Peter Dutton confirms Australia could spy on its own citizens under cybersecurity plan:
Peter Dutton has confirmed the government's $1.6bn cyberstrategy will include capability for the Australian Signals Directorate to help law enforcement agencies identify and disrupt serious criminal activity – including in Australia.
By rendering support to the Australian federal police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the cybersecurity and intelligence agency would for the first time be able to target Australians, although Dutton maintains ASD won't be able to do so directly.
Dutton said law enforcement agencies would target terrorists, paedophiles and drug traffickers operating in the dark web – promising proposed new powers will apply "to those people and those people only".
Details of the new powers – which will require legislation – are not contained in the strategy, which says only that the government will "ensure law enforcement agencies have appropriate legislative powers and technical capabilities to deter, disrupt and defeat the criminal exploitation of anonymising technology and the dark web".
[...] Dutton said the new capabilities would be exercised only in relation to people "alleged to be committing very serious offences".
"If you're a paedophile you should be worried about these powers, if you're a terrorist ... if you're committing serious offence in relation to trafficking of drugs, of ice, for example, that's being pedalled to children, you should be worried about these powers as well.
"The reality is people are trying their best to groom kids online and ... people are trading gun parts on the dark web and it cannot be a lawless space. This law applies to those people and those people only."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @05:40PM (3 children)
It never made sense in the first place. 99% of kids don't have enough money to buy even a small hit of most hard drugs, let alone fuel a habit.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:09PM
Yeah, but they don't care about 99% of kids anyway.
The kids of the 1% though must be protected from such terrible, terrible people - if they want drugs they should be raiding their parents' stash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:16PM (1 child)
THEY CAN FIND... ANOTHER WAY TO PAY
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 09 2020, @08:38AM
Meth-addicted kids selling their bodies to paedophiles to fund terrorism?