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Australia Passes Anti-Encryption Laws [Update] (zdnet.com)
Earlier today, Australia's House of Representatives passed the Assistance and Access Bill. The Anti-Encryption Bill, as it is known as, would allow the nation's police and anti-corruption forces to ask, before forcing, internet companies, telcos, messaging providers, or anyone deemed necessary, to break into whatever content agencies they want access to. "While the Bill can still be blocked by the Senate -- Australian Twitter has been quite vocal over today's proceedings, especially in regards to the [Australian Labor Party's] involvement," reports Gizmodo. ZDNet highlights the key findings from a report from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS): The threshold for industry assistance is recommended to be lifted to offenses with maximum penalties in excess of three years; Technical Assistance Notices (TANs) and Technical Capability Notices (TCNs) will be subjected to statutory time limits, as well as any extension, renewal, or variation to the notices; the systemic weakness clause to apply to all listing acts and things; and the double-lock mechanism of approval from Attorney-General and Minister of Communications will be needed, with the report saying the Communications Minister will provide "a direct avenue for the concerns of the relevant industry to be considered as part of the approval process."
The report's recommendations also call for a review after 18 months of the Bill coming into effect by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor; TANs issued by state and territory police forces to be approved by the Australian Federal Police commissioner; companies issued with notices are able to appeal to the Attorney-General to disclose publicly the fact they are issued a TCN; and the committee will review the passed legislation in the new year and report by April 3, 2019, right around when the next election is expected to be called. In short: "Testimony from experts has been ignored; actual scrutiny of the Bill is kicked down the road for the next Parliament; Labor has made sure it is not skewered by the Coalition and seen to be voting against national security legislation on the floor of Parliament; and any technical expert must have security clearance equal to the Australia's spies, i.e. someone who has been in the spy sector." Further reading: Australia Set To Spy on WhatsApp Messages With Encryption Law.
UPDATE: The encryption bill has passed the Senate with a final vote of 44-12, with Labor and the Coalition voting for it. "Australia's security and intelligence agencies now have legal authority to force encryption services to break the encryptions, reports The Guardian. Story is developing...
The report's recommendations also call for a review after 18 months of the Bill coming into effect by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor; TANs issued by state and territory police forces to be approved by the Australian Federal Police commissioner; companies issued with notices are able to appeal to the Attorney-General to disclose publicly the fact they are issued a TCN; and the committee will review the passed legislation in the new year and report by April 3, 2019, right around when the next election is expected to be called. In short: "Testimony from experts has been ignored; actual scrutiny of the Bill is kicked down the road for the next Parliament; Labor has made sure it is not skewered by the Coalition and seen to be voting against national security legislation on the floor of Parliament; and any technical expert must have security clearance equal to the Australia's spies, i.e. someone who has been in the spy sector." Further reading: Australia Set To Spy on WhatsApp Messages With Encryption Law.
UPDATE: The encryption bill has passed the Senate with a final vote of 44-12, with Labor and the Coalition voting for it. "Australia's security and intelligence agencies now have legal authority to force encryption services to break the encryptions, reports The Guardian. Story is developing...
This is Australia, where the laws of the nation Trump the laws of mathematics.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I'd really like to see who they take to court to try and undo the encryption on the Monero et al. blockchains.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this bill was a backroom deal between the desires of the five eyes and the Australian Government.
Breaking encryption for one government breaks it for all.
I just means there will be a plethora of hidden encryption apps used exclusively by those who plan to do evil.
Wait until someone adds machine learning to the process of communicating meaning and watch people's messages disappear entirely.
As it's not words that information gathers wish to capture, but the meanings being conveyed.
The Australian government have escalated the information war, and don't understand the consequences of doing so.
Has been stopped for now:
No it hasn't. It is being debated in the Senate right now.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I mean how can you ignore experts on a question that only experts can understand? It does not get much more stupid than this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Watching the debate that is happening right now, the lies being used to convince the house to pass this Bill are just sickening.
For US, UK, NZ, Canadian citizens their governments can access the powers via existing intelligence agreements.
The Australian government have escalated the information war, and don't understand the consequences of doing so.
Fraud. They talk about not building backdoors, they just want the keys to the front door by coercing IT professionals with fines, liability and jail time.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It has been a dream for any one of the five eyes countries to pass laws like this. Once the agencies are able to get a foot in the door, precedence will be used as a reason the other four courts should also have access to the data. "The tools to are already created" argument will now exist in a courtroom . This is going to open a whole plethora of doors for all countries.
This will quickly spill over into the rest of the world. Once you see the democracies of the world go this route, the flood gates will open. There will be laws made all over the world that will copy this word for word. Entire turn-key packages to look all of this up will be sold to the highest bidders.
In the end, I see a market being created for stolen country keys and hacked law enforcement portals. Those keys will be nearly priceless. One key for all of whatsapp? Done. One portal for all of proton-mail? Done. The next question will be, "How would you like your secrets served up today sir?"
--
Be mindful when it comes to your words. A string of some that don't mean much to you, may stick with someone else for a lifetime. - Rachel Wolchin
The "opposition" has just moved to drop their own amendments to the Bill. The Division bell is now ringing. The greens attempted to move the "oppositions" amendments however leave was not granted for them to do so.
So for all of the effort from industry and individuals the Bill now stands before the Senate to be passed as originally presented in its flawed form.
This is disgusting.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
its pretty much the same as Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (c.23) (RIP or RIPA) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
they don't try and break encryption they simply ask that you hand over the Keys so they can break into the stream
the same thing as the :
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants.
so americans do you want to examine your own systems because the people who Cant Infiltrate Anything simply go to court...
It seems it's been too long since we've had to work for our freedom and pay for it in blood, both our enemies' and our own.
That which comes free and is considered to be a given rarely has any worth in the eyes of people.
We are descending into totalitarianism again, one way or another, and at some point we will be sick enough of being enslaved, also one way or another, that we'll rise up, heads will roll and we'll install another ruling class, one we trust, to slowly grow complacent and enamored with their power.
The cycle is alive and well and we merely markers on it.
The first duty of an agency that wishes some unknown data to be decrypted would be to prove that it was, in fact, an encrypted message. If they were presented with a file containing random numbers they couldn't just say "you must provide the key to decrypt that" as they have not shown that such a key actually exists.
Of course, the only way to prove that such a key exists would be to use it to decrypt the data. But until the transmission of blocks of random junk becomes widespread and well known (possibly with the occasional encrypted message inserted, as government agencies do it) the "reasonable man" criteria would apply and courts would assume that all apparently random data is actually encrypted messages.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Okay honey, let me go pass a law to make them exist for you.
I can see how a local telco like Telstra might have to do it, but the tech giants like Apple/Google/MS etc don't.
Bwahahahah! That's a good one. Yeah, I'm sure they're all just lining up to put principles ahead of profit.
All they have to do is a pop-up which says "In compliance with Australian regulation whatever it's called, your unique decryption key will be uploaded to and retained on our servers. Have a nice day."
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Well, that's not entirely true. What will happen in reality is that everything that relies on encryption, will either leave AU or be inherently insecure.
They will also find themselves an island in many more ways than they already are because they will be treated as a security hole. By both the good and the bad guys. They have no idea what they are in for.
Generally there are two ways this will work:
1. Companies/corporations that build or provide services using uncrackable encryption get fined and then sanctioned until they either build in backdoors or go out of business/leave the country.
2. Users of such services get fined or imprisoned until they render their passwords. Use of hard encryption first becomes evidence of wrongdoing, and then conclusive proof of it.
This is Australia, where they "block" piratebay at the DNS level.
Actually, the right supports privacy and encryption.
Of course they do.
Ezekiel 23:20
It usually comes crashing down. In my experience Supreme Courts have a habit of wanting reasoning, procedures, redress procedures, limitations and implementations explained to them. Then the inconsistencies come to light in a forum they cant bullshit their way out of. I've seen numerous instances were courts asked the government if they had a severe case teh dumb.
No, only if the law is unconstitutional.
The law now says that if you, as an IT professional, do not comply you are deemed not in compliance and subject to fine ($60,000) and jail terms (up to 10 years). Additionally, you are subject to the liability from users who take legal action to recover damages if they were the victim of a subsequent crime because the government's actions - how is that for a stroke of cuntishness if you want to try to protect you users privacy.
If you do comply you are obliged to keep the actions you have complied with secret or face ($30,000) and 5 years jail and the users have no recourse to recover damages as a result of the consequences.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
US: Nobody can do anything more embarrassing than us. Just look at the 'president' we've elected.
Australia: Hold my beer...
There's a rather straight forward solution to this problem, but I doubt tech companies have the backbone to do it. Every tech company should stop selling their products and services to Australia until this law is reversed. Take away the iPhones, Facebook, Android, and every all website from anyone in Australia. Let the people of Australia decide if they want these gadgets or if they want a government that can break encryption.
Once again, the wrench cartoon is unironically used in a situation where it actually indicates that the citizen ends up being protected against the most common and concerning attacks.
Here is why a $5 wrench does not completely compromise the privacy given by cryptography: it is impossible to hit someone with a wrench without them knowing about it. In fact, you can't even show a wrench to someone purely for intimidation purposes, without them knowing about it.
Massive slurping on an internet backbone, using wrenches? Can't do it.
Secretly investigating someone by wrench-cracking their crypto without them at least being able to talk to a lawyer? Can't do it.
It's a technological measure, and it works. Crypto nerds have already beaten the wrench is most conceivable scenarios. The situations where the defense doesn't work? Doesn't matter, because those scenarios are someone's silly movie fantasy.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If I was any company potentially affected by this, and the data security of my customers was important to me, I'd probably pull my services out of Australia over this, and that's precisely what I'd recommend to any and all companies operating in Australia at this point in time. This is utter and complete bullshit from the Australian government and it should not be allowed to stand.
..and as others have pointed out in this instantiation of this subject, as in past conversations about it, as in many comments of my own in the past: now that encryption-for-all is essentially worthless in Australia, only Australian criminals, and terrorists, and other 'ne'er-do-wells' will have encryption -- and the idiotic Australian govenment will have no way to 'force' anyone to unlock any of that. Only legitimate communications, transactions, and data will be compromised.
The depths of utter stupidity our species is capable of astounds me. It's no wonder, if there are actually starfaring alien civilizations in our galaxy, that they would refuse to reveal themselves to us. Things like this are an embarassment.
I tweeted last night an idea on how we could possibly get this repealed. I decided to put my money where my mouth is open source; open community; http://internetprotests.com/wh... If we the internet join together; I believe we could get it repealed. Guess that depends on how much the people are willing to do to work against it... Just complain or actually do something about it.