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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 04 2018, @05:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the battle-goes-on dept.

Submitted by chromas from IRC, as story from ZDNet:

"The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are committed to personal rights and privacy, and support the role of encryption in protecting those rights," began a document agreed to last week. Sounds good. But wait.

The government ministers who met on Australia's Gold Coast last week went on to explain that the information and communications technology vendors and service providers have a "mutual responsibility" to offer "further assistance" to law enforcement agencies.

"Governments should recognize that the nature of encryption is such that there will be situations where access to information is not possible, although such situations should be rare," it said. That's clearly setting an expectation for industry to meet.

The good news is that service providers who "voluntarily establish lawful access solutions" will have "freedom of choice" in how they do it. "Such solutions can be a constructive approach to current challenges," the document said, cheerily, before ending with a warning.

"Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative, or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions."

The document is the Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption. It's one of three statements to come out of the Five Country Ministerial (FCM) meeting of the homeland security, public safety, and immigration ministers of the five Anglosphere nations. They were joined by the attorneys-general of these nations, who have met annually as the so-called Quintet of Attorneys-General for a decade now.

These are, of course, the same nations that participate in the so-called "Five Eyes" signals intelligence (SIGINT) sharing arrangements under the UKUSA Agreement, although these close allies cooperate both diplomatically and operationally at a number of levels.

The FCM meeting also issued an Official Communiqué, and a Statement on Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces.

Taken together, the three documents represent a toughening-up of the governments' attitudes to the regulation of online communications. For diplomatic language, some of the communiqué's wording is blunt.

Related Coverage

Also found by Arthur and reported at CNET.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:17AM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:17AM (#730140)

    There wasnt any mention of five eyes by the media until a few years ago, why do we always hear about them now?

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:36AM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:36AM (#730142) Journal

    Few people understood how pervasive, and how powerful, the five eyes are, until recent years. Prior to that, some people had at least a slight grasp on US/UK collusion. But, it was a slight grasp on the real state of affairs.

    If a lot of corruption is taking place in your home city, and you keep seeing bits and pieces of it exposed, you know something is wrong, right? But, then, it is exposed that your whole city is pretty much owned by a criminal cartel. How soon would you and others stop talking about that cartel?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:39AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:39AM (#730144)

      Youve given a reason for people to discuss the topic, but not what incentive the news has to use that term.

      • (Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:41AM (2 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:41AM (#730145) Journal

        It's a cool buzzword that catches people's attention. The media is all about ratings. You don't think they would drop a cool buzzword, when it's paying off so well?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:54AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:54AM (#730151)

          It's not like it's a bad thing. It makes easier to follow/search stories on them.

        • (Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:00PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:00PM (#730196) Journal

          It's a cool buzzword that catches people's attention

          Er, no, not quite. It was highly classified until a few years back when a certain NSA employee let slip the odd secret or two.... Now, all the people who are just hearing about it think it is something new, but it's been around since the end of WW2.

      • (Score: 2) by http on Tuesday September 04 2018, @03:55PM

        by http (1920) on Tuesday September 04 2018, @03:55PM (#730293)

        Because it's the shorthand term that the associated intelligence communities actually use to reference it both internally and among themselves - the formal term is significantly long to speak or type.

        --
        I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:54AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:54AM (#730150) Journal

    What was happening a few years ago? It was 2013, and Edward Snowden's new friends were dropping docs like candy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes [wikipedia.org]

    In 2013, documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of numerous surveillance programs jointly operated by the Five Eyes. The following list includes several notable examples reported in the media:

    • PRISM – Operated by the NSA together with the GCHQ and the ASD
    • XKeyscore – Operated by the NSA with contributions from the ASD and the GCSB
    • Tempora – Operated by the GCHQ with contributions from the NSA
    • MUSCULAR – Operated by the GCHQ and the NSA
    • STATEROOM – Operated by the ASD, CIA, CSE, GCHQ, and NSA

    In March 2014, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Australia to stop spying on East Timor. This marks the first time that such restrictions are imposed on a member of the FVEY.

    [...] As a result of Snowden's disclosures, the FVEY alliance has become the subject of a growing amount of controversy in parts of the world:

    • Canada: In late 2013, Canadian federal judge Richard Mosley strongly rebuked the CSIS for outsourcing its surveillance of Canadians to overseas partner agencies. A 51-page court ruling asserts that the CSIS and other Canadian federal agencies have been illegally enlisting FVEY allies in global surveillance dragnets, while keeping domestic federal courts in the dark.
    • New Zealand: In 2014, the NZSIS and the GCSB of New Zealand were asked by the New Zealand Parliament to clarify if they had received any monetary contributions from members of the FVEY alliance. Both agencies withheld relevant information and refused to disclose any possible monetary contributions from the FVEY.[66] David Cunliffe, leader of the Labour Party, asserted that the public is entitled to be informed.
    • European Union: In early 2014, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs released a draft report which confirmed that the intelligence agencies of New Zealand and Canada have cooperated with the NSA under the Five Eyes programme and may have been actively sharing the personal data of EU citizens.

    So it was only around then that the extent of their modern activities began to become well known. And the cooperation had already expanded beyond ECHELON. For example, "As of 2010, the Five Eyes also have access to SIPRNet, the U.S. government's classified version of the Internet."

    --
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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Tuesday September 04 2018, @11:55AM (1 child)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @11:55AM (#730194) Journal

      JFYI - The 5-Eyes agreement goes back to just after WW2 - ECHELON is/was only a very small part of it.

      There was a book published in the 1970's which compromised Top Secret and Secret codewords which identified product/intelligence produced by member nations. And I'm having trouble now recalling what its title is....

      If you Google for books on SIGINT, COMINT and other related topics there are loads of examples.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:18PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:18PM (#730202) Journal

        The question was "There wasnt any mention of five eyes by the media until a few years ago, why do we always hear about them now?"

        ECHELON was a major part of the package, and revealed in 1988 [wikipedia.org]. But it didn't get that much media attention at the time. I bet more people today have heard/read about PRISM than ECHELON.

        Maybe part of the answer is that while some details about the Five Eyes agreement were already known, the mainstream media chose to ignore it and most people didn't get the memo. But in 2013 and especially today, the media landscape has become far more fragmented, information goes viral, and people are more paranoid. The nature of the Snowden revelations, with the dramatic unveiling of Snowden in Hong Kong and subsequent escape to Russia, the steady drip of stories, etc. also helped to propel the story into the public consciousness and keep it there for a long time.

        --
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  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 04 2018, @11:48AM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @11:48AM (#730191) Journal

    You can hardly deny that the 5-Eyes agreement exists after one of your employees blows the lid about a whole load of things that you are doing.... Everybody now knows they exist, what they do and, to some small extent, how they do it.