the number of terrorists from Our Friend And Ally, Saudi Arabia (not on The List) and Pakistan (also not). The List just gives Trump supports an illusion of Doing Something; never mind that it is useless and indeed counter-productive.

    Most of the crazies have been home-grown (and many have been converts).

  35. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trump is a Presbyterian.

  36. Free Society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In a free society, security does not overrule privacy. Period. Fuck those that take our individual rights in the name of security.

    1. Re:Free Society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately it's going to happen and there's nothing we can do about it. Our individual rights are pretty much forfeit, there will be a list of privileges that will be revoked at the authorities' whim, and that will be it. Raving and ranting about it won't change the outcome. The internet is a lost cause. It's over.

    2. Re:Free Society by clonehappy · · Score: 1

      Hey look guys, found the defeatist NSA shill!

  37. Re: Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Awe look at the dumb little redneck. Ain't he so cute. Orange haired little bastard.

    You shouldn't restrict someone entering your country based on their country of origin. It's not American. But I guess you don't care about the real America and the values we were founded on.

  38. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're a short-sighted asshole, and I'm going to tell you precisely WHY: I guarantee that if we dug into your genetic heritage, we'd find some ancestor that came from some country that, at the time, the U.S. would have said "We don't want no (insert people) here". Irish. Chinese. Polish. Japanese. BLACKS. You name it, at one time or another some ethnic group was demonized. So you're an asshole if you stick by that shitty, short-sighted opinion of yours. Xenophobia solves NOTHING.

  39. Re: Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is usually because people are bored out of their fucking mind, same with black bloc and antifa types who go around destroying shit. They always blame it on something like democracy or capitalism, but it's really just people looking for a cause because they've never accomplished anything in life.

    Some people within ISIS have even commented that the native Arabs are less fundamentalist than the westerners who moved there. For example, the natives are known to smoke and drink on occasion, whereas the westerners are always purist adherents to the Quran.

    The first world has so few social problems that this may be something we'll have to get used to going forward.

  40. Re:better idea by Chrisq · · Score: 1

    This post is a joke right? American-born, non-Muslims kill more people in a year in mass shootings than all Muslim terrorist attacks combined.

    This is a joke right? You know that ISIS were killing faster than statisticians count.

  41. Re:Here's a thought.... by qbast · · Score: 2

    Indeed. Let this be a warning to current Australian society.

  42. WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Funny

    What the actual fuck is wrong with these gods-be-damned politicians that they don't understand the simple FACT that if you put a gods-be-damned 'backdoor' into ANY encryption algorithm, that your DESTROY it's ability to keep sensitive data out of the hands of the very people you're trying to 'protect' against!? Does the entire gods-be-damned WORLD have lead in it's drinking water? THIS is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say "People are getting DUMBER". Don't these politicians have techical advisors who are (hopefully!) competent and intelligent, telling them precisely what I said above (and a million times already)?

    1. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's called "Cutting off the nose to spite the face".

      Governments and other rich elite absolutely hate us all. They'll gladly destroy society if they think they can screw us. Whether or not they realize their "safety measures" will ultimately fail them when the world crumbles, is debatable.

    2. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and at this point it's probably the biggest reason why people should realize that terrorists are NOT the real reason they keep demanding backdoors.

    3. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I actually believe you're wrong - nobody is getting dumber. The politicians simply act dumb to get what they want. They just. don't. care. at all about the people and can keep pretending (to be whatever they think you want) until they have all the money/power they desire.

    4. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Politicians are the poster-people for the Dunning-Kruger effect: They have the biggest egos and the smallest understanding of how things actually work. Of course they do not listen to advisers, because really dumb people think they already know all the truths. Unfortunately, democracy does not help either, because most voters are timid sheep and easily frightened to stampede in any direction desired. Hence fascism raises its ugly head gain. That did not take long.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    5. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      This level of ignorant bullshit that our so-called 'leaders' and so-called 'legislators' perpetrate on the rest of us makes me want to vomit. Seriously.

    6. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. The level of stupidity demonstrated is truly astounding.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    7. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      backdoor' into ANY encryption algorithm, that your DESTROY it's ability to keep sensitive data out of the hands of the very people you're trying to 'protect' against!?

      Does it really? Are you sure that encryption is the ONLY thing that keeps government secrets out of enemy hands?
      Before encryption, the government agencies were quite decent at keeping secrets. Maybe they think that they still can if encryption were weakened or gone.

    8. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I take it you have never heard the saying, "empty vessels make the most noise." The advisors attached to intelligence agencies are the emptiest vessels making the most noise.

    9. Re:WHY CAN'T THEY LEARN!!?! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      You likely read what the Australian PM had to say. Proof positive that they're painfully DUMB. I've facepalmed so hard it left a mark on my forehead. :-(

  43. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deporting Muslims back to their countries only serve to congregate them. We should round them up into death camps and exterminate them. That is the only way we can rid the world of those vermin.

  44. Re:Here's a thought.... by gnick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quit letting people from terrorist prone countries or parts of the world into YOUR country...where they refuse to assimilate and become pots of festering terrorist ideology waiting to unleash itself into the host country.

    Someone should have told the Aboriginals & Native Americans that a long time ago

    It wasn't until I read this that it occurred to me that handing out smallpox infected blankets was an act of terrorism.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  45. They did... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then some Missionaries came and told them how God is Great and to give up their Heretic Heathen ways or be crushed under the boots of progress.

    Then they either died of disease (often brought by said missionaries, who then used it to convert people...) or were driven off their land/enslaved by 'righteous christian settlers', some of whom paid a token, some of whom dealt fairly, most of the whom dealt in horse and musket, whether selling, or using to take the land.

    The only things that have changed are the methods, that sort of barbaric colonization still happens today, just under different names, like 'globalism', 'H1B', or 'The Great Jihad Against the White Devil, while also coveting the benefits of his lifestyle!', the latter rather not dissimiliar to the colonists taking of the beneficial aspects of the natives lifestyles while destroying any parts they didn't like. Oh cultural conquerors, what a crude beast are ye!

    1. Re:They did... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Central Banks and IBS and Derivatives

  46. Re:Here's a thought.... by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

    It wasn't an act of terrorism, but it may have been an attempt at genocide with bioweapons...but it's not clear whether it was an intentional use of bioweaponry or not.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  47. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  48. rolleyes by XSportSeeker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Encryption, the best tool to detect ignorance on politicians.
    We should all be using it to give politicians with stupid proposals the boot.

    1. Re:rolleyes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The prime minister is well informed when it comes to technology, he built his wealth founding early Australian tech startups. And he's infamous for using over-the-top encryption apps to avoid accountability. But there is internal conflict in the Liberal party and his position as leader is tenuous. He needs to appease the lunatic god-and-terrorist-fearing faction if he wants to keep the job. So human rights, laws of mathematics and plain common sense have been dispensed with. It's not ignorance. It's a transparent and shameless attempt to cling to power.

    2. Re:rolleyes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull are fucking lawyers. I had the unfortunate experience of working for one of the tech companies that For The Record (Gold) purchased. They completely fucked up that tech company within six months of acquiring it.

  49. Re:better idea by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I looked up the numbers and terrorists kill about 28,000 people a year worldwide. And most of them are likely Muslims that the terrorists don't think are in the "right" sect.

    From the linked article: "More than 55% of all attacks took place in five countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria), and 74% of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Pakistan)."

    Terrorism in countries like the US or Australia is actually vanishingly low. It's touted as a horrible threat by politicians to take away rights and to get themselves more power, but you're more likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist. (There are 37,000 road accident deaths in the US per year and 1.3 million worldwide - Source.)

    If people want to ban all Muslims because of the tiny risk of terrorism, why aren't we banning all motor vehicles to combat the higher risk of automobile-related deaths?

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  50. Re: Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For example, the natives are known to smoke and drink on occasion, whereas the westerners are always purist adherents to the Quran.

    The Koran says nothing about smoking which is prevalent in most Muslim countries.

  51. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In the UK more people are killed on average by wasp stings than by terrorism, I suspect the same is true in the USA.

  52. Re:Here's a thought.... by gnick · · Score: 1

    It wasn't an act of terrorism, but it may have been an attempt at genocide with bioweapons...

    I'm not sure I see the distinction. If I mail you an envelope full of anthrax, that's terror, right? But if my ultimate goal is to kill everyone "like you", it's now an attempt at genocide but not terror? Why are terrorism and genocide attempts mutually exclusive?

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  53. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's a better thought:

    Stop electing corrupt politicians whose idea of foreign policy is bombing the shit out of others, creating hatred and a drive for vengeance for generations.

  54. Re:better idea by Geodesy99 · · Score: 2
    > ... jihadist Christians

    Timeline of Irish National Liberation Army actions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Incident No.

    Injury 47,541

    Shooting incident 36,923

    Armed robbery 22,539

    People charged with paramilitary offences 19,605

    Bombing and attempted bombing 16,209

    Arson 2,225

  55. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Xenophobia solves NOTHING.

    Other than protect us from the short term problem of dying in a fiery explosion by a radicalized people who refuse to assimilate into their host country's culture.

  56. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People debate the definition of terrorism. But if it is "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" (merriam-webster.com). If they're dead, it is hard to coerce them, so it is unlikely someone will be trying to do both.

    Would facing genocide be terrifying? Certainly. Could someone use terror for coercing a group while also systematically killing them? Sure.

    Now the media uses the word Terrorism to describe anything they can hype up as terrorizing. That does not mean the things they label as terrorism, actually are terrorism. Terrorist is just the new boogie man, like communists were before them. The propaganda of your country is just as false as that of any other country.

  57. Good luck. by ewhenn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good luck legislating math.

    1. Re:Good luck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Funny you should say this, as the summary is missing the greatest quote from the Mr Turnbull:-

      "Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"

      Australian law trumps the Laws of Mathematics now!

    2. Re:Good luck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's been done before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

    3. Re:Good luck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Our PM Turnbull said "The laws of math is commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"

      I wonder if that's why gravity has started going wonky and I've seen cars exceeding the speed of light?

    4. Re:Good luck. by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Good luck legislating math.

      They've certainly done it before. Encryption above certain key lengths used to be illegal to export, and software that was secure came with enough restrictions that it was a pretty big barrier for use.

    5. Re:Good luck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The sale of products that feature strong encryption is hereby banned." --legislation

      That wasn't so hard.

    6. Re:Good luck. by illtud · · Score: 1

      PM Turnbull: "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."

      Yeah, good luck with that.

  58. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    In the UK more people are killed on average by wasp stings than by terrorism,

    Yes, But those are Muslim wasps!

  59. Re:Here's a thought.... by gnick · · Score: 1

    The definition of terrorism Google gives me is, "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." This definition doesn't preclude genocide. Even your M-W definition doesn't make coercion a necessary component.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  60. Criminal activities vs Government activities by millertym · · Score: 1

    "We need to ensure the Internet is not used as a dark place for bad people to hide their criminal activities from the law"

    vs.

      "We need to ensure the Internet is not used as a dark place for government organizations to abuse and violate citizens privacy by those who are above the law"

    1. Re:Criminal activities vs Government activities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very nice. 'above the law' is right. There is no recourse against government spying... They can keep you on a watchlist and you'll never know even if you take them to court.

  61. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    >Someone should have told the Aboriginals & Native Americans that a long time ago

    I don't think you know what "letting" means.

  62. Criminalize privacy... by sofla · · Score: 2

    ...and only criminals will have privacy.

  63. Always bringing in those violent moslems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Always bringing in those violent moslems, knowing what they'll do and how they'll try to get away with it, as an excuse to take freedoms and privacy away from the deep rooted and civil locals.

    It's all about control.

    I dream of the day when the corrupt power hungry elite will be rounded up by an armed and informed public and/or betrayed by their own security staff.

  64. Dimwits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Australia is giving the US serious competition for the dumbass award this year.

  65. All for show by eastjesus · · Score: 1

    All the more reason to use open source software that doesn't rely on third party corporate keyholders. Seriously, anyone really concerned about secure communication is not going to rely on a consumer oriented mass-market service run by a profit-making company. They'll use a custom one-time pad for encryption and some steganographic technique to send the encrypted message through an unconnected communication or not use the public Internet at all.

    1. Re:All for show by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Show and surveillance of common people. These are the same government creeps that want to look into your bedroom to make sure you do not do anything "unwanted".

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  66. Watcha gonna do? by nastyphil · · Score: 2

    In Australia, every year, cops kill more people than terrorists do.

    --
    Dialectician. Archology.
    1. Re:Watcha gonna do? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Australia, every year, cops kill more people than terrorists do.

      Tree's kill more people in Australia than do terroists.

    2. Re:Watcha gonna do? by DavidRawling · · Score: 1

      Pfft, trees aren't worth worrying about. Now dropbears, on the other hand - those things are a bloody menace.

  67. Take Away The Guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The public doesn't need guns either. Ban them all!

  68. Re: Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    America has historically done exactly that, and not at all what you say. The purpose of immigration has traditionally been to help America. That changed relatively recently, and Trump is part of that debate finnally occurring in the public sphere.

  69. Access to encrypted message granted, contents are: by chiefcrash · · Score: 1

    -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: BCPG C# v1.6.1.0 hQEMA6aWSBoheq/wAQgAmlMhXPe8IFZS1FFJlZSi5vox+rp2ERjJ/tkZIoDm6eyg NA2GGzmWlI9mu1DKlP0nOINNZV7oY2M8ovqW2AuHd2BpWEaIa58GC/v1hL02xr2P a50tR/FzRG2MkKIFhnW/z+cGZA9CXycusD0tlAnzyve7HZlA08FVFmPnBQ/CbwLe pYzzAVXvSOs3wuPakv57hHErdY0XjarqkBxmnvVzO8WgV93KmZ4caRySzchiBiQ/ Wb9D5PTUIkgS93HWeoQngOTPA1blKKLmSWRk699Wu9MIlcykxgpiNaDjrI6aaZwp ckCTWAwnyhbR8KTqdYo0qlqK0D8t+SC9C+V6XKkA78lQ50pYeazywBvcSNA4OJmx Tif2voDW0VzvSQdbnITUpw/AfuJsMQTYqsTcQaKFQsdoMf9KJiCQGWjjj9Cl3GtT v+FwYAgCbdEjmCOx1XBHQrQ= =Kyq6 -----END PGP MESSAGE-----

    --
    Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
  70. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Holy Land is Holy to Christians, Jewish and Muslims. The Muslims occupied the "Holy Land" because it was their home.

  71. Mathematicians, scientists, and politicians by alispguru · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When mathematicians say something is impossible, they usually mean "logically inconsistent with published proofs, and those proofs are the basis of EVERYTHING".

    When scientists say something is impossible, they usually mean "inconsistent with published models, and those models are good enough to take us to the moon and back".

    When politicians say something is impossible, they usually mean "the current legislature will say no, but that can be changed".

    When politicians hear "secure encryption with back doors is impossible", they hear "impossible" in legislative terms when it's really at least in scientific terms, and very close to mathematical terms.

    --

    To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
    1. Re:Mathematicians, scientists, and politicians by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Terminally dumb, unable to learn and unable to listen to actual experts. The human race cannot afford the politicians in power all over the globe.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re:Mathematicians, scientists, and politicians by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Well then someone needs to slap some sense into them until they understand. I'll gladly volunteer, but I think there'll be a long, long line of people waiting for their chance to 'serve their country' in that capacity.

      Really, honestly, in all seriousness: Are you saying that what happens here, is that these politicians have credible, credentialled, PhD-level, trusted expert technical advisors, telling them "What you want is inviting disaster, for X, Y, and Z reasons", and the politicians are saying "LOL, no, we can change people's minds about that and make it happen"? Really?

    3. Re:Mathematicians, scientists, and politicians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're going to love this: quote PM Trumble: "The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that," he said on Friday. "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia." zdnet.com. Everyone's been having a field day since that corker.

    4. Re:Mathematicians, scientists, and politicians by Agripa · · Score: 1

      When mathematicians say something is impossible, they usually mean "logically inconsistent with published proofs, and those proofs are the basis of EVERYTHING".

      Mathematicians just need to math harder.

  72. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a) IIRC the Protestant "radicalization" was essentially Martin Luther saying "Screw you, hippie!" (in Cartman's voice) to the Catholic church.
    b) Catholics aren't even harmonious with themselves.

  73. Re:Here's a thought.... by erapert · · Score: 1

    Stop spreading lies. Or at least post proof.

  74. The problem with this by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    these encrypted messaging applications and voice applications are being used obviously by all of us, but they're also being used by people who seek to do us harm

    So are roads. And toilets. Especially toilets.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  75. Not a chance by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Present day modern cryptography already can be secure "forever" (i.e. unless somebody finds a fundamental weakness in the cipher itself, brute-forcing will not ever be possible). That war has long been lost by the government creeps that feel threatened by anything they cannot control. All they can do now is a lot of damage.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Not a chance by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The chance is the same device was used to create the message, send the message, be networked with the other person and be to decrypt the response.
      People trust the app creator and the legal/freedom branding of their US OS. Governments just have to stay deeper in both smartphones.
      To get back to cryptography that can be secure the message would have to be created by hand or on an air gapped device. Then photographed as a code ready message.
      Move the code photo file to another computer at the other end, OCR and decode.
      But the two people still got noticed sending messages on the network.
      Anonymity and privacy are both been weakened on the network and in the smartphone.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Not a chance by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Far, far too difficult. You get pretty perfect security long before that.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:Not a chance by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The problem is gov malware will be waiting on any smartphone will all the deep access of the OS/hardware maker.
      Its like really bad Tempest collection at both ends past any decryption and encryption app OS level.
      The OS/hardware has to become the gov malware if it wants to sell in that nation. No app can escape that if it displays plain text.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re:Not a chance by gweihir · · Score: 1

      That is complete BS. Widely spread malware gets discovered and analyzed fast, hence that is precisely what you cannot do with it if you want to use it long-term.

      Paranoia is really no valid substitute for actual understanding of the subject matter.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  76. Re: Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Exactly. People immigrate, some fail economically and socially.

    A failed westerner gets drunk, maybe start bar fights, may become an addict. A failed middle easterner may find jihadist friends.

  77. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who wins really matters ... if you are an ISIS or kommi American yeomanry will butcher you out of our society. And write that history to their own desires. So pick a cultural ansatz palsy ... aboriginal ... western ... semite ... knowing the only combat rule is - - - don't lose baby. Need a postcard palsy ?

  78. The link to TFA is wrong. by boondaburrah · · Score: 1

    Here is the correct link: http://www.reuters.com/article...

  79. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

    Bad example...the Crusades were a reaction to the Muslims overtaking the "Holy Land"...and not letting Christians in....it was a defensive move back in the day.

    Once again, the Muslims were the initial aggressors.

    Better example than you realize, the Crusades were actually a falsified bit of propaganda using the hysteria over purported aggression against pilgrims that was severely exaggerated, but were used by the Pope to try to improve his political position. Or the Venetian merchants. Or the local kings and emperors.

    Which also explains why instead of going to the Holy Lands, the Crusades often targeted local Jews anyway. Sorry, once again, you're misinformed.

    But since you actually brought up more recent affairs yes, we can find modern-day violence from the people you don't condemn.

    And even the attempts to subvert the legal system to support Christian Dominionism remain evident, the 92nd anniversary of the Scopes trial may be coming up, but they remain pervasive in their efforts to suborn the law to their interests.

  80. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

    Bad example...the Crusades were a reaction to the Muslims overtaking the "Holy Land"...and not letting Christians in....it was a defensive move back in the day.

    Nice fantasy. Maybe you should read what historians have to say before spouting nonsense.

    The early crusades were against heretics of all sorts, be they cathars, muslims or bogomils. Those who joined were there to steal riches and grab land/titles for second sons. Byzantium calling for help to retake some turkish provinces does not make it a "holy land".

  81. Re:Here's a thought.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 0

    Someone should have told the Aboriginals & Native Americans that a long time ago

    That was a LONG time ago and different situation...the lands of the world were all up for grabs....war is not terrorism.

    Now we have decided who has what land and civilizations formed....and now we have people just blowing up and shooting people, and slashing them...for theological reasons.

    Most of civilization has come a long way...these throwback religious zealots have not and they are the problem, that needs to be addressed.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  82. Re:better idea by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

    The early crusades were against heretics of all sorts

    I think you're confusing the Inquisition with the Crusades.

    Regardless....all the other religions have civilized and aren't in the business of widespread killing of those not of their particular brand of religion...except for the stone age Muslims.

    It is they who need to come into the 21st century and learn to live and tolerate others.

    Many of the other religions aren't perfect, but they're a darn site better and SAFER than the present day muslims.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  83. Re:better idea by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

    Timeline of Irish National Liberation Army actions...

    And today present date....who should you fear violence from more...the IRA or whomever, or the muslim jihadists?

    I"m not afraid of many Irish groups coming to my shores and flying planes into buildings or shooting up Xmas parties....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  84. Re:Here's a thought.... by Hotawa+Hawk-eye · · Score: 1
    If you're talking about the definition of terrorism in the United States, the US Code states:

    (5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
    (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
    (B) appear to be intended—
    (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
    (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
    (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
    (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

    Giving blankets infected with smallpox to people located in the United States obviously satisfies part A and C. [Attempted murder is a violation of United States law.] One could argue that it was intended to intimidate the civilian population to whom the blankets were given and so satisfies part B item i.

  85. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What on earth are you talking about? Civilizations continue to rise and fall. Perhaps it moves more slowly than you can comprehend or more likely you've played too much Civilization...

  86. Re:Here's a thought.... by Rakarra · · Score: 0

    Quit letting people from terrorist prone countries or parts of the world into YOUR country...where they refuse to assimilate and become pots of festering terrorist ideology waiting to unleash itself into the host country.

    Someone should have told the Aboriginals & Native Americans that a long time ago

    You're right. They should have. But they didn't. Their loss. I'm not inclined to repeat their mistakes.
    Though it wouldn't have mattered, they had no defense against the diseases the Europeans came with. Then the soldiers and colonists conquered fair and square what remained and pushed them off their land and into smaller reservations. It works as a cautionary tale.

  87. Re:Here's a thought.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 0

    Quit letting people from terrorist prone countries or parts of the world into YOUR country...where they refuse to assimilate and become pots of festering terrorist ideology waiting to unleash itself into the host country.

    Troll?

    Wow...this is a perfectly valid point of view, unless you don't believe a country should have sovereignty and the right to protect its borders and regulate who comes into your country....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  88. "I AM the law" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I see Judge Dredd in the near future.

  89. Re:Here's a thought.... by Frobnicator · · Score: 1

    That was a LONG time ago and different situation...the lands of the world were all up for grabs.

    They're talking about Aboriginal and Native American populations. The lands weren't vacant and up for grabs. They had existing nations with unique cultures, trade routes, economic structure, social structure, political structure, and military.

    The lands were already populated. In both cases the native people were less able to defend themselves and consequently lost a war against invaders. One of the spoils of war is writing the history books. In both of these cases the invaders said the land was not owned by anyone else so they claimed it for themselves.

    Now we have decided who has what land and civilizations formed....and now we have people just blowing up and shooting people, and slashing them...for theological reasons.

    That has been the case for several thousand years. These brief periods of mild peace are the rare exception in world history, not the rule.

    --
    //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  90. Re:Here's a thought.... by jonwil · · Score: 1

    What about all the people who are citizens of western countries and were brainwashed by online videos and radical clerics into committing acts of terror?

  91. Re:better idea by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

    Bad example...the Crusades were a reaction to the Muslims overtaking the "Holy Land"...and not letting Christians in....it was a defensive move back in the day.

    Once again, the Muslims were the initial aggressors.

    All those lands have been passed around from conquering civilization to conquering civilization. Why would some Englander have cared whether some tribe came in and rolled through Judea? Oh... right. They're Holy Lands. They're Christian, so of course, they'll go to war.. for God.

  92. It's not used for terrorism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's used for blackmail and industrial espionage.

  93. Re:better idea by Rakarra · · Score: 0

    Why? Are pussy-assed liberals going to threaten me with violence for calling them pussies? If they do, then yeah, they will be shot dead.

    What a shame it is to live in such fear while pretending to be so brave.

  94. Re:Here's a thought.... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Informative

    It wasn't until I read this that it occurred to me that handing out smallpox infected blankets was an act of terrorism.

    It wasn't an act of terrorism, but it may have been an attempt at genocide with bioweapons...but it's not clear whether it was an intentional use of bioweaponry or not.

    It was neither an act of terrorism nor an attempted genocide because it didn't happen. The entire story is a fraud, perpetrated by a former "ethnic studies" professor named Ward Churchill.

    The High Plains Smallpox Epidemic of 1837 was caused by personal contact with infected passengers from the riverboat St. Peter's, owned by a fur trading company. The epidemic on the High Plains centered around Fort Clark which, despite the name, was not a military installation. It was a privately owned fur trading post. The boss of Fort Clark was Francis Chardon, a fur trader. His personal diary survived to this day, one of numerous eyewitness accounts preserved from the time.

    Not only were infected blankets not distributed, but correspondence from Joshua Pilcher, the Indian Bureau's sub-agent to the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Ponca at Fort Kiowa, just south of Fort Clark, to Mr. Chardon describes one particular problem interfering with attempts to contain the epidemic that is curiously relevant to today. A smallpox vaccine existed in 1837, but Mr. Pilcher noted "it is a verry delicate experiment among those wild Indians, because death from any other cause, while under the influence of Vaccination would be attributed to that + no other cause[.]"

    Sound familiar?

    In 2006, Ward Churchill was found guilty of seven counts of research misconduct by the University of Colorado Ethics Committee. He was fired in 2007. He promptly filed suit, and won a jury trial for wrongful dismissal. The jury followed the instructions to the letter in coming to their conclusion, but recognized Churchill for the lying shitheel he was and awarded him precisely $1.00. (One juror denied any such motivation in a public interview.) A judge vacated the jury verdict on the grounds that the (state) university enjoys quasi-judicial immunity. The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld that decision. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal and in 2013 agreed with both the first judge and the Court of Appeals that the university was immune to suit in these circumstances. The US Supreme Court declined to get involved.

    It took 19 years from when Churchill first published his fraudulent bullshit in 1994 to the time when the judicial system finished with the case. It could easily take four or five generations for his lie to finally exit the public consciousness. This despite the fact that humanity currently has the fastest, most ubiquitous communications systems in the history of the species.

    "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on." —Mark Twain[1]

    ----
    [1] Except Samuel Clemens never wrote that. He was first credited with saying it in 1919, though he had died in 1910. The earliest known version of the sentiment in English was written by Jonathan Swift in 1710. His version was, "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it;".

  95. a dark place... by random_ID · · Score: 1

    "We need to ensure the world is not a dark place where bad people become authority figures to abuse the law,"

    Fixed.

    1. Re:a dark place... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite right - she/ProbabePedo/DimwitDaughter didn't get elected.

  96. Re:better idea by Geodesy99 · · Score: 1
    Actually, I don't give the faintest thought to Jihadist.

    However, if you spent some quality time with your local militia group, your skin would crawl. I personally know several people that grew up in some of the pseudo-christian groups, and hhttps://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10864545&cid=54811229#ave personal experience the terror and fear they generated in the towns near their compounds in Idaho, Montana, Utah, etc. Also see the stats at https://www.splcenter.org/2010... - those are just the tip of the iceberg, the ones that gain national attention.

    I didn't want to reach too far back into the past, but the Klan comes to mind. http://bit.ly/2tcvOJo

    Extremism respects no flavor or religion.

  97. Re:Here's a thought.... by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm aware that Ward Churchill has fraudulently claimed that the 1837 outbreak was caused by an attempt at genocide by the US military using plague blankets. However, that was not the only incident. In fact there is hard evidence of intentional genocide using plague blankets as bioweapons against the native Americans by the British military.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  98. Good luck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    -----BEGIN TERRORIST CIPHER-----
    A1D8B658 47D95C1D D2C56F6F DC39F3BA 0B35A581 784EC213 80A4CD51 E5722B6C
    885786F4 B1137F31 D1BE63AF 476CC253 A1189926 B920AB01 7C2FDB67 02E12DB0
    5F9C08B8 1FE8310D B1EC05B6 DE2F3017 C5B05543 E0898D31 FACA7122 8E95222C
    25B698BA C3B6B912 E29FE1F3 9732783A C0A8A711 9515014B DD1F5639 B912D62E
    8151B97F 4C14A2A7 3A8EB969 8648B905 206F525A 236705CC B77CBC38 69538CD0
    79E2026A 2AAA26F9 A292223B 68C17CE0
    -----END TERRORIST CIPHER-----

  99. Built on the telecommuncations intercept act by MrKaos · · Score: 2

    You are right, manufacturers will be forced to comply. I wrote to Brandis about this in 2015, it set the stage for what is happening now and was predictable. Not only is the state not interested in protecting her citizens, it is quite clear that monitoring the civilian population is a priority over everything else.

    I see little sincerity in the Australian Government on this issue and judging from previous legislations this proposed one will contain as many flaws as the one I wrote about in 2015. We will have to wait and see what emerges in the proposed legislation.

    Here is the 2015 letter:

    Dear Honourable Minister,

    First, my apologies that the available time and gravity of this Bill has not allowed me to write a proper paper based piece of mail that addresses you in a more appropriate manner.

    I write to regarding the concerns that I have after reading Part One of "Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015 as an Information Technology professional with roughly thirty years of experience, including experience as a Security Technologist, Technology Architect and Business Analyst. This Bill should not be passed at all and if introduced in its current form will expose Australia and her population to economic damage.

    The most pressing of my concerns is the Bill introduces and inadvertently provides a significant vector for Australian citizens to be defrauded by organised crime in an automated manner. Additionally there are no protections for Australian Citizens who are subject to abuse of access to this data and no opportunity for relief through complaint mechanism such as the Privacy Commissioner or the Telecommunications Ombudsman.

    No fraud protection measures are in place and the Bill casually exposes all Australians to a wide range of vectors for fraud such as banking, superannuation, insurance and, more serious threats such as identity theft and harassment This will first cost taxpayers a fortune, then again as a consumer, then again in economic fraud. Australians are being asked to pay for the systems that will be used as a vector for crime because criminal do not care about violating such systems to access the opportunities to raid Australians of their net worth.

    From a business perspective, implementation of these type of systems poses significant technical challenges to business to comply with section 187AA the Bill to make it function. Any business who tries to implement such a system will be asked to pay for imposing severe capacity limitations on their infrastructure to grow their business whilst capturing the data tabled. A lot of mostly useless data will be generated for law enforcement. At a miserly 4 internet accesses per person per day such a system, nationally, would be required to record 7.3^10 accesses to retain 2 years data. I suspect that people will do more that 4 browser updates in a day.

    The chilling effect of this is that many existing viable small businesses operating in and proposed for Australia that create a modern economy, will not be viable on Australian soil. The economic benefits of electronic commerce will progressively go to to other countries. Even a cursory examination of Sections 187AA.3A,3B suggest that any computing infrastructure can be subject to the Minister's scrutiny, subjected to a Communications Access Controller, the distraction of the machination of an Implementation plan and the unknown risk associated with non-compliance. The government will be responsible for driving away the very kind of business opportunities a 21st century Australia needs for economic growth.

    The type and capacity of infrastructure to do the required data capture will be quite onerous and unaffordable for some businesses, even if they could access the expertise to implement it. Having created similar types of systems in my work for the worlds largest corporate businesses my assessment is the data collection requirements under this Bill are much more, now that I understand the propos

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  100. Re:Here's a thought.... by aussie_a · · Score: 1

    Quit letting people from terrorist prone countries or parts of the world into YOUR country...where they refuse to assimilate and become pots of festering terrorist ideology waiting to unleash itself into the host country.

    We would, but given America is one of the biggest military powers in the world, we don't your boy Trump is going to let us ban you yanks from our shores. Meanwhile we are currently important plane-loads of Irish to do jobs Australians are simply too educated to want to do, so we can't exactly ban them either.

    But you're probably right. In an ideal world we would ban Americans and Irish from our shores to help protect us from countries that are literal breeding grounds for terrorists.

  101. Re:Here's a thought.... by aussie_a · · Score: 0

    They had existing nations with unique cultures, trade routes, economic structure, social structure, political structure, and military.

    Why didn't these so called nations call upon their international allies who weren't involved in the war and request they help in sanctioning the invading countries? Why didn't they ask for help in fighting the invading countries? At least in the case of Australia, France would have gladly gone to war with England. Did these nations withdraw their ambassadors from the invading countries? After all, we are calling them nations and even the world's poorest countries have embassies in which to interact with the international community.

    If they couldn't even be bothered to commit these basic acts of interacting with nations on the world stage, who cares if their nations were lost. Their governments were obviously too corrupt to even bother trying to save their people.

    Or it could be they weren't nations at all, but were instead primitive tribes that modern day society has glorified and romanticized in order to make white people feel bad about what they did. That is, after all, a current pastime by modern society (especially white heterosexual males).

  102. Re:Here's a thought.... by haruchai · · Score: 1

    "Then the soldiers and colonists conquered fair and square"
    That doesn't jibe with history

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  103. Re:Here's a thought.... by haruchai · · Score: 1

    " instead primitive tribes that modern day society has glorified and romanticized in order to make white people feel bad about what they did"
    It doesn't matter whether they were primitive or not and the conquering nations absolutely should feel bad - they committed terrible crimes despite their lofty ideals & religious truths. In short, thieving & murdering hypocrites.

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  104. Re:Here's a thought.... by haruchai · · Score: 1

    Stop spreading lies. Or at least post proof.

    You're replying to the wrong comment

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  105. Re:Here's a thought.... by haruchai · · Score: 1
    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  106. Re:Here's a thought.... by aussie_a · · Score: 1

    So you support children going to jail to serve the rest of their fathers sentence as well? Should the father die before getting parole?

  107. Re: better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ah, that's why he wears glasses then.

  108. Re:Australia is nanny state / police state. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't understand Australians. We have a proud history as convicts, and you can't have criminals without laws. We simply make all these laws so we have even more opportunities to break the law.

  109. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You'd be better off banning baths (very dangerous, you can slip and kill yourself from an accidental head injury), cars (the statistic you mentioned) and, ultimately, people (all deaths are caused by people, either to other people or by themselves (old age is your body killing itself, after all)).
    The intelligence agencies have had it so easy for so long that they've forgotten how to do their jobs, hence we get this bullshit.

  110. Re:Here's a thought.... by tendrousbeastie · · Score: 1

    The suggestions are not mutually exclusive.

  111. Re:better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Look up the Crusades, and find something that ain't in some liberal tabloid. It wasn't just "omg they're not letting our people in".

    The muslims were basically committing genocide against the people currently living in those lands. It was a bloodbath. The Crusades were an attempt to stop the bloodbath.

    You can say "oh but so and so did that before already...", but at what point in time do prior atrocities authorize current atrocities? Only a fool would think that.

  112. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aborigines. Aboriginal is the adjective

  113. Re:Here's a thought.... by Frobnicator · · Score: 1

    Seems to be only the extremes with you.

    Either the old nations were primitives that deserved to be destroyed and conquered, or the invaders should be punished to the furthest generations.

    Most people pick somewhere in the middle. For most of us that means recognizing the acts of the past were harmful in several ways, try to find some ways to correct the wrongs (like making an effort to treat people fairly and not discriminate), then move on with life trying to do the best you can. Then hopefully we won't screw up the world too badly for our children.

    --
    //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  114. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quit letting people from terrorist prone countries or parts of the world into YOUR country...where they refuse to assimilate and become pots of festering terrorist ideology waiting to unleash itself into the host country.

    Someone should have told the Aboriginals & Native Americans that a long time ago

    Fuck em. They missed their chance.

    Now stop whining over it ya pansy!

  115. Re: Here's a thought.... by catprog · · Score: 1

    Of course the natives are less fundamentalist then people who have moved to "get in touch" with their religion.

    Only the most hardcore people would move because of any ideology.

    --
    My Transformation Website
    Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
    Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
  116. Re:Here's a thought.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It might have been if there was any truth to it. The truth of all that is that the disease spread across the land well ahead of European settlers in most cases. The actual historical records show settlers arriving to empty or nearly empty lands, the native inhabitants having died or fled prior to their arrival. The settlers knew what had happened but not really why. Diseases work like that. It was a tragedy, similar to the black plague in Europe which originated in the far east and was brought over by rats on trading ships, but in neither case was it deliberate. Most people who caught it had never been near the place where the plague originated nor did they have contact with anyone who did. Diseases spread a lot faster than people did in those days.

    As to the smallpox blankets, that was based on the writings of exactly two British solders in the mid 1700s, well after smallpox had peaked across the continent. Most other 'evidence' of this has been fabricated by people with an agenda. It's not even especially known if you can even spread the disease like that, but please go on accepting myths when they conform to the cultural narrative everyone is trying to push.

  117. Re:Here's a thought.... by haruchai · · Score: 1

    Fuck em. They missed their chance.

    Now stop whining over it ya pansy!

    like the South over losing the Civil War? When are they going to "assimilate" into America?

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  118. Re:better idea by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    The muslims were basically committing genocide against the people currently living in those lands

    Again, they would not have given a shit if it wasn't the sacredness of the lands and their religion that told them they had to defend it. Was rousing the peasants and sending them two thousand miles away something they did if, say, the poor folks in India were getting massacred?

  119. Re:Here's a thought.... by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    "Then the soldiers and colonists conquered fair and square"
    That doesn't jibe with history

    No? I seem to recall that disease did a pretty good job (it did most of the heavy work, really), and tribe by tribe, the natives were forced to give up their land.
    Sorry, by "fair and square" I didn't mean to imply that the US lived up to treaties and agreements, which it most certainly did not.