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Oz Government to Become "Biggest Hacker in Town"
Wired is running a story with further information about the Australian Government authorising legalised hacking of private computer systems by its internal security organisation, ASIO.
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This is exactly the aspect that made me worried as well. According to the article, authorities can get a permit to break in and check the data. There is absolutely nothing preventing them from cracking their way in prior to the search and PLANTING the evidence they then find when the court order/permit allows.
As they sure as h*ll will modify the data on the computer during both processes, there is no way the victim (er, the owner of the computer) can point to what would have been changed without his knowlegde or consent. In effect, he has no ability to prove that the evidence wasn't there in the first place. ("Of course the files have been modified! How else would the police have managed to access everything on the computer?")
This may set an unwanted precedence and a disasterous example. Orwellian police states may no longer be mere horror speculations, but the standard in the 3rd millenium. I expect with utmost terror as to what countries follow the Australian Way.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
You are correct, Australia has no real enemies at the moment. The other poster's comment about Fiji was snide and uninformed. Our relationship with Indonesia is rather rocky at present, after the East Timor referendum, and our subsequent major push behind and membership of a peace keeping force. Someone else talked about our "occupation of Indonesia", but the circumstances of East Timor's annexation makes it debatable whether it ever actually was Indonesian territory.
A friend of mine works in military intelligence (show you have some and spare us the "army intelligence" jokes) and while of course he did not speak directly about his work, he did say that Indonesia was a prime interest of his unit.
IMHO most of our real concerns are related to internal terrorism, of which there is not a lot but what there is has occasionally been sensational. Some nutters tried to blow up a Commonwealth Heads of Govenment meeting in Sydney in the 1970's, and there are plenty of screwball individuals and organisations around.
We basically have four parties here. The Liberal/National Coalition are currently in power. The Labor party are contenders and held government through most of the '80s and early 90's. The Democrats are a small party who at present hold the balance of power in the Senate and have the balance of power when the major parties disagree on an issue, usually resulting in intense negotiation with the government. In the recent past, a few independents have had an unjustifiably huge say in political decisions.
The harshness Internet Censorship legislation was to a significant degree a result of the Liberals' desire to get an independent with a strong anti-porn stance to vote for their tax legislation, a move which backfired in any case.
In that case, the Labor party did not oppose the legislation - no one wants to be seen as an advocate of kiddie porn. The democrats put up some resistance to their credit, but without Labore opposing the legislation theirs were token efforts at best. The same thing seems to have happened here.
WE do have another party, One Nation, a populist right wing organsation whose platform seems to be bashing our indigenous people and blaming the country's problems on single parents, the unemployed, etc., headed by a former female fish and chip shop owner with the nastiest pair of eyes I've ever seen. They'd be a real worry poitically were it not for their staggering level of ineptitude and internal bickering. I doubt they'd ever come up with a coherent policy on communications or the internet.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Beside, who keeps info that could breach national security on a public server anyhow?
Unfortunatly the major parties have managed to literally fix the voting system into a position where they cannot lose.
The combination of compulsory voting (fines imposed if you dont) with a preferential system means that while you vote for a conservative party, if your candidate has no chance of winning, your vote is passed onto that parties next preference.
This is an extremely effective mechanism of freezing out any alternative that the two major parties both dislike enough to exchange preferences over. So while a voter may tick that Liberal box, the vote may end up counting towards the Labor count.
In many electorates, where one side's pollsters feel its not worth spending the money to put up a candidate, no candidate is put up. Independants generally lose their seat after a term, after whatever issue pushed them into parliment has faded from public memory.
In fact in Victoria we have three independants committing to voting with the government, which really bends the definition of independant past breaking point.
And as for the federal senate with its broken proportional representation, leading to situations where one religous nut, who got a fraction of the votes needed in a larger state can dictate tax and censorship issues to a government with the backbone of a limp squid....
There's a good reason most Australian's distrust politians, have more respect for lawyers, and expect more honesty for real estate agents. In the vote on the referendum, (lost mainly because of a scare campaign over "the politican's republic") we had government ministers on TV saying dont vote for this republic, it gives too much power to politicians (a lie), and I'm a politican, and you cant trust us.
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Silence is consent.
Please! A "shrimp" on the barbie!
Funnily enough, I think this would be rather symbolic of the Australia-related stories on Slashdot. We don't even say shrimp - we say prawn... The shrimp on the barbie icon would be an ironic play on the fact that we are so misrepresented overseas - and our government only exacerbates the situation.
I don't know a single person who agrees with any of our recent technology legislation. That includes people who don't have a huge understanding of the ramifications of the changes made. Most of it was put through for the benefit of other bills - mostly related to the current conservative government's tax scheme.
Sadly, most of the media focus on government decisions in the previous few months has been focussed on the republic issue. Even then we were caught with our pants down.
There is only on party in Australia who have any idea of the importance of our technology sector: the Australian Democrats. At the last election, they were essentially given control of senate decisions on partisan issues.
There is hope...
The key question is does this new law infringe on the constitution (or whatever they call their basic national laws) of Australia? If it does, then it is wrong and will hopefully be ruled unconstitutional. If it does not, then okay. If the ppl don't like it, then they need to change their constitution.
The same holds true in the US. Remember all the brouhaha over COPA? Ultimately, the high courts started telling Congress that they passed unconstitutional laws.
Some ppl have stated that the gov is doing the same thing as script kiddies. Well, here in the US, law enforcement agencies have been given court approval to break into private property to play listening devices; for instance, this was used in the 80's against New England organized crime. Additionally, wiretapping by the gov is okay if its has court approval. Private wiretapping (like secretly recording telephone conversations) is illegal in many states. Linda Tripp is learning this lesson right now.
This apparently works well against drug dealers and such. Encryption passwords are captured and reported back to Washington, and then they break into the encrypted email. If they can't get the target to install the Trojan, they get access to his computer somehow and pop it in. Would Netice help in a case like this? I would think you'd want to use something like ZoneAlarm. But these guys are so unsophisticated, they think the Internet is magic and they're invisible once they install PGP or something.
Do you really think the NSA doesn't do this, too? What are the checks and balances there?
If the NSA is doing this, they are in rather deep trouble. It is illegal for the NSA to gather information on US Citizens. The ECPA (Electronic Communications and Privacy Act) also contains a lot of restrictions on what sorts of things can be intercepted, by who, and how. If the NSA has been intercepting stuff like email and reading the content without obtaining court orgers they can be hit by some pretty stiff penalties under the ECPA too.
Congress as well as civil liberties organizations are really putting some heat on the NSA right now. EPIC is suing because of disclosure requirements that the NSA has not met under our FOIA - goverment agencies are required to disclose internal documents when requested unless they can prove that there are some sound reasons like national security not to. Congress also has an investigation going which the NSA has refused to provide testimony for - Congress' response was to cut funding for the NSA legal department by 33%. This is the ultimate check and balance that Congress holds over the executive branch in the US.
There were some incidents like this in the 60's with the CIA which is also forbidden to gather intelligence within the US. The results were not pleasant for those guilty of this.
The FBI has the right to gather information of US citizens - but the FBI does not have black budgets, and they are generally required to be much more open about their activities than the NSA or CIA. Ultimately any information that the FBI can present in a court in the US has to pass a variety of tests under the Unreasonable Search and Seizure provisions in the Constitution, too.
That's exactly what it is. Plain and simple. Yet another step towards Big Brother. You know the Australian government seems to have been taking a lot of them recently; even the US government doesn't have the audacity to proceed at this pace.
Frankly, this solidified my decision: I won't ever move to Australia. I'll grant, I don't like the US government. But at least they pay lip service to the rights of the citizens (and occasionally respect them); this law simply stomps all over Australians' rights without even a shred of subterfuge. Same with all the censorship laws there, many of which go into effect in less than a month. And then there's the other Net-related fiascos going on there...
By the way, earlier in this thread someone noticed that ASIO's Website had a "test page." This poster feared that ASIO was using it as a tool in their Big Brother scheme. I read it a bit differently (seeing as there was nothing in the page source that indicated the possibility of sending data).
I don't even think they have a proper Website. All that page was missing was that inane yellow diamond with the animated digging man inside it and it would have exactly mirrored the perpetually in-progress page of a typical technologically-illiterate person. I honestly think they're that clueless about technology; even more so than the US government (which is itself pretty damn bad). They fear it, fear it with such intensity that they'd do anything to crush it.
Oh, one last point: isn't this getting dangerously close to becoming a human rights violation? The situation there seems to be getting out of control; someone needs to bring them back into line and remind them who really runs the show.
Look, our (I'm Australian) govenment has done some pretty bad stuff lately, but I don't think this one is too bad.
So, they made a law that lets them (basically) monitor your computer use if they get a court order.
What's wrong with that? Sure, I don't like EACELON (sp) but this is totally different. That is indiscrminate wire tapping. This is focused on people who are breaking the law.
I don't like the idea of someone searching my computer, or my house. However I dislike even more the idea that the govement that is supposed to protect us cannot because the law forbids it from searching a criminals house (or computer)
At least, now, it is out in the open, and not against the law. Where there is law, there are proceedures, and appeals, and checks & balances.
Do you really think the NSA doesn't do this, too? What are the checks and balances there?
This is an interesting issue because it draws numerous issues of technology, government, and privacy together. The descision touches on governmental rights and restrictions with regard to its citizens, privacy issues, security, permissible protection, etc.
In many ways technology is only bringing to light how invasive our governments have been in the past. It seems conceded by both sides of the issue (its hard to tell which argument it supports) that this merely extends previously held powers to "modern technology". Maybe technology is merely raising public awereness of just how invasive our governments have or could have been (legally)...
By way of example, in Australia, the Philippines, and I'm sure other nations, the governemnt is allowed to "root through" private mail upon mere suspicion of criminal behavior. But because this mail was *centrally controlled* it was unclear when this occurred. I'm sure many other people have gotten packages and messages that have been opened by "somebody".
> The new powers are contained in a bill passed by
> Australia's parliament late last month (the
> Australian Security Intelligence Organization
> Legislation Amendment 1999).
This raises the issue of technologist awareness. I'm not really sure that *any* civilian groups would really be driving this bill. In fact this sounds like something governments like to sneak quietly through w/o raising fuss. Why? It raises government power, and sadly political focus (at least in the US) is largely centered around the wielding of power.
** ITS HARDER TO DEAL WITH THESE THINGS ONCE THEY ARE PASSED **
Of course another approach to combatting this is to fight back. Internet technology has been kind enough to oblige knowledegable users with "close to professional" (or as good) security tools. Use PGP even when you don't *really* need it. It just gets more encrypted mail out there, which certainely complicates the job of a centralized monitoring system.
-nullity-
"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is the best defence"
Also, Australian gov't likes to send lots of it's troops to help out whoever it thinks are it's friends. Whenever the US finds a cause, Australia backs it. Sure, our army is quite insignificant by comparison, but it's assumed that alliances with the US and Britain would be of some use if we were attacked.
On a slightly unrelated note, shouldn't we have "Australia" icons on the slashdot main page! Surely there's enough articles for a seperate section
Sometimes people break into computers and break the law.
Sometimes people break into computer and they ARE the law.
Which would you prefer?
That's simply not true. A democracy is always supported by the majority of the people, and the simple fact that it continues to exist implies that the so-called "silent majority" continues to back it. Therefore, the best way to change (or overthrow) a democracy is from within. Attacking it from the outside will simply undermine popular support and set the majority of the people against you.
A textbook example of this is Adolph Hitler (hey, I don't like the guy, but he makes a good example here). In 1923 he decided that the democratic German government was corrupt and traitorous, and attempted an armed revolution to overthrow it. Can you guess what happened? The people wouldn't support him. Like most people in a democracy, they wanted the government changed, not eliminated. Hitler was caught and imprisoned for treason after the revolution was crushed by German police forces.
After Hitler's release from prison, he again went to work on changing the government, but from the inside. He ran for office himself, and set up many of his supporters to run for various other offices. He used the democratic system to put himself and his supporters in positions of power, and then eliminated the system to keep himself there. By 1933 he had achieved through legislation and propoganda what had failed so miserably when attempted by force. While the Nazi reign was horrible, it does provide a great example of the power of working within the system.
So I agree with the original poster. If you really want to change the system, you need to put some effort into it. Sometimes that means voting, sometimes that means participating in the campaigns of people you support, and sometimes that means running yourself. Our (U.S.) system was designed to put a large amount of power in the hand of the people, but if the people aren't willing to use that power, it's worthless.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.