Anonymous Coward writes:
"Following in the footsteps of America, Australia's Attorney-General's department wants new laws to force users and providers of encrypted internet communications services to decode any data intercepted by authorities. If this passes it will be a dark day for freedom of speech in Australia.
The full report, entitled 'Inquiry into the comprehensive revision of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979,' [PDF] is here
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Attorney General's War on Encrypted Web Services
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(Score: -1, Flamebait) by eapache on Monday March 17 2014, @10:57PM
Perhaps I'm being overly pedantic, but the government knowing what you're saying is *not* the same thing as the government limiting your ability to say certain things. The latter is a loss of freedom-of-speech, the former is not.
Admittedly, the former is a tidy step in the direction of the latter, so I'm not sure what the difference is. Directly conflating the two in this way just bugs me.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Random2 on Monday March 17 2014, @11:13PM
It's all fine and dandy, assuming those in power don't abuse that knowledge.
After all, you might enjoy being part of the Sons of Liberty, but if His Majesty decided that the group was a threat to the colonies, well, knowing who's involved goes a long way.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:06AM
It's not fine and dandy for one second. Privacy is a human right, period.
If a government wants to violate it I demand full, human interaction required, due process. Privacy can only be violated for the greater good if a judge agrees it meets strict requirements, preferably constitutionally protected.
Anything less is absolutely intolerable.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Funny) by egcagrac0 on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:01AM
Citation needed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:00AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lx on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:53AM
You're right. Privacy is at least as important as freedom of speech but they are two different things.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday March 18 2014, @07:25AM
The government showing interest in what you are saying means that they probably want to do something with that information. If they want that information and won't tell you what it's for, then it's safe to assume you won't like what they'll do with it. This makes people (rightfully) paranoid, which leads to self-censorship. Even if it's not censorship in the strict sense, it still ends up doing just that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by githaron on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:32PM
Why do you think voting is private? We don't want to government to intimidate or threaten you in order to influence your vote. Other information can be used similarly. Freedom of speech is about the government not being allowed to harm you for things you say. Privacy helps ensure that right.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by clone141166 on Monday March 17 2014, @11:23PM
"Under the department's plan, law enforcement, anti-corruption and national security agencies
I don't have a problem with them creating a process similar to how a warrant to search your house or other physical property works. I think it's okay if they are required to present evidence before a judge to prove they have reasonable grounds to suspect that you are doing something illegal before compelling you to hand over your encryption keys.
The area of the law that needs to be addressed though is who owns the data once a user transmits it. I am concerned that they would be able to issue notices to service providers or other data carriers without informing the user. Legally I think the data needs to be classified as belonging to the original user, not to the carrier. ie. If the data of a user is to be intercepted and/or tracked in any way it should require that a warrant was issued to the *user* not just to the carrier.
There are other reasons it is a good idea to classify data as owned by the user and not the carrier too, like removing liability from carriers for carrying "illegal" data. I have never been able to understand why governments think that carriers should be responsible for the data they carry. It's like if I walked into a hairdresser's salon and stabbed someone, holding the hairdresser accountable for my actions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:47AM
And that should be legal because?
(Score: 2) by githaron on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:39PM
It's not and it should not. It violates the Fifth Amendment [wikipedia.org]. That is one of the reasons why the government prefers to get the data from Big Data companies.
(Score: 1) by clone141166 on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:59AM
To be honest I hadn't even considered it from the point of view of being a 5th amendment violation. Australia does not have a 5th amendment, although we do have a series of similar laws designed to provide a "right to silence" during questioning/trial.
I'm not sure if it really is a right-to-silence violation though. Why aren't you able to refuse a search warrant of your house then if you know it contains incriminating contents (ie. illegal weapons or drugs)? If you have encrypted data stored on your computer, then you have already chosen to express that information, you aren't being asked a question. It seems like a search of your computer for illegal activities is closer to a search of your physical property than it is to being asked a question that may incriminate yourself.
However I guess you could argue that even with a search warrant for your house you aren't required to hand over the door keys, the warrant merely legitimises any attempts made by police to access your property.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Monday March 17 2014, @11:24PM
They've got all the bad guys listed: bikers/bikies, drug cartels, child exploiters, terrorists, and corrupt officials. Who could possibly stand against such a law?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by clone141166 on Monday March 17 2014, @11:36PM
In the eternal words of Wikipedia: Citations Needed!
And yet all we get in response to these hordes of dastardly criminal miscreants, that have apparently overrun the country, is an endless parade of legislation. Why fund and train the police force when instead it's easier to just pass laws making everyone guilty of something.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by davester666 on Monday March 17 2014, @11:36PM
Obviously, the only people who would be against it are bikers/bikies, drug cartels, child exploiters, terrorists, and corrupt officials.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @11:25PM
The take home from this then is... that all net users should start encrypting their own content?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 17 2014, @11:27PM
I mean, the way I remember, a SSL connection
The trick: the second step is transparent to the human users, they never get to know the symmetric key.
If they want the private certificate(s) of the party(ies) involved, there'd be major troubles for the integrity of the internet in general; e.g. no warranty the "legally-snooping" party isn't going to use the private key of my bank to decrypt all the communications for all the customers of the bank; good bye trust, good bye ecommerce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday March 17 2014, @11:39PM
That's the most amusing (in a grab-popcorn-before-the-train-wreck sort of way) where folks who have zero idea about HOW this stuff works want to improve it to make it better. I try to apply Hanlon's razor to it as much as I can - for the sake of my own sanity.
The way I see it is on of the following two ways:
1) The PIP [Person in Power] makes sound-bytes and generates a political view knowing it literally CANNOT be done then throws grenades around saying "We wanted to do it, we tried to do it, but [insert whipping boy] couldn't deliver."
2) The PIP has no idea and simply fumbles through the field/subject and simply tries to add value by repeating what others have said they want.
I personally hope it is the second. Useless/incompetent PIPs are far better in my books than coniving snakes. You can educate folks, but you pretty much can't take politik out of a politician.
(Score: 3, Informative) by clone141166 on Monday March 17 2014, @11:50PM
This wouldn't be the first time Australia has attempted to implement a law without considering any of the technical realities/details. Our previous government wanted to filter the entire internet to save us from child pr0n and whatnot, and the current government wants to have another go, this time to save us from piracy.
I highly recommend this short clip demonstrating the intelligence of our politicians (this is from the previous Minister for Communications & Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gl7X6peh-w [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 18 2014, @01:37AM
ahhh! beware the spam-scam portal! It's crazy that he was the Minster of anything technical. Probably scared a bunch of old (voting) people though : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:47AM
Wow, I would have thought Conroy could have done better than that!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:50AM
While Hanlon razor doesn't explore the consequences of incompetence, Grey's formulation does provide a suggestion on how one should react in the presence of advance incompetence.
But again... maybe it's just that I'm starting the metamorphosis into a grumpy old man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Tuesday March 18 2014, @01:19AM
The NSA and sundry other american secret services have been illegally hacking economic communications for years, now they want to make it legal and illegal to stop the theft.
Please America, explain why the rest of the world should continue business with you?
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:56PM
A couple things: The implied assumption in the above is that the rest of the world is better. Unfortunately, that is demonstrably not true. Admittedly, the rest of the world (i.e. humanity in general) being various degrees of power-hungry and corrupt is not a reason to continue doing business with the US.
Secondly, this story is not actually about the US.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Dogeball on Tuesday March 18 2014, @10:17AM
The document explicitly has 'dual objectives'.
1) To 'protect privacy of communications'
2) To 'enable interception and access to communications in order to investigate serious crime and threats to national security'
The idea is that all communications are encrypted, but law-enforcement can request 'lawfully intercepted' data be decrypted.
The problems with this proposal are technical. As more than half the document is devoted to explaining the importance of citizen privacy and public confidence in communications, I don't think there is evil intent; I just can't see any workable solution.
Correct use of end-to-end encryption would prevent a random block of intercepted data from being decrypted at all, and prevent a session from being decrypted after the session has ended (session keys should be destroyed).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:52PM
I would have prepended the word "Oz" to the headline of this piece of news. There are a lot of AGs [wikipedia.org] you know.
(Sure Australia is mentioned in the body but...)