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Australia pushes for spyware on phones

213 points by tonteldoos 8y ago

elitistphoenix 8y ago
This is the problem with non-technical lawyers making technical laws. It's like when the Attorney General was pushing for metadata retention but couldn't even explain what metadata was.
- BigJono 8y ago
  The laws of mathematics don't apply in Australia.
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    Australia needs a referendum to repeal the laws of gravity.
    - ggm 8y ago
      We will decide which laws of physics come to Australia and on what terms.
- rbg246 8y ago
  I have a feeling it was not explained deliberately so that the general public wouldn't know what it was and that what the legal definition of what meta data was could be expanded when required.
  - lugg 8y ago
    The point still stands.
    - rbg246 8y ago
      Agreed
- ezoe 8y ago
  It doesn't require rocket science to understand how bad this is. It's like permission to arrest and jail anyone for no reason BECAUSE he may commit crime in the future.
  - brian-armstrong 8y ago
    Australia's inhabitants were sent there in punishment for crimes, so in fact everyone there is a criminal already (or descends from a crimefamily)
    - threeseed 8y ago
      About 1/3 of Australia are immigrants. So no. Most of us aren't criminals or descended from criminals.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      Honestly, that joke's getting a bit old now. Most Australians are recent immigrants, only 20% of Australians are descended from a convict.
      - lozaning 8y ago
        Any truth to what I've been told that it's a point of pride for those who can trace their family lines back to those that were criminals? I've heard it's kinda similar to the The Daughters of the American Revolution in the US.
        fineline 8y ago
        Apparently it used to be considered something you would try and hide, back in the days of the cultural cringe[0], whereas now it can be seen as a bit of a badge of honour. My wife's family descends from a convict bloke whose free wife came out too and got her husband assigned to her. Convicts were assigned as essentially unpaid labour (other than food and a rough bed) to land owners at the time. Given that many were very petty criminals back in Britain (e.g. stealing a loaf of bread) some interpret the arrangement as not much better than slavery, as a means to provide free labour to grow the fledgling colony. Some of the tales of the worst penal institutions (think Tasmania) are truly horrifying. But many convict labourers were granted their freedom over time too. It also had an interesting effect on the labour market, with free settlers finding it hard to get decent pay as farm labour etc. One of the great statesmen, Henry Parkes, was in exactly that position when he first arrived in Aus as a poor settler, and got involved in the protest which eventually turned back the last convict ship ever to anchor in Sydney Harbour. He went on to be elected multiple times as premier of NSW, achieving lots of progress in the state (trained nursing, universal education etc.) before getting the heads of all the colonial states around the table to drive the process of joining to become the nation of Australia. If only we had statesmen / women of that calibre today ... but sadly not. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe
- iliketosleep 8y ago
  The Attorney General may not understand it well, but the people advising him may. The metadata collection is an "always on" type of surveillance, and under such conditions all it takes is one slip up in OPSEC to be caught out. Some of these politicians may look like clowns at times, but don't underestimate the level of intelligence (and agendas) of those working for them behind the scenes.
- threeseed 8y ago
  This isn't how it works at all. Technical laws are advised by people from technical backgrounds. And in the case of laws like this it is coming directly from technical experts at ASIO/ASIS. Likewise it is irrelevant whether the Attorney General knows the technical definition of metadata since he isn't personally writing the law.
  - cyberferret 8y ago
    No, I would counter argue that those in charge of bringing in laws should at least understand the basic principles of what those laws contain. Much as they shouldn't ban a chemical additive to our foods without first understanding the nature and effects of that chemical (based on scientific research and evidence), then they shouldn't enact laws around privacy and data without understanding what that data itself contains. (He doesn't have to make the chemicals in a lab, he just needs to understand what it is/does). The fact that the AG has no clear definition of what 'meta data' is, or cannot explain that to a reporter or the public really shakes my confidence that his limited understanding of 'meta data' includes elements that can personally identify someone (e.g. Does he think a phone number is 'meta data' or straight up 'personal data'? Because a phone number can be owned by more than one person, or is transferrable, does he think that is 'meta'?). The AG should at least be able to give a broad definition of the scope of the laws that he is going to be responsible for upholding.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      What are you proposing is unworkable. AG and Ministers set the strategic direction for the public sector. They operate at a sufficiently high level such that they will never be the experts and will never be across the subtleties of the policies. That's the job of the public servants. Also the distinction between data and metadata is quite subtle and as someone who deals with this daily I make mistakes with it. So I don't expert the AG or really anyone to have the right answer every time.
      - cam_l 8y ago
        I broadly agree with you in principle, but in this specific case i think the issue of the law is the subtlety of the definition. The thing that the AG was studiously avoiding to answer was that both he and the people that drafted the law understood that metadata is data. He was trying to obfuscate the fact that the government was massively shifting the imaginary line between them.
- walrus01 8y ago
  As a network engineer for several medium sized ASes, I have a real problem with political jackasses who've never typed "enable" on a router one day in their life making regulations about the Internet.
Gys 8y ago
These kind of concerns, laws and regulation often remind me of a 1983 joke by the Belgium comedian 'Urbanus': Urbanus vertelt dat zijn buurman boer is en dat hij rond rijdt met zijn tractor en een vieselijk geel poeder spuit op zijn akker. Kwaad interpelleert hij hem. Urbanus: “Maar voor wat is dat nu allemaal weer nodig ?” Boerke: “Dat is poeder tegen de olifanten.” Urbanus: “Maar hier zitten toch geen olifanten in ’t Pajottenland ?” Boerke: “Goe poeier hé jongen!” Translated: Urbanus says that his neighbor is a farmer and that he drives around with his tractor and sprays an awful yellow powder in his field. He interrogates him badly. Urbanus: "But for what is all that necessary now?" Farmer: "That is powder against the elephants." Urbanus: "But there are no elephants here in the Pajottenland?" Farmer: "Yes boy, good powder!"
- deleted 8y ago
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- krustyburger 8y ago
  “Lisa, I want to buy your rock.”
repsilat 8y ago
Not only are criminals misusing technology to have conversations that the Australian Government can't listen to, they're also taking clever physical countermeasures like having conversations in person -- sometimes completely out of earshot of their own devices! If we as a society (quite reasonably) conclude that our government should have access to criminals' communications, allowing savvy criminals to make use of "non-electronic backdoors" is obviously out of the question. Anyone want to propose an enforcement mechanism? Maybe listening devices implanted in everyone, or just everywhere in our homes?
- ag71668 8y ago
  How do we the citizens fight these laws? They are bipartisan and get shoved through the pipeline so quickly that rights groups don't even have time to react, never mind the electorate. Domestic surveillance seems to be an example of where democracy is completely circumvented.
  - oldandtired 8y ago
    The same way you fight any sort of problem like this. Become the squeaky wheel in your electorate. Highlight clearly the problems that both sides are bringing in together and build a momentum such that the sitting member knows he won't get in and neither will his opposition party person, if they continue to support such notions. If it means a loss for the major parties by having, say, an independent taking over, then both sides will start to listen. However, that kind of activism is very hard work and you have to be prepared for the rest of your electorate to be blaise about the subject matter.
    - chii 8y ago
      > rest of your electorate to be blaise about the subject matter. This is definitely the root problem of democracy of today. Lives are comfortable enough for most that they don't really need to care for these issues (until it's too late).
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Are you Aussie? If so...definitely not guns!
jimjimjim 8y ago
that guy was almost the prime minister of australia.
- fphhotchips 8y ago
  Might have made it all the way, if only he could count.
- stephen_g 8y ago
  He also only holds his seat on a 1.6% margin, and was only one vote (his own) away from being forced to resign in a vote of no confidence last week (for misleading Parliment over the handling of some immigration cases where he interveined to let in au pairs for friends/Liberal party donors who admitted that they were going to illegally work on tourist visas)... The next Federal election can't come soon enough...
  - flukus 8y ago
    > The next Federal election can't come soon enough... Where they'll be replaced by the Labor party who also support this.
    - tonteldoos 8y ago
      But the PM is likely to be changed halfway through the term anyway (along with his/her ministers), so this really doesn't make much of a difference either way :-/
      - flukus 8y ago
        At least they've fixed that, replacing leader would be a month long affair and be voted on by every member of the party.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Given that the rate at which Australia changes prime minister, is ‘almost prime minister’ a compliment or an insult? There hasn’t been one that survived a term in over a decade. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/09/04/why-australia-loses-prime-ministers#ampf=undefined https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.economist.com/the-economi...
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headsoup 8y ago
Someone should advise these officials that the concerns people have are with doubts in law enforcement maintaining full integrity in appropriate use, and that a criminal third party could use these backdoors to hack into peoples' devices. Then remind them that they should also be obliged to have these backdoors on their own phones, and if they are concerned about doing so perhaps this is not a thing to push on everyone else...
- type0 8y ago
  > and that a criminal third party could use these backdoors to hack into peoples' devices Yeah, but in this case politicians are worse than the criminals. > and if they are concerned about doing so perhaps this is not a thing to push on everyone else... They don't think of themselves to be like everyone else, so their intent is that it stays that way.
perilunar 8y ago
Would Apple, Google, Facebook, et al. actually comply with this? Australia is such a small market for them that they could conceivably just refuse and pull their products. Apple in particular has a history of refusing to compromise on encryption.
- stephen_g 8y ago
  Australia might be a fairly small market, but it's a quite rich one (top 10 GDP per capita, top 20 in PPP terms). Companies like Apple do pretty well here. So they could just refuse to sell products here, but I don't think they would just pull out completely...
nitemice 8y ago
I believe this proposed law is the same one that was discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17756020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17756020
throwawayuy 8y ago
Most western democracies pride themselves on “having governments of laws, not men”. Australia has a rather more transactional view of freedom and very limited judicial review. Just this weekend it was announced that people with welfare debts would be blocked from flying overseas. That might be fair, but blocking people from travelling seems to be at the whim of civil servants and politicians. There wasn’t much of an uproar, since the ends justify the means, and no one likes cheats, despite this amounting to extrajudicial punishment. The minister proposing this encryption crackdown has used his vast discretionary powers to do immigration favours for the politically connected, with impunity, while ignoring arguably more deserving cases. The land of roos, barbies and golden beaches has a rather well-developed authoritarian streak behind its carefully constructed facade.
- lysp 8y ago
  I know someone who works for housing. Rent is generally calculated as 25% of a person's income - regardless of what their income is. For someone on $550/fn New-Start, rent is calculated at approx $68.75 per week. There are often instances where families in public housing properties are regularly taking overseas holidays despite having quite extreme unpaid rent debts. Sometimes from low thousands to 10-15 thousand of unpaid rent/debt. They simply stop paying rent. And to rack up that amount of debt when you're paying so little in rent, it's often for quite some time that it remains unpaid. Often the only real option is to start eviction proceedings through the xCAT tribunals, where the tribunal member will usually give families many multiples of chances and time to pay. When they finally realise they are finally going to actually be evicted, they will often show up to the housing offices with the entire amount of unpaid rent. So I agree with this policy and think it will often work to recover debt. There are quite a few people who play the system and I think this will help combat that. But I only think it should be implemented for cases with high amounts of debt and as long as some safeguards are added (exemption for victims of family violence for example).
  - Jedi72 8y ago
    Every step on the staircase to hell seems logical and justified. There are ways to prevent this e.g. jail time for perpetrators, that dont involve blanket removal of citizens rights.
retrogradeorbit 8y ago
Dutton annoyed that Turnbull and cabinet "went dark" and he couldn't find out (through his friends in law enforcement; remember hes an ex-detective) who was talking to who during the leadership spill and thus lost his bid to be Prime Minister?
kardos 8y ago
It seems like this is the followup plan to the more or less failed attempts to defeat encryption directly by weakening it or by various key escrow schemes. That it, it seems like the actions of a government worried that if they do not step in and take power here, they risk leaving a power void that will get filled by someone else, such as a large tech company or a foreign government. Has insisting that crypto remain undefeatable fast-forwarded us to the rubber-hose cryptanalysis stage?
lysp 8y ago
This is a follow-on news story as people slowly try and digest the content of the new bill. One of the main issues with this is it's being tried to push through as quickly and quietly as possible. The original draft bill was open for public submissions for less than a month (Aug 15 - Sept 10). * http://web.archive.org/web/20180814010356/https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-assistance-access-bill-2018.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20180814010356/https://www.homeaf... The draft was 176 pages of legislation and quite complex in it's language so required a lot of time to comprehend - which is quite difficult to do effectively in a 3 week time period. Quite a few large organisations put forward submissions (a couple of them are linked here): * https://internet.org.au/news/209-submission-internet-australia-s-submission-on-draft-assistance-and-access-bill https://internet.org.au/news/209-submission-internet-austral... Submissions included a few internet bodies, EFF and privacy organisations, major ISPs and Telcos, the Law Council, Human Rights Commission, device makers (Apple/Sumsung/Google) as well as others. The bill was then submitted into parliament 10 days later. There is no way possible that they have reviewed and considered all public submissions in 10 days. The government also stated that they had "widely consulted industry" to which the major IPSs denied. It's basically a shambles. What the cynic in me thinks is this is basically being made in collaboration with the five-eyes countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States). As agencies in those 5 countries share information, the spyware/encryption keys/backdoors gained will be openly shared amongst all. I think they all believe Australia is the easiest place to try and get the legislation through.
- girvo 8y ago
  > I think they all believe Australia is the easiest place to try and get the legislation through. And they're correct. Australia is used for all sorts of unsavoury things, from spec-ops operations that other countries don't want to take the risk on, to taking over PlayPen(?) and operating it for months -- we don't have strongly enumerated rights, and our authoritarian past has never actually been dealt with. The same people, or those they trained are still in power.
  - King-Aaron 8y ago
    Not to mention the general public is largely apathetic to practically anything that affects them other than the Grand Final.
ggm 8y ago
Richard Alston come back: bad semi-sentient AI has overreached and we need another simulacrum. Would Stephen Conroy have walked into this mess? I rather suspect he would, after all he wanted to have a giant rubber 'NEKKID WUMMAN' stamp to apply to any URL he didn't like.
Kim_Bruning 8y ago
China is already doing this in Xinjiang for locals and apparantly also (some?) tourists: * https://mashable.com/2017/07/21/china-spyware-xinjiang/?europe=true#bhfWvgzYzOqs https://mashable.com/2017/07/21/china-spyware-xinjiang/?euro... * https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo...
artichokeheart 8y ago
And that will be the end of trust in Australia. When communicating with an Australian (or someone visiting there) you will have to assume that your conversations are not secure and are being recorded unencrypted. Also if you are in one of the 5 eyes nations your conversation will also be shared with your own government.
neuromute 8y ago
This morning I opened Hacker News and two threads sat next to one another. This thread I'm commenting on now and another thread titled "Police forcing me to install Jingwang spyware app, how to minimize impact?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060543) How poignant, and yet startling. Australia is seemingly following in the footsteps of China, a country famed for their strict censorship laws, oppressive and authoritarian nature and far-reaching surveillance powers.
- FerretFred 8y ago
  My thoughts exactly, and in reality, the Five-Eyes countries will surely follow if the price is right. Maybe they'll get the Telcos to install it as part of the standard bloatware, or do a deal with Facebook. I know the UK is so far up China's backside they'd welcome an opportunity like this...
- jakecopp 8y ago
  I thought exactly this too as I read hacker news this morning and read through the Sydney Morning Herald - absolutely terrifying!
oldandtired 8y ago
The problem Australia has at all levels of governance is that those who we elect to represent us, represent the party before they represent the electorate. In addition to that, most of our elected representatives (House or Representatives and the Senate) are lacking in that essential item called a backbone. To find the truth of this, go talk to your representative at each level and try to get them to make public statements about subjects that are important to you. As far as the major political parties are concerned, their obvious differences are really minor and their hidden similarities are major. In the last few years, we have had our federal politicians vote bipartisanly for various legislation that was ostensibly aimed at preventing terrorism and yet, this country already had extensive legislation that covered those particular matters (all of it under criminal offences). One idea that has been discussed at various time in private is for each piece of legislation to be explained to each electorate and have a response return to parliament. So, instead of each representative voting on party lines, he/she would have to submit from their electorate the number of yes's, the number of no's and the number of abstentions. For any legislation to actually pass, the total number of yes votes from all electorates would have to be more than the total of no votes added to the total of abstentions. This would mean that for any legislation to be passed, the representative would have to work very hard to convince his/her electorate that they would need to vote yes for the proposal. The benefits of each legislation would have to be carefully articulated before getting traction. In addition, we could require that all legislation contain a sunset clause of say five years, after which the legislation would be null and void. For any extension, it would need to go back to the electorates again. One benefit of such a scheme, is the slow-down of new legislation and another would be that old legislation that no longer held the attention would fade away. I know, I know, this is a pipe dream and will never happen. But such a scheme would have the benefit that political parties would in all likelihood diminish.
stephengillie 8y ago
Rich counties, companies, and other groups track you based on connections and data across thousands of servers and sites. Poor/lazy counties etc just force an app on you.
turblety 8y ago
Maybe we need this. Let's face it, within a day of this backdoor being released it will be leaked/hacked/exploited in some way, which will cause a national outcry that could go global. Maybe we need a test case to show the rest of the world how badly these uneducated, ridiculous and reckless laws will be.
__d 8y ago
If my reading of the explanatory document was correct, the proposed legislation goes beyond telecommunications providers. Software developers, both within Australia and overseas, can be compelled under threat of 10 years imprisonment, to build and/or insert into their software any mechanism required by the government agencies to enable access to communications. So, the developers of any secure software would now be under threat of extradition to Australia and jail time unless they compromise their own app. Unfortunately, in the absence of massive pressure, Labor will do nothing but add a few useless amendments, and pass it.
type0 8y ago
I always thought of Australia as the buttocks of the Earth, no wonder that things are upside down there.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Maybe imagine how that sounds to the people who live there (or how you'd like to hear that about your country) before opening your mouth, thanks. p.s. I've got a joke to lighten the mood. Have you heard of an 'Australian kiss'? It's like a French kiss but Down Under. xD

213 points by tonteldoos 8y ago

This is the problem with non-technical lawyers making technical laws. It's like when the Attorney General was pushing for metadata retention but couldn't even explain what metadata was.

BigJono 8y ago
The laws of mathematics don't apply in Australia.
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  Australia needs a referendum to repeal the laws of gravity.
  - ggm 8y ago
    We will decide which laws of physics come to Australia and on what terms.
rbg246 8y ago
I have a feeling it was not explained deliberately so that the general public wouldn't know what it was and that what the legal definition of what meta data was could be expanded when required.
- lugg 8y ago
  The point still stands.
  - rbg246 8y ago
    Agreed
ezoe 8y ago
It doesn't require rocket science to understand how bad this is. It's like permission to arrest and jail anyone for no reason BECAUSE he may commit crime in the future.
- brian-armstrong 8y ago
  Australia's inhabitants were sent there in punishment for crimes, so in fact everyone there is a criminal already (or descends from a crimefamily)
  - threeseed 8y ago
    About 1/3 of Australia are immigrants. So no. Most of us aren't criminals or descended from criminals.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    Honestly, that joke's getting a bit old now. Most Australians are recent immigrants, only 20% of Australians are descended from a convict.
    - lozaning 8y ago
      Any truth to what I've been told that it's a point of pride for those who can trace their family lines back to those that were criminals? I've heard it's kinda similar to the The Daughters of the American Revolution in the US.
      - fineline 8y ago
        Apparently it used to be considered something you would try and hide, back in the days of the cultural cringe[0], whereas now it can be seen as a bit of a badge of honour. My wife's family descends from a convict bloke whose free wife came out too and got her husband assigned to her. Convicts were assigned as essentially unpaid labour (other than food and a rough bed) to land owners at the time. Given that many were very petty criminals back in Britain (e.g. stealing a loaf of bread) some interpret the arrangement as not much better than slavery, as a means to provide free labour to grow the fledgling colony. Some of the tales of the worst penal institutions (think Tasmania) are truly horrifying. But many convict labourers were granted their freedom over time too. It also had an interesting effect on the labour market, with free settlers finding it hard to get decent pay as farm labour etc. One of the great statesmen, Henry Parkes, was in exactly that position when he first arrived in Aus as a poor settler, and got involved in the protest which eventually turned back the last convict ship ever to anchor in Sydney Harbour. He went on to be elected multiple times as premier of NSW, achieving lots of progress in the state (trained nursing, universal education etc.) before getting the heads of all the colonial states around the table to drive the process of joining to become the nation of Australia. If only we had statesmen / women of that calibre today ... but sadly not. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe
iliketosleep 8y ago
The Attorney General may not understand it well, but the people advising him may. The metadata collection is an "always on" type of surveillance, and under such conditions all it takes is one slip up in OPSEC to be caught out. Some of these politicians may look like clowns at times, but don't underestimate the level of intelligence (and agendas) of those working for them behind the scenes.
threeseed 8y ago
This isn't how it works at all. Technical laws are advised by people from technical backgrounds. And in the case of laws like this it is coming directly from technical experts at ASIO/ASIS. Likewise it is irrelevant whether the Attorney General knows the technical definition of metadata since he isn't personally writing the law.
- cyberferret 8y ago
  No, I would counter argue that those in charge of bringing in laws should at least understand the basic principles of what those laws contain. Much as they shouldn't ban a chemical additive to our foods without first understanding the nature and effects of that chemical (based on scientific research and evidence), then they shouldn't enact laws around privacy and data without understanding what that data itself contains. (He doesn't have to make the chemicals in a lab, he just needs to understand what it is/does). The fact that the AG has no clear definition of what 'meta data' is, or cannot explain that to a reporter or the public really shakes my confidence that his limited understanding of 'meta data' includes elements that can personally identify someone (e.g. Does he think a phone number is 'meta data' or straight up 'personal data'? Because a phone number can be owned by more than one person, or is transferrable, does he think that is 'meta'?). The AG should at least be able to give a broad definition of the scope of the laws that he is going to be responsible for upholding.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    What are you proposing is unworkable. AG and Ministers set the strategic direction for the public sector. They operate at a sufficiently high level such that they will never be the experts and will never be across the subtleties of the policies. That's the job of the public servants. Also the distinction between data and metadata is quite subtle and as someone who deals with this daily I make mistakes with it. So I don't expert the AG or really anyone to have the right answer every time.
    - cam_l 8y ago
      I broadly agree with you in principle, but in this specific case i think the issue of the law is the subtlety of the definition. The thing that the AG was studiously avoiding to answer was that both he and the people that drafted the law understood that metadata is data. He was trying to obfuscate the fact that the government was massively shifting the imaginary line between them.
walrus01 8y ago
As a network engineer for several medium sized ASes, I have a real problem with political jackasses who've never typed "enable" on a router one day in their life making regulations about the Internet.

Gys 8y ago

These kind of concerns, laws and regulation often remind me of a 1983 joke by the Belgium comedian 'Urbanus': Urbanus vertelt dat zijn buurman boer is en dat hij rond rijdt met zijn tractor en een vieselijk geel poeder spuit op zijn akker. Kwaad interpelleert hij hem. Urbanus: “Maar voor wat is dat nu allemaal weer nodig ?” Boerke: “Dat is poeder tegen de olifanten.” Urbanus: “Maar hier zitten toch geen olifanten in ’t Pajottenland ?” Boerke: “Goe poeier hé jongen!” Translated: Urbanus says that his neighbor is a farmer and that he drives around with his tractor and sprays an awful yellow powder in his field. He interrogates him badly. Urbanus: "But for what is all that necessary now?" Farmer: "That is powder against the elephants." Urbanus: "But there are no elephants here in the Pajottenland?" Farmer: "Yes boy, good powder!"

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krustyburger 8y ago
“Lisa, I want to buy your rock.”

repsilat 8y ago

Not only are criminals misusing technology to have conversations that the Australian Government can't listen to, they're also taking clever physical countermeasures like having conversations in person -- sometimes completely out of earshot of their own devices! If we as a society (quite reasonably) conclude that our government should have access to criminals' communications, allowing savvy criminals to make use of "non-electronic backdoors" is obviously out of the question. Anyone want to propose an enforcement mechanism? Maybe listening devices implanted in everyone, or just everywhere in our homes?

ag71668 8y ago
How do we the citizens fight these laws? They are bipartisan and get shoved through the pipeline so quickly that rights groups don't even have time to react, never mind the electorate. Domestic surveillance seems to be an example of where democracy is completely circumvented.
- oldandtired 8y ago
  The same way you fight any sort of problem like this. Become the squeaky wheel in your electorate. Highlight clearly the problems that both sides are bringing in together and build a momentum such that the sitting member knows he won't get in and neither will his opposition party person, if they continue to support such notions. If it means a loss for the major parties by having, say, an independent taking over, then both sides will start to listen. However, that kind of activism is very hard work and you have to be prepared for the rest of your electorate to be blaise about the subject matter.
  - chii 8y ago
    > rest of your electorate to be blaise about the subject matter. This is definitely the root problem of democracy of today. Lives are comfortable enough for most that they don't really need to care for these issues (until it's too late).
- acct1771 8y ago
  Are you Aussie? If so...definitely not guns!

jimjimjim 8y ago

that guy was almost the prime minister of australia.

fphhotchips 8y ago
Might have made it all the way, if only he could count.
stephen_g 8y ago
He also only holds his seat on a 1.6% margin, and was only one vote (his own) away from being forced to resign in a vote of no confidence last week (for misleading Parliment over the handling of some immigration cases where he interveined to let in au pairs for friends/Liberal party donors who admitted that they were going to illegally work on tourist visas)... The next Federal election can't come soon enough...
- flukus 8y ago
  > The next Federal election can't come soon enough... Where they'll be replaced by the Labor party who also support this.
  - tonteldoos 8y ago
    But the PM is likely to be changed halfway through the term anyway (along with his/her ministers), so this really doesn't make much of a difference either way :-/
    - flukus 8y ago
      At least they've fixed that, replacing leader would be a month long affair and be voted on by every member of the party.
lostlogin 8y ago
Given that the rate at which Australia changes prime minister, is ‘almost prime minister’ a compliment or an insult? There hasn’t been one that survived a term in over a decade. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/09/04/why-australia-loses-prime-ministers#ampf=undefined https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.economist.com/the-economi...

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headsoup 8y ago

Someone should advise these officials that the concerns people have are with doubts in law enforcement maintaining full integrity in appropriate use, and that a criminal third party could use these backdoors to hack into peoples' devices. Then remind them that they should also be obliged to have these backdoors on their own phones, and if they are concerned about doing so perhaps this is not a thing to push on everyone else...

type0 8y ago
> and that a criminal third party could use these backdoors to hack into peoples' devices Yeah, but in this case politicians are worse than the criminals. > and if they are concerned about doing so perhaps this is not a thing to push on everyone else... They don't think of themselves to be like everyone else, so their intent is that it stays that way.

perilunar 8y ago

Would Apple, Google, Facebook, et al. actually comply with this? Australia is such a small market for them that they could conceivably just refuse and pull their products. Apple in particular has a history of refusing to compromise on encryption.

stephen_g 8y ago
Australia might be a fairly small market, but it's a quite rich one (top 10 GDP per capita, top 20 in PPP terms). Companies like Apple do pretty well here. So they could just refuse to sell products here, but I don't think they would just pull out completely...

nitemice 8y ago

I believe this proposed law is the same one that was discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17756020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17756020

throwawayuy 8y ago

Most western democracies pride themselves on “having governments of laws, not men”. Australia has a rather more transactional view of freedom and very limited judicial review. Just this weekend it was announced that people with welfare debts would be blocked from flying overseas. That might be fair, but blocking people from travelling seems to be at the whim of civil servants and politicians. There wasn’t much of an uproar, since the ends justify the means, and no one likes cheats, despite this amounting to extrajudicial punishment. The minister proposing this encryption crackdown has used his vast discretionary powers to do immigration favours for the politically connected, with impunity, while ignoring arguably more deserving cases. The land of roos, barbies and golden beaches has a rather well-developed authoritarian streak behind its carefully constructed facade.

lysp 8y ago
I know someone who works for housing. Rent is generally calculated as 25% of a person's income - regardless of what their income is. For someone on $550/fn New-Start, rent is calculated at approx $68.75 per week. There are often instances where families in public housing properties are regularly taking overseas holidays despite having quite extreme unpaid rent debts. Sometimes from low thousands to 10-15 thousand of unpaid rent/debt. They simply stop paying rent. And to rack up that amount of debt when you're paying so little in rent, it's often for quite some time that it remains unpaid. Often the only real option is to start eviction proceedings through the xCAT tribunals, where the tribunal member will usually give families many multiples of chances and time to pay. When they finally realise they are finally going to actually be evicted, they will often show up to the housing offices with the entire amount of unpaid rent. So I agree with this policy and think it will often work to recover debt. There are quite a few people who play the system and I think this will help combat that. But I only think it should be implemented for cases with high amounts of debt and as long as some safeguards are added (exemption for victims of family violence for example).
- Jedi72 8y ago
  Every step on the staircase to hell seems logical and justified. There are ways to prevent this e.g. jail time for perpetrators, that dont involve blanket removal of citizens rights.

retrogradeorbit 8y ago

Dutton annoyed that Turnbull and cabinet "went dark" and he couldn't find out (through his friends in law enforcement; remember hes an ex-detective) who was talking to who during the leadership spill and thus lost his bid to be Prime Minister?

kardos 8y ago

It seems like this is the followup plan to the more or less failed attempts to defeat encryption directly by weakening it or by various key escrow schemes. That it, it seems like the actions of a government worried that if they do not step in and take power here, they risk leaving a power void that will get filled by someone else, such as a large tech company or a foreign government. Has insisting that crypto remain undefeatable fast-forwarded us to the rubber-hose cryptanalysis stage?

lysp 8y ago

This is a follow-on news story as people slowly try and digest the content of the new bill. One of the main issues with this is it's being tried to push through as quickly and quietly as possible. The original draft bill was open for public submissions for less than a month (Aug 15 - Sept 10). * http://web.archive.org/web/20180814010356/https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-assistance-access-bill-2018.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20180814010356/https://www.homeaf... The draft was 176 pages of legislation and quite complex in it's language so required a lot of time to comprehend - which is quite difficult to do effectively in a 3 week time period. Quite a few large organisations put forward submissions (a couple of them are linked here): * https://internet.org.au/news/209-submission-internet-australia-s-submission-on-draft-assistance-and-access-bill https://internet.org.au/news/209-submission-internet-austral... Submissions included a few internet bodies, EFF and privacy organisations, major ISPs and Telcos, the Law Council, Human Rights Commission, device makers (Apple/Sumsung/Google) as well as others. The bill was then submitted into parliament 10 days later. There is no way possible that they have reviewed and considered all public submissions in 10 days. The government also stated that they had "widely consulted industry" to which the major IPSs denied. It's basically a shambles. What the cynic in me thinks is this is basically being made in collaboration with the five-eyes countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States). As agencies in those 5 countries share information, the spyware/encryption keys/backdoors gained will be openly shared amongst all. I think they all believe Australia is the easiest place to try and get the legislation through.

girvo 8y ago
> I think they all believe Australia is the easiest place to try and get the legislation through. And they're correct. Australia is used for all sorts of unsavoury things, from spec-ops operations that other countries don't want to take the risk on, to taking over PlayPen(?) and operating it for months -- we don't have strongly enumerated rights, and our authoritarian past has never actually been dealt with. The same people, or those they trained are still in power.
- King-Aaron 8y ago
  Not to mention the general public is largely apathetic to practically anything that affects them other than the Grand Final.

ggm 8y ago

Richard Alston come back: bad semi-sentient AI has overreached and we need another simulacrum. Would Stephen Conroy have walked into this mess? I rather suspect he would, after all he wanted to have a giant rubber 'NEKKID WUMMAN' stamp to apply to any URL he didn't like.

Kim_Bruning 8y ago

China is already doing this in Xinjiang for locals and apparantly also (some?) tourists: * https://mashable.com/2017/07/21/china-spyware-xinjiang/?europe=true#bhfWvgzYzOqs https://mashable.com/2017/07/21/china-spyware-xinjiang/?euro... * https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/8ofiiw/chinese_bo...

artichokeheart 8y ago

And that will be the end of trust in Australia. When communicating with an Australian (or someone visiting there) you will have to assume that your conversations are not secure and are being recorded unencrypted. Also if you are in one of the 5 eyes nations your conversation will also be shared with your own government.

neuromute 8y ago

This morning I opened Hacker News and two threads sat next to one another. This thread I'm commenting on now and another thread titled "Police forcing me to install Jingwang spyware app, how to minimize impact?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060543) How poignant, and yet startling. Australia is seemingly following in the footsteps of China, a country famed for their strict censorship laws, oppressive and authoritarian nature and far-reaching surveillance powers.

FerretFred 8y ago
My thoughts exactly, and in reality, the Five-Eyes countries will surely follow if the price is right. Maybe they'll get the Telcos to install it as part of the standard bloatware, or do a deal with Facebook. I know the UK is so far up China's backside they'd welcome an opportunity like this...
jakecopp 8y ago
I thought exactly this too as I read hacker news this morning and read through the Sydney Morning Herald - absolutely terrifying!

oldandtired 8y ago

The problem Australia has at all levels of governance is that those who we elect to represent us, represent the party before they represent the electorate. In addition to that, most of our elected representatives (House or Representatives and the Senate) are lacking in that essential item called a backbone. To find the truth of this, go talk to your representative at each level and try to get them to make public statements about subjects that are important to you. As far as the major political parties are concerned, their obvious differences are really minor and their hidden similarities are major. In the last few years, we have had our federal politicians vote bipartisanly for various legislation that was ostensibly aimed at preventing terrorism and yet, this country already had extensive legislation that covered those particular matters (all of it under criminal offences). One idea that has been discussed at various time in private is for each piece of legislation to be explained to each electorate and have a response return to parliament. So, instead of each representative voting on party lines, he/she would have to submit from their electorate the number of yes's, the number of no's and the number of abstentions. For any legislation to actually pass, the total number of yes votes from all electorates would have to be more than the total of no votes added to the total of abstentions. This would mean that for any legislation to be passed, the representative would have to work very hard to convince his/her electorate that they would need to vote yes for the proposal. The benefits of each legislation would have to be carefully articulated before getting traction. In addition, we could require that all legislation contain a sunset clause of say five years, after which the legislation would be null and void. For any extension, it would need to go back to the electorates again. One benefit of such a scheme, is the slow-down of new legislation and another would be that old legislation that no longer held the attention would fade away. I know, I know, this is a pipe dream and will never happen. But such a scheme would have the benefit that political parties would in all likelihood diminish.

stephengillie 8y ago

Rich counties, companies, and other groups track you based on connections and data across thousands of servers and sites. Poor/lazy counties etc just force an app on you.

turblety 8y ago

Maybe we need this. Let's face it, within a day of this backdoor being released it will be leaked/hacked/exploited in some way, which will cause a national outcry that could go global. Maybe we need a test case to show the rest of the world how badly these uneducated, ridiculous and reckless laws will be.

__d 8y ago

If my reading of the explanatory document was correct, the proposed legislation goes beyond telecommunications providers. Software developers, both within Australia and overseas, can be compelled under threat of 10 years imprisonment, to build and/or insert into their software any mechanism required by the government agencies to enable access to communications. So, the developers of any secure software would now be under threat of extradition to Australia and jail time unless they compromise their own app. Unfortunately, in the absence of massive pressure, Labor will do nothing but add a few useless amendments, and pass it.

type0 8y ago

I always thought of Australia as the buttocks of the Earth, no wonder that things are upside down there.

yesenadam 8y ago
Maybe imagine how that sounds to the people who live there (or how you'd like to hear that about your country) before opening your mouth, thanks. p.s. I've got a joke to lighten the mood. Have you heard of an 'Australian kiss'? It's like a French kiss but Down Under. xD