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Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

229 points by luord 8y ago

fredley 8y ago
Like a $5 wrench[1], but more socially acceptable. 1: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- dingaling 8y ago
  For a couple of decades pre-XKCD that technique was called "rubber-hose decryption". I don't know why he thought it necessary to change the implement; a hose causes repeatable pain, a wrench can cause fatal damage.
tessi3r 8y ago
Seems like the only logical solution is to carry a hammer to destroy your phone if necessary. If the heat hasn't told you they want your phone, there's nothing legally stopping you from destroying your own property if you see them coming...
- fuzzieozzie 8y ago
  I usually have my foot with me. Foot + phone + ground = destroyed phone But, with enough resources they could still read the memory in the phone even if it was smashed.
  - abraham_lincoln 8y ago
    Dump it in a bottle of Gatorade or coconut water.
    - marnett 8y ago
      will the electrolytes aid in the destruction?
      - logfromblammo 8y ago
        It's what electronics crave! Yes, the conductivity of electrolytes in solution will tend to short out conductive pathways in the short term, and contribute to corrosion of exposed metals later on.
  - ben509 8y ago
    If the ground is solid and the police let you destroy evidence while they're detaining you.
- tzakrajs 8y ago
  Or snap it in half, most phones will do this easily.
  - fredley 8y ago
    Would you, under immediate threat, be able to locate and destroy the memory chips—and specifically the memory chips—on your phone? If they're prepared to lock you up for 10 years, they're prepared to do some serious digital forensics on some unsnapped chips.
    - tessi3r 8y ago
      Hence, the hammer.
    - gautamnarula 8y ago
      Would factory resetting your phone be sufficient, or is data still recoverable even after the standard factory reset option on Android (and I assume, iPhones)? I don't really know much about these "serious forensics."
      - jonknee 8y ago
        If the storage is encrypted (standard on iOS, depends for Android) then the data should be pretty well unrecoverable.
  - wemdyjreichert 8y ago
    We found JerryRigEverything's HN!
  - lcfcjs 8y ago
    Lol yeah maybe androids, not iphones
  - kazinator 8y ago
    How does that prevent the judge from construing that as refusal to unlock your phone, and handing you a ten year sentence?
- XorNot 8y ago
  On some level this is why I'm skeptical of all security efforts in the electronic space. Because if the government or anyone sufficiently powerful is actually after me, the first thing I'm going to do is throw my phone down the garbage disposal and blindly dd all my hard drives with zeros.
  - CGamesPlay 8y ago
    Unfortunately this plan relies on you knowing that they are after you. In the case of a raid when you're not home, you won't have access to the hard drives to erase them.
  - mattthebaker 8y ago
    Tampering with evidence, which includes destroying evidence is also a crime. IANAL so I'm not sure at what point a phone becomes evidence, i.e. once there is a indictment, once there is a warrant, t=0, etc. John Carmack got in trouble for deleting emails in that IP case if I recall. A better privacy feature might be that the phone stores no history.
- refurb 8y ago
  Yeah, the court would never figure that one out and charge with destruction of evidence!
  - kulahan 8y ago
    "Why did you destroy your phone?" "I was angry at losing a game of Pocket Tanks and I have anger management issues"
    - refurb 8y ago
      Court’s have never seen an excuse like that before. They’ll never figure it out!
      - candiodari 8y ago
        Fortunately criminal courts require proof. If you have a lawyer ... this won't happen (probably).
  - ball_of_lint 8y ago
    For that to stick they would need proof that there was some evidence on the phone. Since the only way to prove that something was evidence on the phone is to know what was on the phone I'd expect that to be thrown out immediately. If they were able to get the phones contents from some other avenue then destroying the phone had no purpose.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      > For that to stick they would need proof that there was some evidence on the phone. They can make your life pretty fucking miserable while that's going on though. And the innocence tax is pretty high. Most people on HN can afford good lawyers. What's the going rate for a good criminal defence team for a year?
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  Independently of legal risks, please everyone keep in mind that modern cell phone batteries are a serious hazard.
  - tessi3r 8y ago
    Perfect, I just need to carry a punch that's able to puncture the battery... Immediately cause your mobile device to self-immolate on demand!
kodablah 8y ago
Also concerning is what they are doing towards companies (pardon the tangent): > It covers [...] device vendors [...] as long as they have "a nexus to Australia" > But what if the suspect stores the keys themselves? In that case, the government would pull out the big guns with a second kind of order called a technical capability notice. It forces communications providers to build new capabilities that would help the government access a target’s information where possible. > What if the communications provider doesn’t want to help? Then they could face penalties from the government, or "injunctions or enforceable undertakings". Yeah, right. But the precedent is alarming, because what is happening (and you see it with other "pro law enforcement" or "pro privacy" legislation too) is governments are giving themselves broad enforcement powers to ask for things and then only using it when push really comes to shove. This they-can-but-they-probably-won't approach towards enforcement is dangerous as it removes predictability in favor of government subjectivity. What does it mean in practice? It can mean that while Samsung or Apple would give them the middle finger resting on their size/leverage, a smaller company can't do that. So the enforcement agencies proportionalize their punishments to the amount tolerable without citizen backlash. Everyone should just remember this tactic when we go around praising laws with big punishments for big companies just because we happen to like the spirit of the law. And also remember this when people call us stupid for questioning subjectivity of statute enforcement or the lack of statute enforcement in general when new versions of these laws are crafted.
- ShorsHammer 8y ago
  The article mentions both child abusers and terrorists yet the laws will rarely be used for that. Mandatory metadata retention was also bought in for the same reasons and has barely appeared as evidence in any subsequent cases, despite >300,000 warrantless metadata requests last year, overseen by a handful of public servants behind closed doors, in a country of 25 million people. Another very concerning law is about "fixated persons", which was bought in with big budgets and huge teams of detectives solely dedicated to going after lone wolf terrorists, so far the only person charged is a former mining executive who was a respected lawyer and Head of Compliance at one of Australia's biggest gas companies (One of the largest gas exporters in the world.) She turned whistleblower on some corrupt deals and environmental coverups involving certain fracking leases and the government. After contacting the Mining Minister about it over the space of a few months, instead of investigating, the Minister referred her to the police, she was then deemed a "fixated person", which involved incarceration without charge, being taken to a mental institution and forcibly injected with anti-psychotic drugs for months. Eventually a judge decided she could go home. All media coverage of it is banned in Australia until the trial is finished, which has been postponed at every hearing for over a year now, time heals all wounds I guess. It's naive to think that those in power wouldn't abuse such laws. I'm all for giving police the powers they need and perhaps even more as long as there is transparent oversight and it's targeted, but the complete opposite is happening in many places on Earth right now. Monsters flourish in the darkness.
dfsegoat 8y ago
Genuinely curious - What is the current state / precedent for this type of situation in the US?
- ransom1538 8y ago
  US: Life sentence. If a judge orders you to unlock your laptop/phone and you don't -- it could be a life sentence. IMHO, they go around the constitution with "Contempt of court". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indefinitely-for-refusing-to-decrypt-hard-drives-loses-appeal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...
  - LanceH 8y ago
    Unless you're a politician, then you can just "have no recollection."
    - mindslight 8y ago
      Politicians and plebs have the same exact ability there - in both cases what is already happening will just continue unimpeded. That's a principle called equal protection!
  - adventured 8y ago
    You're dramatically over-simplifying by using one example to claim it's law. That is not the US law, that's one individual instance. In fact it's unsettled legal territory. The Supreme Court has yet to settle it, and they will very likely be the final word.
    - ransom1538 8y ago
      I re-read my comment, I didn't say "That is the US law".
      - ben509 8y ago
        Re-read the parent as well, because it also doesn't claim you did. You absurdly oversimplified the situation, which is the criticism, please address that.
grosjona 8y ago
I think it's fine. If you did nothing wrong then you have nothing to lose by unlocking your phone. So if you don't unlock your phone, it's an admission of guilt. People are way too paranoid. Nobody cares about what you do with your phone. Sometimes I feel like the upper classes of society (especially hypocrites who have money and a reputation to protect) are projecting their fears on all other classes. Then like fools, the honest proletariat adopts all these ridiculous fears as their own.
- jedberg 8y ago
  Please post your email password here so we can all take a look. If you've doing nothing wrong then you would have no problem with that right?
  - johndough 8y ago
    If you have the data from breaches listed on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ you can already get access to some of his passwords (not tested of course). It seems like the "nothing to hide"-philosophy has also been applied to the password complexity. I'd strongly recommend to use secure passwords and maybe a password manager. Further, I'd recommend using different aliases and email addresses for different websites, or at least keeping email addresses private where possible.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Was this meant as a joke?
- cromulent 8y ago
  If the world needs to be more transparent, then I think it should start with the Australian politicians. Give us access to their phones and computers, give us CCTV in their offices. Then we can be sure that no crimes are being committed, that no corruption takes place. They are, after all, working for us.
- basilgohar 8y ago
  I upvoted this comment not because I agree with this viewpoint, but specifically because I don't, and I want this to be seen by more people. Whether this is an attempt at trolling or not, I am not sure, but I believe many people, especially those somewhat removed from marginalized populations, also hold this viewpoint. I advise those that hold this viewpoint to see the excellent video, "Don't Talk to Cops". This should not be seen as an indictment of the many good people that work in law enforcement, but rather one of a system that incentivizes convictions over actual guilt or innocence. At any moment in time, it we are breaking so many laws because of how the laws are written. It's illegal to speed. Who has never done that? A cop can pull you over. If the cop is having a bad day, and asks you to do something you don't want to, and you argue, now you're resisting arrest, which is another crime. And then for how many people has the next step been imprisonment and/or death due to an altercation that all started from a thing nearly everyone does almost every day? The government does not need more powers to find more people guilty of crimes that shouldn't even be illegal. There are already too many people in jail and too many people dead due to a justice system that, sadly, skews far away from actual justice.
gyani95 8y ago
Wish you could configure a finger to erase all data if needed.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kazinator 8y ago
Don't keep anything sensitive on your phone, encrypted or otherwise. Keep it on some storage medium whose very existence is secret. They can't accuse you of refusing to unlock something whose whereabouts are unknown and, indeed, whose very existence is only alleged.
- Arubis 8y ago
  That's concerning, because it's incredibly easy to feed sensitive and/or valuable data to your phone without it being deliberate. One could argue that that's Google's (and many others') business model. Practically speaking, this is not a long jump to suggesting "don't think any banned thoughts", which obviously gets ugly fast.
  - hsienmaneja 8y ago
    Practically, it’s quite a leap from regulating privacy controls of a portable, globally connected node (your phone) to thought control. Just my hypothesis, but while the tech community might recognize the theoretical ideals of a libertarian future, the masses don’t agree. I’d bet that those who actually have something more deeply incriminating to hide comprise a majority (or a significant minority) of those who intend to use surreptitious privacy tools. It seems that regulating encryption and privacy and agreeing to use regulated devices has parallels to agreeing to a breathalyzer when operating motor vehicle, when implemented correctly. Of course, that ideal implementation has a ways to go. We will always need to balance privacy with the need to reduce suffering. Libertarian ideals don’t apply universally, given the variety of human behaviors.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      And yet somehow, it doesn't matter that these tools will be used by deeply compromised people. US police officer Daniel Holtzclaw used his position as police officer and specifically search power to rape women. [4] It took years before the police was even willing to investigate the claims. YEARS, plural. Who runs child services ? Pedophiles, at least in Norway [1] (and yes, that guy had used his power to get children "allocated" to him, and of course, the government decided to let that guy go, immigrant mothers however, must lose their children and get beaten up more than once in the progress. Same for the kids by the way. Why ? Well the decision was made by someone who "enjoyed child porn" for > 20 years) The Australian police is at least partly run by criminal torturers [2] (note, aside from this happening, they also have a bit of a reputation that they're doing this, so don't think this is an isolated incident). In the Netherlands, mental patients were thrown in solitary, and the government "can't find anyone who ever did that". [3] In Belgium, the most notorious unsolved crime of the country, the "Brabant killers"/"Nijvel gang", famous for extremely violent attacks against supermarkets who killed almost 40 people in the process, is strongly suspected to at least partially consist of police officers, maybe entirely. [5] (one of the suspects is an ex-policeman, and the reactions of the police to the investigation defy all reason) What is difficult to see is that, of course, positions of power attract criminals. That means a lot of criminals work for the police. A lot of paedophiles work for schools, or as priests (though not any more), and for child care, and child institutions. A lot of bullies, racists, torturers and rapists work for mental health institutions. Besides, does anyone seriously think so many paedophiles worked for the church because they liked Jesus ? Governments don't want global thought control. Governments have police/military working for them and they pay them ... in status, in control they get over others. They want to get the criminals working for the police. That means that it's a system explicitly designed to let these people in, and the price is that the police, child care, mental health, ... bully, torture and rape. The government can then as described in the Australia example, use this as a weapon against individuals, and they frequently do. That's why governments want to expand this power, and reduce the options people have to complain about these actions. That's why the power of these institutions must be tightly controlled and minimized, and they must be prevented from exercising such powers without tight oversight. The government doesn't want to do that, because that would limit their own power as well. Look at the australian case mentioned above: these laws mean that the government can just destroy individuals that are a threat or a nuisance to them. On the other hand it takes away one of the main reasons people become police officers: they want power, and of course people who want power ... use it. Here's some links to the most egregious cases. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/norways_hidden_scandal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/norways_hidden_s... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-03/melbourne-police-on-video-taking-down-disability-pensioner/9591006 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-03/melbourne-police-on-vi... [3] https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents/NLD/INT_CAT_NGO_NLD_12840_E.pdf https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers
ada1981 8y ago
Has anyone created a mobile OS that has a feature where if a certain password is entered on the unlock screen that it boots up a dummy desktop while silently encrypting or erasing the phone in the background?
- gknoy 8y ago
  That doesn't seem like it would be helpful from a forensics standpoint -- if a court is asking for my password, they probably already have an image cloned from my device, so any such things seem like they would either be noticeable, or simply be ineffective.
  - ada1981 8y ago
    If they have a cloned copy of an encrypted phone; and a suspect gives them a password that gives them an experience of having access to the phone, They might be satisfied with that. (Especially if they aren’t reading this thread)
- comboy 8y ago
  It doesn't seem so easy to do reasonably. Somebody can compare your call log/messages to data they got from your provider. It still seems like a nice idea, but it doesn't really give you plausible deniability.
  - binomialxenon 8y ago
    I don't think the call and SMS log is what needs to be hidden, as those are so easily accessible that it would be foolish to use them for anything very sensitive. It would be to protect more sensitive things such as email accounts, encrypted messaging, photos, documents, etc.
    - ada1981 8y ago
      Right. Or getting into crypto Wallets, etc if you are held at gun point. Having that as an option would be useful.
squarefoot 8y ago
Plausible deniability. The system should allow two (or more) passwords, one unlocks only the important stuff and one unlocks much less dangerous stuff while destroying any evidence of the first, including the multiple passwords protection layer. To add some credibility, the less dangerous data should contain something one could get in trouble for but not enough to have his life destroyed. As an example, if after being forced to reveal a password my phone showed photos of myself having sex with a hooker, I don't think many prosecutors would believe I put them there to protect other more sensitive stuff that would ruin my entire life and not just my relationship. And if they did, I just served them with real proof of why I encrypted my phone which should be enough to counter their unfounded accusations.
- PunchTornado 8y ago
  that sounds like a really good idea and not that difficult to implement.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Truecrypt always had that - one password decrypts into your real partition, the other decrypts the prepared one, with a clear OS. It's impossible to say there is anything in the space where the hidden partition resides, and you have provided a password so at least in theory you are clear.
    - cryptonector 8y ago
      But it is possible to say that you have Truecrypt installed. Then the LEO just asks for the second password.
      - lol768 8y ago
        > Then the LEO just asks for the second password. But it's entirely _optional_ to use. They cannot prove there is a second password.
wpdev_63 8y ago
They don't really have to ask to get into your phone if you are with a US carrier. If they absolutely need access to your phone, they will get on it with very little resistance. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdxg9/fbi-hacking-investigations-classified-remote-operations-unit https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdxg9/fbi-hackin... https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept-surveillance/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept-surveill... https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/#EXAMPLES https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/#EXAMPLES
y-c-o-m-b 8y ago
It's evident citizens are not going to win the fight for privacy by trying to change policy. Voting has become nearly meaningless in the modern age when it comes to changing politics. Influencing businesses to do what's right is becoming more challenging too as this order shows they can just be forced to hand over data by authorities. I don't want the "bad guys" getting away with their activities either, but I don't want some jackass in a volatile country to obtain my confidential data because the authorities are too incompetent to store it securely on their servers. It's just begging for identity theft and black-mail. Time and time again we've been shown that even the most sensitive data can't be secured properly (e.g. Equifax, Google, Yahoo, Anthem, NSA/CIA hacks and leaks). I also don't want some corrupt cop having a bad day make up an absurdly false reason to go through my private life. It's bad enough with people getting drugs planted by corrupt cops; authorities just can't be trusted and there is no proper oversight to make sure they're acting ethically. The only way to fight this is by developing tools to counteract these measures in a reasonably intelligent manner. Hidden multi-layer partitions, hidden "remote" hosts, encrypted decoys that show faux private content so it appears you're cooperating when real content is hidden, etc.
- eftychis 8y ago
  I disagree that voting has become meaningless. The issue is that young people think and feel that voting is meaningless. Thus politicians don't really have to pay attention to what young people think or want. (You don't vote, you don't count.) If you don't vote, your peers don't vote. You transfer your power to other people. Think of NRA. It is a small relatively movement. But if they say to their members go vote X, 100% of them are voting X. This conviction makes a difference. Even if they have 200 votes say, those 200 people are going to make sure everyone around them is going to vote appropriately. And the numbers stack. Also, as usual in the U.S. call your representatives, create a group and take legal action through courts, etc. You have other tools in your belt too, which you mention. These are the "oh shit". But you wouldn't want 20 years from now, to have to use them, or go to jail for using them, because they were illegal.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    People should also be aware that trying to convince people on the other side of whatever political fight you are in that voting is meaningless is a real strategy.
matheusmoreira 8y ago
A government's ability to control its population weakens as subversive technology evolves. The law is always behind the state of the art. This frustrates officials so much they react with incredulity and throw childish tantrums. In order to maintain control, the government must ask for more and more power and become more and more totalitarian. It's like a politico-technological arms race. What will be the end of this? Will the technology evolve so much the government won't be able to win no matter what it does and surrender? Or are they going to ban encryption, non-vulnerable computers and everything that could stand in the way of prosecuting people they don't like?
- aeternus 8y ago
  Technology can already more or less deal with this. Encryption plus a hidden volume (the existence of which cannot be proven) provides the ability for someone to 'unlock' the phone but still not provide access to the real data. It would be quite difficult to ban encryption without causing a ton of other problems.
  - gnode 8y ago
    But the argument being made is that in the face of such technology, the government will make increasingly drastic laws to compensate. E.g. require you use vulnerable phone software approved by them, and allow inferences of guilt if you use something else.
- calgoo 8y ago
  No need to ban encryption, you just create a state sponsored encryption system on a chip, and if anyone is caught trying to break/hack it you get life in prison / death penalty. /s I read something similar to that in "Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future" by Vernor Vinge. A really interesting take on the soon to be future of 2025.
crb002 8y ago
Absurd. I forget passwords all the time.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
The article buries the lede pretty badly. >The government’s explanatory note says that the Bill could force a manufacturer to ... install government software on it If the bill passes, using a phone purchased in Australia is no longer secure. I know my security threat model excludes manufacturer-installed root kits - is there a reasonable strategy for mitigating this risk? Buying a phone in the US and importing it yourself is one, but that seems very awkward. edit: reading the actual text, there's some protection in section 317ZG, which prohibits the law from being used to cause "systematic weakness" or "systematic vulnerability", but explicitly carves out an exception for targeting specific devices. So for a specific example, the bill would allow the Australian government to compel Apple to secretly push an over-the-air update to backdoor a specific device of interest. >The mere fact that a capability to selectively assist agencies with access to a target device exists will not necessarily mean that a systemic weakness has been built. Yeah, the bill is definitely designed to allow exactly the scenario I described. They're after using the code-signing keys and technical expertise of device manufacturers and communication program developers to target individual devices with encryption backdoors. >Likewise, a notice may require a provider to facilitate access to information prior to or after an encryption method is employed, as this does not weaken the encryption itself. Definitely planning on backdooring devices and reading the messages pre-encryption and post-decryption.
- rstuart4133 8y ago
  > Definitely planning on backdooring devices and reading the messages pre-encryption and post-decryption. They actually explicitly said that was the aim. From https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/explanatory-document.pdf https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/expla... : > This includes accessing communications at points where it is not encrypted. I am an Australian, and I have been listening to the Minister for months tell everybody they were going to do something about encryption, but then categorically ruling out weakening crypto with back doors. I wondered what he was on about. Now I know I guess. In case it's not obvious, they aren't just targeting phones. Anything with an app store or automatic updates is fair game. So this includes Microsoft updating Windows and Edge, Google updating Chrome and Chromebooks, and of course all of Apple's products. They don't have the expertise to write the software bugs to do this of course - but the bill allows for this by making provision for forcing the tech companies to provide whatever technical assistance is required (and encourages them to go further by providing voluntary assistance). I see a few comments here that seem to think that encryption on (eg, Signal, PGP, encrypted hard disks, bimetrics) will save you. The entire point of these provisions is to get to the data when it is not decrypted, which it must be if you want to use it. Nothing will save you on these devices - once the bug is installed they are an open book. Possibly more open than you imagine, as they can turn on the microphone, camera, gps without you knowing. Since there are commercial organisations they are targeting, I expect once they roll over they will do it in the most efficient way possible. Which is to say I expect it will be automated - something like the law enforcement agency will provide a MAC or some other unique identified and a few minutes later the bug is installed and sending data back. What that means it is will be highly centralised, meaning you can compromise just a few people and/or pieces of equipment and you have the keys to the entire thing. A spy machine that can track everyone - it's an impossibly attractive target. I can't imagine state actors like Russia or China not to turning a gift like that from the democracies into something useful. They are arguably sticking to the letter their promise not to back door encryption, but in reality they are legislating a centralised system that can see even banking password, everything you read, and everything you say, and everywhere you have been. It's pretty much the same outcome. Way to go, guys.
BLKNSLVR 8y ago
The draft of the bill is accessible here: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-assistance-access-bill-2018.pdf https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-a... I am not a lawyer, and I haven't read the document in detail. There are three places where penalties of 10 years in jail are mentioned: - 64A (Person with knowledge of a computer or a computer system to assist access etc.), which comes under the "Schedule 2: Computer Access Warrants etc" - 3LA(5) which comes under "Schedule 3: Search warrants issued under the Crimes Act 1914" - 201(A) (Use of electronic equipment at other place), which comes under "Schedule 4: Search warrants issued under the Customs Act 1901" 10 years in jail appears to be a penalty for not unlocking your phone when a warrant has been issued to do so. As long as a warrant is required, I don't really have a problem with this, it doesn't seem to be an unreasonable extension into the electronic world from the analogue. Warrants already exist to search your house and everything in it - that's pretty much the biggest privacy invasion you could have, but it requires paperwork and sign-off by "certain parties". (The trustworthiness of those doing the paperwork and the "certain parties" signing-off on warrants is a separate argument as that's not "new" to this change in legislation). It doesn't appear that you could get thrown in the clink for 10 years for refusing to unlock your phone during a random traffic stop. Happy to hear why my take on this may be wrong though.
evntllyCnsistnt 8y ago
What about straight-up smashing your phone? And never carrying another one again? Watch this happen.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Or just use a dumbphone, which most serious criminals have already worked out.
throwawaymanbot 8y ago
Australia originally was a prison colony.. so its good to see that they are getting back with their original mission statement. All this democracy BS was just a phase thankfully.
voidmain 8y ago
We need a certificate transparency type solution that makes pushing compromised firmware to individual devices impractical. That still leaves forcing manufacturers to insert backdoors in all devices, which as far as I know can only be made tamper evident by open sourcing (and using reproducible builds for) all security critical software and hardware.

229 points by luord 8y ago

fredley 8y ago

Like a $5 wrench[1], but more socially acceptable. 1: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/

dingaling 8y ago
For a couple of decades pre-XKCD that technique was called "rubber-hose decryption". I don't know why he thought it necessary to change the implement; a hose causes repeatable pain, a wrench can cause fatal damage.

tessi3r 8y ago

Seems like the only logical solution is to carry a hammer to destroy your phone if necessary. If the heat hasn't told you they want your phone, there's nothing legally stopping you from destroying your own property if you see them coming...

fuzzieozzie 8y ago
I usually have my foot with me. Foot + phone + ground = destroyed phone But, with enough resources they could still read the memory in the phone even if it was smashed.
- abraham_lincoln 8y ago
  Dump it in a bottle of Gatorade or coconut water.
  - marnett 8y ago
    will the electrolytes aid in the destruction?
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      It's what electronics crave! Yes, the conductivity of electrolytes in solution will tend to short out conductive pathways in the short term, and contribute to corrosion of exposed metals later on.
- ben509 8y ago
  If the ground is solid and the police let you destroy evidence while they're detaining you.
tzakrajs 8y ago
Or snap it in half, most phones will do this easily.
- fredley 8y ago
  Would you, under immediate threat, be able to locate and destroy the memory chips—and specifically the memory chips—on your phone? If they're prepared to lock you up for 10 years, they're prepared to do some serious digital forensics on some unsnapped chips.
  - tessi3r 8y ago
    Hence, the hammer.
  - gautamnarula 8y ago
    Would factory resetting your phone be sufficient, or is data still recoverable even after the standard factory reset option on Android (and I assume, iPhones)? I don't really know much about these "serious forensics."
    - jonknee 8y ago
      If the storage is encrypted (standard on iOS, depends for Android) then the data should be pretty well unrecoverable.
- wemdyjreichert 8y ago
  We found JerryRigEverything's HN!
- lcfcjs 8y ago
  Lol yeah maybe androids, not iphones
- kazinator 8y ago
  How does that prevent the judge from construing that as refusal to unlock your phone, and handing you a ten year sentence?
XorNot 8y ago
On some level this is why I'm skeptical of all security efforts in the electronic space. Because if the government or anyone sufficiently powerful is actually after me, the first thing I'm going to do is throw my phone down the garbage disposal and blindly dd all my hard drives with zeros.
- CGamesPlay 8y ago
  Unfortunately this plan relies on you knowing that they are after you. In the case of a raid when you're not home, you won't have access to the hard drives to erase them.
- mattthebaker 8y ago
  Tampering with evidence, which includes destroying evidence is also a crime. IANAL so I'm not sure at what point a phone becomes evidence, i.e. once there is a indictment, once there is a warrant, t=0, etc. John Carmack got in trouble for deleting emails in that IP case if I recall. A better privacy feature might be that the phone stores no history.
refurb 8y ago
Yeah, the court would never figure that one out and charge with destruction of evidence!
- kulahan 8y ago
  "Why did you destroy your phone?" "I was angry at losing a game of Pocket Tanks and I have anger management issues"
  - refurb 8y ago
    Court’s have never seen an excuse like that before. They’ll never figure it out!
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Fortunately criminal courts require proof. If you have a lawyer ... this won't happen (probably).
- ball_of_lint 8y ago
  For that to stick they would need proof that there was some evidence on the phone. Since the only way to prove that something was evidence on the phone is to know what was on the phone I'd expect that to be thrown out immediately. If they were able to get the phones contents from some other avenue then destroying the phone had no purpose.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    > For that to stick they would need proof that there was some evidence on the phone. They can make your life pretty fucking miserable while that's going on though. And the innocence tax is pretty high. Most people on HN can afford good lawyers. What's the going rate for a good criminal defence team for a year?
emiliobumachar 8y ago
Independently of legal risks, please everyone keep in mind that modern cell phone batteries are a serious hazard.
- tessi3r 8y ago
  Perfect, I just need to carry a punch that's able to puncture the battery... Immediately cause your mobile device to self-immolate on demand!

kodablah 8y ago

Also concerning is what they are doing towards companies (pardon the tangent): > It covers [...] device vendors [...] as long as they have "a nexus to Australia" > But what if the suspect stores the keys themselves? In that case, the government would pull out the big guns with a second kind of order called a technical capability notice. It forces communications providers to build new capabilities that would help the government access a target’s information where possible. > What if the communications provider doesn’t want to help? Then they could face penalties from the government, or "injunctions or enforceable undertakings". Yeah, right. But the precedent is alarming, because what is happening (and you see it with other "pro law enforcement" or "pro privacy" legislation too) is governments are giving themselves broad enforcement powers to ask for things and then only using it when push really comes to shove. This they-can-but-they-probably-won't approach towards enforcement is dangerous as it removes predictability in favor of government subjectivity. What does it mean in practice? It can mean that while Samsung or Apple would give them the middle finger resting on their size/leverage, a smaller company can't do that. So the enforcement agencies proportionalize their punishments to the amount tolerable without citizen backlash. Everyone should just remember this tactic when we go around praising laws with big punishments for big companies just because we happen to like the spirit of the law. And also remember this when people call us stupid for questioning subjectivity of statute enforcement or the lack of statute enforcement in general when new versions of these laws are crafted.

ShorsHammer 8y ago
The article mentions both child abusers and terrorists yet the laws will rarely be used for that. Mandatory metadata retention was also bought in for the same reasons and has barely appeared as evidence in any subsequent cases, despite >300,000 warrantless metadata requests last year, overseen by a handful of public servants behind closed doors, in a country of 25 million people. Another very concerning law is about "fixated persons", which was bought in with big budgets and huge teams of detectives solely dedicated to going after lone wolf terrorists, so far the only person charged is a former mining executive who was a respected lawyer and Head of Compliance at one of Australia's biggest gas companies (One of the largest gas exporters in the world.) She turned whistleblower on some corrupt deals and environmental coverups involving certain fracking leases and the government. After contacting the Mining Minister about it over the space of a few months, instead of investigating, the Minister referred her to the police, she was then deemed a "fixated person", which involved incarceration without charge, being taken to a mental institution and forcibly injected with anti-psychotic drugs for months. Eventually a judge decided she could go home. All media coverage of it is banned in Australia until the trial is finished, which has been postponed at every hearing for over a year now, time heals all wounds I guess. It's naive to think that those in power wouldn't abuse such laws. I'm all for giving police the powers they need and perhaps even more as long as there is transparent oversight and it's targeted, but the complete opposite is happening in many places on Earth right now. Monsters flourish in the darkness.

dfsegoat 8y ago

Genuinely curious - What is the current state / precedent for this type of situation in the US?

ransom1538 8y ago
US: Life sentence. If a judge orders you to unlock your laptop/phone and you don't -- it could be a life sentence. IMHO, they go around the constitution with "Contempt of court". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indefinitely-for-refusing-to-decrypt-hard-drives-loses-appeal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...
- LanceH 8y ago
  Unless you're a politician, then you can just "have no recollection."
  - mindslight 8y ago
    Politicians and plebs have the same exact ability there - in both cases what is already happening will just continue unimpeded. That's a principle called equal protection!
- adventured 8y ago
  You're dramatically over-simplifying by using one example to claim it's law. That is not the US law, that's one individual instance. In fact it's unsettled legal territory. The Supreme Court has yet to settle it, and they will very likely be the final word.
  - ransom1538 8y ago
    I re-read my comment, I didn't say "That is the US law".
    - ben509 8y ago
      Re-read the parent as well, because it also doesn't claim you did. You absurdly oversimplified the situation, which is the criticism, please address that.

grosjona 8y ago

I think it's fine. If you did nothing wrong then you have nothing to lose by unlocking your phone. So if you don't unlock your phone, it's an admission of guilt. People are way too paranoid. Nobody cares about what you do with your phone. Sometimes I feel like the upper classes of society (especially hypocrites who have money and a reputation to protect) are projecting their fears on all other classes. Then like fools, the honest proletariat adopts all these ridiculous fears as their own.

jedberg 8y ago
Please post your email password here so we can all take a look. If you've doing nothing wrong then you would have no problem with that right?
- johndough 8y ago
  If you have the data from breaches listed on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ you can already get access to some of his passwords (not tested of course). It seems like the "nothing to hide"-philosophy has also been applied to the password complexity. I'd strongly recommend to use secure passwords and maybe a password manager. Further, I'd recommend using different aliases and email addresses for different websites, or at least keeping email addresses private where possible.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Was this meant as a joke?
cromulent 8y ago
If the world needs to be more transparent, then I think it should start with the Australian politicians. Give us access to their phones and computers, give us CCTV in their offices. Then we can be sure that no crimes are being committed, that no corruption takes place. They are, after all, working for us.
basilgohar 8y ago
I upvoted this comment not because I agree with this viewpoint, but specifically because I don't, and I want this to be seen by more people. Whether this is an attempt at trolling or not, I am not sure, but I believe many people, especially those somewhat removed from marginalized populations, also hold this viewpoint. I advise those that hold this viewpoint to see the excellent video, "Don't Talk to Cops". This should not be seen as an indictment of the many good people that work in law enforcement, but rather one of a system that incentivizes convictions over actual guilt or innocence. At any moment in time, it we are breaking so many laws because of how the laws are written. It's illegal to speed. Who has never done that? A cop can pull you over. If the cop is having a bad day, and asks you to do something you don't want to, and you argue, now you're resisting arrest, which is another crime. And then for how many people has the next step been imprisonment and/or death due to an altercation that all started from a thing nearly everyone does almost every day? The government does not need more powers to find more people guilty of crimes that shouldn't even be illegal. There are already too many people in jail and too many people dead due to a justice system that, sadly, skews far away from actual justice.

gyani95 8y ago

Wish you could configure a finger to erase all data if needed.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kazinator 8y ago

Don't keep anything sensitive on your phone, encrypted or otherwise. Keep it on some storage medium whose very existence is secret. They can't accuse you of refusing to unlock something whose whereabouts are unknown and, indeed, whose very existence is only alleged.

Arubis 8y ago
That's concerning, because it's incredibly easy to feed sensitive and/or valuable data to your phone without it being deliberate. One could argue that that's Google's (and many others') business model. Practically speaking, this is not a long jump to suggesting "don't think any banned thoughts", which obviously gets ugly fast.
- hsienmaneja 8y ago
  Practically, it’s quite a leap from regulating privacy controls of a portable, globally connected node (your phone) to thought control. Just my hypothesis, but while the tech community might recognize the theoretical ideals of a libertarian future, the masses don’t agree. I’d bet that those who actually have something more deeply incriminating to hide comprise a majority (or a significant minority) of those who intend to use surreptitious privacy tools. It seems that regulating encryption and privacy and agreeing to use regulated devices has parallels to agreeing to a breathalyzer when operating motor vehicle, when implemented correctly. Of course, that ideal implementation has a ways to go. We will always need to balance privacy with the need to reduce suffering. Libertarian ideals don’t apply universally, given the variety of human behaviors.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    And yet somehow, it doesn't matter that these tools will be used by deeply compromised people. US police officer Daniel Holtzclaw used his position as police officer and specifically search power to rape women. [4] It took years before the police was even willing to investigate the claims. YEARS, plural. Who runs child services ? Pedophiles, at least in Norway [1] (and yes, that guy had used his power to get children "allocated" to him, and of course, the government decided to let that guy go, immigrant mothers however, must lose their children and get beaten up more than once in the progress. Same for the kids by the way. Why ? Well the decision was made by someone who "enjoyed child porn" for > 20 years) The Australian police is at least partly run by criminal torturers [2] (note, aside from this happening, they also have a bit of a reputation that they're doing this, so don't think this is an isolated incident). In the Netherlands, mental patients were thrown in solitary, and the government "can't find anyone who ever did that". [3] In Belgium, the most notorious unsolved crime of the country, the "Brabant killers"/"Nijvel gang", famous for extremely violent attacks against supermarkets who killed almost 40 people in the process, is strongly suspected to at least partially consist of police officers, maybe entirely. [5] (one of the suspects is an ex-policeman, and the reactions of the police to the investigation defy all reason) What is difficult to see is that, of course, positions of power attract criminals. That means a lot of criminals work for the police. A lot of paedophiles work for schools, or as priests (though not any more), and for child care, and child institutions. A lot of bullies, racists, torturers and rapists work for mental health institutions. Besides, does anyone seriously think so many paedophiles worked for the church because they liked Jesus ? Governments don't want global thought control. Governments have police/military working for them and they pay them ... in status, in control they get over others. They want to get the criminals working for the police. That means that it's a system explicitly designed to let these people in, and the price is that the police, child care, mental health, ... bully, torture and rape. The government can then as described in the Australia example, use this as a weapon against individuals, and they frequently do. That's why governments want to expand this power, and reduce the options people have to complain about these actions. That's why the power of these institutions must be tightly controlled and minimized, and they must be prevented from exercising such powers without tight oversight. The government doesn't want to do that, because that would limit their own power as well. Look at the australian case mentioned above: these laws mean that the government can just destroy individuals that are a threat or a nuisance to them. On the other hand it takes away one of the main reasons people become police officers: they want power, and of course people who want power ... use it. Here's some links to the most egregious cases. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/norways_hidden_scandal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/norways_hidden_s... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-03/melbourne-police-on-video-taking-down-disability-pensioner/9591006 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-03/melbourne-police-on-vi... [3] https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents/NLD/INT_CAT_NGO_NLD_12840_E.pdf https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers

ada1981 8y ago

Has anyone created a mobile OS that has a feature where if a certain password is entered on the unlock screen that it boots up a dummy desktop while silently encrypting or erasing the phone in the background?

gknoy 8y ago
That doesn't seem like it would be helpful from a forensics standpoint -- if a court is asking for my password, they probably already have an image cloned from my device, so any such things seem like they would either be noticeable, or simply be ineffective.
- ada1981 8y ago
  If they have a cloned copy of an encrypted phone; and a suspect gives them a password that gives them an experience of having access to the phone, They might be satisfied with that. (Especially if they aren’t reading this thread)
comboy 8y ago
It doesn't seem so easy to do reasonably. Somebody can compare your call log/messages to data they got from your provider. It still seems like a nice idea, but it doesn't really give you plausible deniability.
- binomialxenon 8y ago
  I don't think the call and SMS log is what needs to be hidden, as those are so easily accessible that it would be foolish to use them for anything very sensitive. It would be to protect more sensitive things such as email accounts, encrypted messaging, photos, documents, etc.
  - ada1981 8y ago
    Right. Or getting into crypto Wallets, etc if you are held at gun point. Having that as an option would be useful.

squarefoot 8y ago

Plausible deniability. The system should allow two (or more) passwords, one unlocks only the important stuff and one unlocks much less dangerous stuff while destroying any evidence of the first, including the multiple passwords protection layer. To add some credibility, the less dangerous data should contain something one could get in trouble for but not enough to have his life destroyed. As an example, if after being forced to reveal a password my phone showed photos of myself having sex with a hooker, I don't think many prosecutors would believe I put them there to protect other more sensitive stuff that would ruin my entire life and not just my relationship. And if they did, I just served them with real proof of why I encrypted my phone which should be enough to counter their unfounded accusations.

PunchTornado 8y ago
that sounds like a really good idea and not that difficult to implement.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Truecrypt always had that - one password decrypts into your real partition, the other decrypts the prepared one, with a clear OS. It's impossible to say there is anything in the space where the hidden partition resides, and you have provided a password so at least in theory you are clear.
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    But it is possible to say that you have Truecrypt installed. Then the LEO just asks for the second password.
    - lol768 8y ago
      > Then the LEO just asks for the second password. But it's entirely _optional_ to use. They cannot prove there is a second password.

wpdev_63 8y ago

They don't really have to ask to get into your phone if you are with a US carrier. If they absolutely need access to your phone, they will get on it with very little resistance. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdxg9/fbi-hacking-investigations-classified-remote-operations-unit https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdxg9/fbi-hackin... https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept-surveillance/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept-surveill... https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/#EXAMPLES https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/#EXAMPLES

y-c-o-m-b 8y ago

It's evident citizens are not going to win the fight for privacy by trying to change policy. Voting has become nearly meaningless in the modern age when it comes to changing politics. Influencing businesses to do what's right is becoming more challenging too as this order shows they can just be forced to hand over data by authorities. I don't want the "bad guys" getting away with their activities either, but I don't want some jackass in a volatile country to obtain my confidential data because the authorities are too incompetent to store it securely on their servers. It's just begging for identity theft and black-mail. Time and time again we've been shown that even the most sensitive data can't be secured properly (e.g. Equifax, Google, Yahoo, Anthem, NSA/CIA hacks and leaks). I also don't want some corrupt cop having a bad day make up an absurdly false reason to go through my private life. It's bad enough with people getting drugs planted by corrupt cops; authorities just can't be trusted and there is no proper oversight to make sure they're acting ethically. The only way to fight this is by developing tools to counteract these measures in a reasonably intelligent manner. Hidden multi-layer partitions, hidden "remote" hosts, encrypted decoys that show faux private content so it appears you're cooperating when real content is hidden, etc.

eftychis 8y ago
I disagree that voting has become meaningless. The issue is that young people think and feel that voting is meaningless. Thus politicians don't really have to pay attention to what young people think or want. (You don't vote, you don't count.) If you don't vote, your peers don't vote. You transfer your power to other people. Think of NRA. It is a small relatively movement. But if they say to their members go vote X, 100% of them are voting X. This conviction makes a difference. Even if they have 200 votes say, those 200 people are going to make sure everyone around them is going to vote appropriately. And the numbers stack. Also, as usual in the U.S. call your representatives, create a group and take legal action through courts, etc. You have other tools in your belt too, which you mention. These are the "oh shit". But you wouldn't want 20 years from now, to have to use them, or go to jail for using them, because they were illegal.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  People should also be aware that trying to convince people on the other side of whatever political fight you are in that voting is meaningless is a real strategy.

matheusmoreira 8y ago

A government's ability to control its population weakens as subversive technology evolves. The law is always behind the state of the art. This frustrates officials so much they react with incredulity and throw childish tantrums. In order to maintain control, the government must ask for more and more power and become more and more totalitarian. It's like a politico-technological arms race. What will be the end of this? Will the technology evolve so much the government won't be able to win no matter what it does and surrender? Or are they going to ban encryption, non-vulnerable computers and everything that could stand in the way of prosecuting people they don't like?

aeternus 8y ago
Technology can already more or less deal with this. Encryption plus a hidden volume (the existence of which cannot be proven) provides the ability for someone to 'unlock' the phone but still not provide access to the real data. It would be quite difficult to ban encryption without causing a ton of other problems.
- gnode 8y ago
  But the argument being made is that in the face of such technology, the government will make increasingly drastic laws to compensate. E.g. require you use vulnerable phone software approved by them, and allow inferences of guilt if you use something else.
calgoo 8y ago
No need to ban encryption, you just create a state sponsored encryption system on a chip, and if anyone is caught trying to break/hack it you get life in prison / death penalty. /s I read something similar to that in "Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future" by Vernor Vinge. A really interesting take on the soon to be future of 2025.

crb002 8y ago

Absurd. I forget passwords all the time.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

The article buries the lede pretty badly. >The government’s explanatory note says that the Bill could force a manufacturer to ... install government software on it If the bill passes, using a phone purchased in Australia is no longer secure. I know my security threat model excludes manufacturer-installed root kits - is there a reasonable strategy for mitigating this risk? Buying a phone in the US and importing it yourself is one, but that seems very awkward. edit: reading the actual text, there's some protection in section 317ZG, which prohibits the law from being used to cause "systematic weakness" or "systematic vulnerability", but explicitly carves out an exception for targeting specific devices. So for a specific example, the bill would allow the Australian government to compel Apple to secretly push an over-the-air update to backdoor a specific device of interest. >The mere fact that a capability to selectively assist agencies with access to a target device exists will not necessarily mean that a systemic weakness has been built. Yeah, the bill is definitely designed to allow exactly the scenario I described. They're after using the code-signing keys and technical expertise of device manufacturers and communication program developers to target individual devices with encryption backdoors. >Likewise, a notice may require a provider to facilitate access to information prior to or after an encryption method is employed, as this does not weaken the encryption itself. Definitely planning on backdooring devices and reading the messages pre-encryption and post-decryption.

rstuart4133 8y ago
> Definitely planning on backdooring devices and reading the messages pre-encryption and post-decryption. They actually explicitly said that was the aim. From https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/explanatory-document.pdf https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/expla... : > This includes accessing communications at points where it is not encrypted. I am an Australian, and I have been listening to the Minister for months tell everybody they were going to do something about encryption, but then categorically ruling out weakening crypto with back doors. I wondered what he was on about. Now I know I guess. In case it's not obvious, they aren't just targeting phones. Anything with an app store or automatic updates is fair game. So this includes Microsoft updating Windows and Edge, Google updating Chrome and Chromebooks, and of course all of Apple's products. They don't have the expertise to write the software bugs to do this of course - but the bill allows for this by making provision for forcing the tech companies to provide whatever technical assistance is required (and encourages them to go further by providing voluntary assistance). I see a few comments here that seem to think that encryption on (eg, Signal, PGP, encrypted hard disks, bimetrics) will save you. The entire point of these provisions is to get to the data when it is not decrypted, which it must be if you want to use it. Nothing will save you on these devices - once the bug is installed they are an open book. Possibly more open than you imagine, as they can turn on the microphone, camera, gps without you knowing. Since there are commercial organisations they are targeting, I expect once they roll over they will do it in the most efficient way possible. Which is to say I expect it will be automated - something like the law enforcement agency will provide a MAC or some other unique identified and a few minutes later the bug is installed and sending data back. What that means it is will be highly centralised, meaning you can compromise just a few people and/or pieces of equipment and you have the keys to the entire thing. A spy machine that can track everyone - it's an impossibly attractive target. I can't imagine state actors like Russia or China not to turning a gift like that from the democracies into something useful. They are arguably sticking to the letter their promise not to back door encryption, but in reality they are legislating a centralised system that can see even banking password, everything you read, and everything you say, and everywhere you have been. It's pretty much the same outcome. Way to go, guys.

BLKNSLVR 8y ago

The draft of the bill is accessible here: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-assistance-access-bill-2018.pdf https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-a... I am not a lawyer, and I haven't read the document in detail. There are three places where penalties of 10 years in jail are mentioned: - 64A (Person with knowledge of a computer or a computer system to assist access etc.), which comes under the "Schedule 2: Computer Access Warrants etc" - 3LA(5) which comes under "Schedule 3: Search warrants issued under the Crimes Act 1914" - 201(A) (Use of electronic equipment at other place), which comes under "Schedule 4: Search warrants issued under the Customs Act 1901" 10 years in jail appears to be a penalty for not unlocking your phone when a warrant has been issued to do so. As long as a warrant is required, I don't really have a problem with this, it doesn't seem to be an unreasonable extension into the electronic world from the analogue. Warrants already exist to search your house and everything in it - that's pretty much the biggest privacy invasion you could have, but it requires paperwork and sign-off by "certain parties". (The trustworthiness of those doing the paperwork and the "certain parties" signing-off on warrants is a separate argument as that's not "new" to this change in legislation). It doesn't appear that you could get thrown in the clink for 10 years for refusing to unlock your phone during a random traffic stop. Happy to hear why my take on this may be wrong though.

evntllyCnsistnt 8y ago

What about straight-up smashing your phone? And never carrying another one again? Watch this happen.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Or just use a dumbphone, which most serious criminals have already worked out.

throwawaymanbot 8y ago

Australia originally was a prison colony.. so its good to see that they are getting back with their original mission statement. All this democracy BS was just a phase thankfully.

voidmain 8y ago

We need a certificate transparency type solution that makes pushing compromised firmware to individual devices impractical. That still leaves forcing manufacturers to insert backdoors in all devices, which as far as I know can only be made tamper evident by open sourcing (and using reproducible builds for) all security critical software and hardware.