7 ms·

Australia's anti-encryption laws used to bypass journalist protections: expert

244 points by vermilingua 7y ago

roenxi 7y ago
The really concerning part is that legislation of this nature often receives bipartisan support in the Australian parliament. I don't recall if it was this bill or a different one, but the opposition released a strongly worded statement saying "we have concerns with this legislation", then voted for it ASAP. A thinner fig leaf of an excuse I have yet to see in politics.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  This type of bipartisan support seems to be a recurring concern with the more authoritarian "national security" legislation being passed around the world. We have the same thing in the UK, where both of the big parties have tended to support intrusive government surveillance powers. Because of our voting system, the more liberal but smaller parties that would challenge such measures tend to be disproportionately under-represented at national level, so authoritarianism almost always wins. This leads to claims that most people support such measures, yet not so long ago we had a huge grass roots campaign against mandatory ID cards (and related measures like the database behind those cards) that ultimately succeeded in preventing their introduction, so clearly it's not really as simple as that. Certainly some reports based on polling that get brought out to demonstrate that public "support" for these measures have glossed over heavily loaded questions in the polls themselves. (They're not quite "Terrorism is a really serious threat and a nuke might kill everyone. Do you support stronger government powers to prevent bad people doing these bad things and keep your children safe?" but sometimes they get awfully close.) This is the reality of the politics of fear in the Western world today. Personally I'm slightly optimistic that things will turn for the best within the next few years. We seem to have widespread concern about "fake news" and unwarranted interference in democratic processes, to the point that now we see explicit "fact checking" becoming a common practice in media reporting of political statements and we're seeing big social media platforms trying to rein in the more questionable propaganda and stop their systems from becoming little more than a rumour-driven mob on a national or global scale. Maybe someone will finally notice that the threat from terrorism is actually pretty small, the threat from excessive government powers is actually pretty big, and in any case all of these resources might be better spent on other areas of government like education or healthcare or infrastructure projects that could make a much bigger difference to a lot more people anyway. We can hope...
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    Cryptography is unknown to many and many fear the unknown.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      True. It certainly doesn't help that a lot of the elected representatives who are making these laws evidently lack even a basic understanding of the technical issues involved, so they are often guided by expert advice from those who entirely coincidentally are the main beneficiaries of the stronger powers being created.
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      Frankly this story doesn't have any substantial to do with cryptography, rather it's about how the media in Australia just doesn't have much protection when anything labelled state secrets are involved. Stories about the raiding and seizing of journalists computers and other materials go back to 2000 at least, see links at end of https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/federal-police-raid-home-of-news-corp-journalist-annika-smethurst https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/feder...
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > Because of our voting system, the more liberal but smaller parties that would challenge such measures tend to be disproportionately under-represented at national level, so authoritarianism almost always wins. Not because of the voting system, but the very inherent nature of the political process. You and me should be much more afraid of a lot of fools being turned into an organised political force than of typical "fascist intellectuals" ganging up on somebody. It is much more easy to coerce an insecure and ignorant person to do crazy things, than that of even most villainous man with intelligence whose crazyness will be at least limited by his instinct of self preservation. Minority juntas tend to be weak because everybody "have to look after their own backs," and different parties trying to prevent others from achieving monopoly on violence, or doing something stupid that has a chance to jeopardise them both. The long lull after WWII was all due to that "everybody having to look after own back" in both society and on the world stage. Four generations have passed since then, and all lessons of that time are now forgotten.
- incompatible 7y ago
  It's just politics in a democratic system. Mainstream parties like the Liberals and Labor in Australia can't go far from what the Australian people will vote for. Apparently, the voters support measures against crime, especially terrorists or paedophiles. Presumably, Labor have done the calculations and think they will lose too much support if the Liberals are accusing them of being weak on crime.
atoav 7y ago
These things should be surprising, but they are not. And this is true around the globe, independent of evidence politician demand ever crazier methods (while at the same time usually reducing both the paychecks and numbers of police officers). I wonder how we, the people, can protect our democratic systems from these dangers?
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Don't elect bad politicians, that is the sum total of the defence available. Laws don't matter if the people in charge don't respect them, so better keep track of who you elect.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > Don't elect bad politicians Systems which rely on benevolent leaders fail. The solution is systems of checks and balances.
    - shusson 7y ago
      and a common set of ethics and morals. Systems can be manipulated and changed.
    - tremon 7y ago
      Bad politicians will attempt to unbalance the checks on them.
    - JasonFruit 7y ago
      I read an interesting passage lately in Murray Rothbard's _Anatomy of the State_, where he makes a convincing argument that every check, every balance, is immediately repurposed by the State as a means of legitimizing its tyrannical overreach. For example, in the US, the Supreme Court is often seen as the arbiter of constitutionality. If the legislature or the executive can get the Supreme Court, then, to give its approval to a limited, innocuous-seeming version of an abuse, it can then point to that as a seal of legitimacy — and the tactic frequently succeeds, mollifying what would otherwise become public outrage. An example is the Supreme Court resistance to, and final acceptance of, FDR's New Deal policies. When the court finally relented and allowed Roosevelt to proceed, it took the wind out of the opposition, which might otherwise have put a stop to it. Instead, similar policies have proceeded without opposition ever since, and finally gained acceptance by both sides of the political establishment. In the end, the only check on abusive government is the people, which must be able to identify tyranny and have a will to oppose it by either voting the bums out, resisting their abuses directly, or forcing them out if necessary.
Lanrei 7y ago
This was from a letter from the Department of Homeland Affairs in regards to the Assistance and Access Act. Notice that they cite terrorism as necessitating the Act, but in actuality they just abuse it. "Encryption is a vital security measure for digital data and the Australian Government is committed to strong protections for personal and commercial information. It makes the communications and devices of all people more secure. While encryption is an important aspect of modern communications it is routinely employed by terrorists, child sex offenders and criminal organisations to mask illegal conduct. This is an impediment to our agencies’ ability to detect and disrupt serious threats to the public. Rapid technological change means that valuable sources of evidence and intelligence are diminishing; 95 per cent of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s (ASIO) most dangerous counter-terrorism targets and 90 per cent of communications lawfully intercepted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are encrypted and unreadable. By 2020, it is expected that all communications among terrorists and organised crime groups will be encrypted. The Assistance and Access Act was introduced as a direct response to this challenge. The legislation passed both Houses on 6 December 2018 and received Royal Assent on 8 December 2018. The need for a modern and fit-for-purpose legal framework was highlighted by the fatal terrorist attack in Melbourne in November 2018, and the subsequent disruption of alleged planning for a mass casualty attack by three individuals. Encrypted communications commonly facilitate the planning and execution of such attacks and it is the Government’s duty to ensure that Australia’s law enforcement and security agencies have the requisite tools to protect the Australian public. The Assistance and Access Act balances the needs of investigators with important limitations and safeguards that protect the privacy of Australians, maintain the security of digital systems and ensures law enforcement’s powers are used appropriately. Robust transparency, oversight and independent scrutiny measures ensure that industry and the public can maintain confidence in the products and services that allow them to communicate securely online. The new laws are not about breaking encryption. It is paramount that the services and devices that Australians rely on remain secure. Through the provisions of the Assistance and Access Act, Government can partner with industry to modernise investigations and prosecute criminals that hide in online spaces while ensuring their assistance does not make the communications of innocent parties vulnerable. That is why the Assistance and Access Act clearly prohibits law enforcement from requiring a communications or device provider to build systemic weaknesses or backdoors into their systems (so called ‘back doors’). The Assistance and Access Act also states a provider cannot be prevented from fixing known weaknesses. Australian agencies are committed to working collaboratively with industry. The regime sets out how this collaboration will occur and builds greater partnerships between providers and Australia’s key law enforcement and security agencies. This is a framework for assistance and does not allow for unwarranted access to communications content or data. Access to this material remains subject to an underlying warrant or authorisation and strong oversight. The Government undertook an extensive three-stage consultation process to develop and consult on these measures, engaging with industry and the public on the entirety of the Act. Significant changes were made in response to feedback from the technology community and civil society – this consultation process improved the legislation, and ensures a more robust response to the challenges posed by a rapidly evolving communications environment."
traderjane 7y ago
> One part of the law updated the powers law enforcement have in executing a warrant. Added into the Crimes Act was the power for agencies to “add, copy, delete or alter” data on computers as part of the execution of warrants.
- ShorsHammer 7y ago
  Just a few bytes here and there could never hurt anyone :) Honestly the scariest part is how there's was virtually no opposition whatsoever to the police being able to put anything onto other people's hard drives, anything! It's an authoritarian wetdream.
- SuperNinjaCat 7y ago
  When I first read this I interpreted it as possibly having something to do with enabling offensive cyber operations (maybe?), it just sounded too weird to be anything else. One thing I did notice during the ABC raid was how the police ignored general digital forensic practices and simply created an archive on the target drive (overwriting any data previously there), dragged and dropped what they wanted into it, then zipped it up and left (this was according to one ABC employees twitter feed while they were in the office as it was happening).
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    That struck me as well. How can they ever use that as evidence in a court case when there is no chain of custody whatsoever? Who cares I guess, they have the power to modify any data they want anyway. It's crazy.
    - SuperNinjaCat 7y ago
      My first impression was that they had no intention of going to court with the data they were after, but then again I've not read up on any legal case studies involving digital forensic evidence handling which are publicly available in Australia (how would a magistrate even deal with that sort of evidence if it can legally be modified? I'm not sure any of these new laws have been tested in court before). It's nuts that something that used to be seen as solid evidence in court could now be seen as totally unreliable, and just because someone may present it saying "trust me because I'm a cop" means absolutely nothing when someone has a duty to factor the human element into the equation. The guidelines regarding the handling of digital forensic evidence (and all types of evidence for that matter) were designed to deal with this. So yeah, I think what I'm trying to say here is that among the new laws, that one in particular could do much more harm than good due to being so vague in its wording and scope. From what I've read about the US court system, this type of evidence would no longer be permitted in 99.9% of cases, It wouldn't matter if you're the damn pope presenting it, everyone's human. I actually wish I knew a magistrate in real life to ask them how they would handle a case involving this law and a drive handed to them by some prosecution team involving the AFP.
SiempreViernes 7y ago
Reading more, I don't think there is any general lesson to learn about the impact of the anti-encryption laws on journalistic freedom. The relationship between the AFP and journalists in Australia seems pretty adversarial, and this new law has simply been misused facilitate already occurring egregious behaviour. It does not appear to allow any novel violations of journalistic rights.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  > The relationship between the AFP and journalists in Australia seems pretty adversarial Well, yes. The AFP was, for a long time, an incompetent shambles. The media reported on the generous vistas of incompetence, bastardry and shambolatry. Now the AFP is essentially taking its revenge, with gusto.
SN76477 7y ago
Being anti encryption is inviting abuse. Politicians will not their position on the topic until they are personally attacked. When their private conversations, images, friends and families start leaking they will begin to care.
- torified 7y ago
  But, but, but... the bill specifically says that they're excluded from the spying! So they're totally immune from that risk! /s Yes, I'll laugh when their pants inevitably fall down. I wonder what the reaction will be. But seriously, I have to wonder what these politicians want the endgame to be. A police state isn't good for anyone, including them. I used to think Australia was the best country and think they were trying their best for Australia's interests, but they are busily removing the good things about Australia at a really scary rate. I don't want to trade a minor increase in "safety" for living in a surveillance dystopia, which is 100% where we're headed.
  - SN76477 7y ago
    With freedom comes risk, I live in the USA and I want to be able to walk down the street without being monitored or tracked. Along with that I must accept that petty crime is going to happen, because I am not the only one walking down the street without being monitored. I think that crime needs to be reevaluated. There needs to be a good financial analysis of where the time and attention is best spent, they cannot find all crime all of the time (which feels like the goal)
    - torified 7y ago
      Finding all crime is not the goal. As the KGB saying goes, "Everyone has committed a crime, it's about who we decide to prosecute".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

244 points by vermilingua 7y ago

The really concerning part is that legislation of this nature often receives bipartisan support in the Australian parliament. I don't recall if it was this bill or a different one, but the opposition released a strongly worded statement saying "we have concerns with this legislation", then voted for it ASAP. A thinner fig leaf of an excuse I have yet to see in politics.

Silhouette 7y ago
This type of bipartisan support seems to be a recurring concern with the more authoritarian "national security" legislation being passed around the world. We have the same thing in the UK, where both of the big parties have tended to support intrusive government surveillance powers. Because of our voting system, the more liberal but smaller parties that would challenge such measures tend to be disproportionately under-represented at national level, so authoritarianism almost always wins. This leads to claims that most people support such measures, yet not so long ago we had a huge grass roots campaign against mandatory ID cards (and related measures like the database behind those cards) that ultimately succeeded in preventing their introduction, so clearly it's not really as simple as that. Certainly some reports based on polling that get brought out to demonstrate that public "support" for these measures have glossed over heavily loaded questions in the polls themselves. (They're not quite "Terrorism is a really serious threat and a nuke might kill everyone. Do you support stronger government powers to prevent bad people doing these bad things and keep your children safe?" but sometimes they get awfully close.) This is the reality of the politics of fear in the Western world today. Personally I'm slightly optimistic that things will turn for the best within the next few years. We seem to have widespread concern about "fake news" and unwarranted interference in democratic processes, to the point that now we see explicit "fact checking" becoming a common practice in media reporting of political statements and we're seeing big social media platforms trying to rein in the more questionable propaganda and stop their systems from becoming little more than a rumour-driven mob on a national or global scale. Maybe someone will finally notice that the threat from terrorism is actually pretty small, the threat from excessive government powers is actually pretty big, and in any case all of these resources might be better spent on other areas of government like education or healthcare or infrastructure projects that could make a much bigger difference to a lot more people anyway. We can hope...
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Cryptography is unknown to many and many fear the unknown.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    True. It certainly doesn't help that a lot of the elected representatives who are making these laws evidently lack even a basic understanding of the technical issues involved, so they are often guided by expert advice from those who entirely coincidentally are the main beneficiaries of the stronger powers being created.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Frankly this story doesn't have any substantial to do with cryptography, rather it's about how the media in Australia just doesn't have much protection when anything labelled state secrets are involved. Stories about the raiding and seizing of journalists computers and other materials go back to 2000 at least, see links at end of https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/federal-police-raid-home-of-news-corp-journalist-annika-smethurst https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/feder...
- baybal2 7y ago
  > Because of our voting system, the more liberal but smaller parties that would challenge such measures tend to be disproportionately under-represented at national level, so authoritarianism almost always wins. Not because of the voting system, but the very inherent nature of the political process. You and me should be much more afraid of a lot of fools being turned into an organised political force than of typical "fascist intellectuals" ganging up on somebody. It is much more easy to coerce an insecure and ignorant person to do crazy things, than that of even most villainous man with intelligence whose crazyness will be at least limited by his instinct of self preservation. Minority juntas tend to be weak because everybody "have to look after their own backs," and different parties trying to prevent others from achieving monopoly on violence, or doing something stupid that has a chance to jeopardise them both. The long lull after WWII was all due to that "everybody having to look after own back" in both society and on the world stage. Four generations have passed since then, and all lessons of that time are now forgotten.
incompatible 7y ago
It's just politics in a democratic system. Mainstream parties like the Liberals and Labor in Australia can't go far from what the Australian people will vote for. Apparently, the voters support measures against crime, especially terrorists or paedophiles. Presumably, Labor have done the calculations and think they will lose too much support if the Liberals are accusing them of being weak on crime.

atoav 7y ago

These things should be surprising, but they are not. And this is true around the globe, independent of evidence politician demand ever crazier methods (while at the same time usually reducing both the paychecks and numbers of police officers). I wonder how we, the people, can protect our democratic systems from these dangers?

SiempreViernes 7y ago
Don't elect bad politicians, that is the sum total of the defence available. Laws don't matter if the people in charge don't respect them, so better keep track of who you elect.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Don't elect bad politicians Systems which rely on benevolent leaders fail. The solution is systems of checks and balances.
  - shusson 7y ago
    and a common set of ethics and morals. Systems can be manipulated and changed.
  - tremon 7y ago
    Bad politicians will attempt to unbalance the checks on them.
  - JasonFruit 7y ago
    I read an interesting passage lately in Murray Rothbard's _Anatomy of the State_, where he makes a convincing argument that every check, every balance, is immediately repurposed by the State as a means of legitimizing its tyrannical overreach. For example, in the US, the Supreme Court is often seen as the arbiter of constitutionality. If the legislature or the executive can get the Supreme Court, then, to give its approval to a limited, innocuous-seeming version of an abuse, it can then point to that as a seal of legitimacy — and the tactic frequently succeeds, mollifying what would otherwise become public outrage. An example is the Supreme Court resistance to, and final acceptance of, FDR's New Deal policies. When the court finally relented and allowed Roosevelt to proceed, it took the wind out of the opposition, which might otherwise have put a stop to it. Instead, similar policies have proceeded without opposition ever since, and finally gained acceptance by both sides of the political establishment. In the end, the only check on abusive government is the people, which must be able to identify tyranny and have a will to oppose it by either voting the bums out, resisting their abuses directly, or forcing them out if necessary.

Lanrei 7y ago

This was from a letter from the Department of Homeland Affairs in regards to the Assistance and Access Act. Notice that they cite terrorism as necessitating the Act, but in actuality they just abuse it. "Encryption is a vital security measure for digital data and the Australian Government is committed to strong protections for personal and commercial information. It makes the communications and devices of all people more secure. While encryption is an important aspect of modern communications it is routinely employed by terrorists, child sex offenders and criminal organisations to mask illegal conduct. This is an impediment to our agencies’ ability to detect and disrupt serious threats to the public. Rapid technological change means that valuable sources of evidence and intelligence are diminishing; 95 per cent of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s (ASIO) most dangerous counter-terrorism targets and 90 per cent of communications lawfully intercepted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are encrypted and unreadable. By 2020, it is expected that all communications among terrorists and organised crime groups will be encrypted. The Assistance and Access Act was introduced as a direct response to this challenge. The legislation passed both Houses on 6 December 2018 and received Royal Assent on 8 December 2018. The need for a modern and fit-for-purpose legal framework was highlighted by the fatal terrorist attack in Melbourne in November 2018, and the subsequent disruption of alleged planning for a mass casualty attack by three individuals. Encrypted communications commonly facilitate the planning and execution of such attacks and it is the Government’s duty to ensure that Australia’s law enforcement and security agencies have the requisite tools to protect the Australian public. The Assistance and Access Act balances the needs of investigators with important limitations and safeguards that protect the privacy of Australians, maintain the security of digital systems and ensures law enforcement’s powers are used appropriately. Robust transparency, oversight and independent scrutiny measures ensure that industry and the public can maintain confidence in the products and services that allow them to communicate securely online. The new laws are not about breaking encryption. It is paramount that the services and devices that Australians rely on remain secure. Through the provisions of the Assistance and Access Act, Government can partner with industry to modernise investigations and prosecute criminals that hide in online spaces while ensuring their assistance does not make the communications of innocent parties vulnerable. That is why the Assistance and Access Act clearly prohibits law enforcement from requiring a communications or device provider to build systemic weaknesses or backdoors into their systems (so called ‘back doors’). The Assistance and Access Act also states a provider cannot be prevented from fixing known weaknesses. Australian agencies are committed to working collaboratively with industry. The regime sets out how this collaboration will occur and builds greater partnerships between providers and Australia’s key law enforcement and security agencies. This is a framework for assistance and does not allow for unwarranted access to communications content or data. Access to this material remains subject to an underlying warrant or authorisation and strong oversight. The Government undertook an extensive three-stage consultation process to develop and consult on these measures, engaging with industry and the public on the entirety of the Act. Significant changes were made in response to feedback from the technology community and civil society – this consultation process improved the legislation, and ensures a more robust response to the challenges posed by a rapidly evolving communications environment."

traderjane 7y ago

> One part of the law updated the powers law enforcement have in executing a warrant. Added into the Crimes Act was the power for agencies to “add, copy, delete or alter” data on computers as part of the execution of warrants.

ShorsHammer 7y ago
Just a few bytes here and there could never hurt anyone :) Honestly the scariest part is how there's was virtually no opposition whatsoever to the police being able to put anything onto other people's hard drives, anything! It's an authoritarian wetdream.
SuperNinjaCat 7y ago
When I first read this I interpreted it as possibly having something to do with enabling offensive cyber operations (maybe?), it just sounded too weird to be anything else. One thing I did notice during the ABC raid was how the police ignored general digital forensic practices and simply created an archive on the target drive (overwriting any data previously there), dragged and dropped what they wanted into it, then zipped it up and left (this was according to one ABC employees twitter feed while they were in the office as it was happening).
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  That struck me as well. How can they ever use that as evidence in a court case when there is no chain of custody whatsoever? Who cares I guess, they have the power to modify any data they want anyway. It's crazy.
  - SuperNinjaCat 7y ago
    My first impression was that they had no intention of going to court with the data they were after, but then again I've not read up on any legal case studies involving digital forensic evidence handling which are publicly available in Australia (how would a magistrate even deal with that sort of evidence if it can legally be modified? I'm not sure any of these new laws have been tested in court before). It's nuts that something that used to be seen as solid evidence in court could now be seen as totally unreliable, and just because someone may present it saying "trust me because I'm a cop" means absolutely nothing when someone has a duty to factor the human element into the equation. The guidelines regarding the handling of digital forensic evidence (and all types of evidence for that matter) were designed to deal with this. So yeah, I think what I'm trying to say here is that among the new laws, that one in particular could do much more harm than good due to being so vague in its wording and scope. From what I've read about the US court system, this type of evidence would no longer be permitted in 99.9% of cases, It wouldn't matter if you're the damn pope presenting it, everyone's human. I actually wish I knew a magistrate in real life to ask them how they would handle a case involving this law and a drive handed to them by some prosecution team involving the AFP.

SiempreViernes 7y ago

Reading more, I don't think there is any general lesson to learn about the impact of the anti-encryption laws on journalistic freedom. The relationship between the AFP and journalists in Australia seems pretty adversarial, and this new law has simply been misused facilitate already occurring egregious behaviour. It does not appear to allow any novel violations of journalistic rights.

jacques_chester 7y ago
> The relationship between the AFP and journalists in Australia seems pretty adversarial Well, yes. The AFP was, for a long time, an incompetent shambles. The media reported on the generous vistas of incompetence, bastardry and shambolatry. Now the AFP is essentially taking its revenge, with gusto.

SN76477 7y ago

Being anti encryption is inviting abuse. Politicians will not their position on the topic until they are personally attacked. When their private conversations, images, friends and families start leaking they will begin to care.

torified 7y ago
But, but, but... the bill specifically says that they're excluded from the spying! So they're totally immune from that risk! /s Yes, I'll laugh when their pants inevitably fall down. I wonder what the reaction will be. But seriously, I have to wonder what these politicians want the endgame to be. A police state isn't good for anyone, including them. I used to think Australia was the best country and think they were trying their best for Australia's interests, but they are busily removing the good things about Australia at a really scary rate. I don't want to trade a minor increase in "safety" for living in a surveillance dystopia, which is 100% where we're headed.
- SN76477 7y ago
  With freedom comes risk, I live in the USA and I want to be able to walk down the street without being monitored or tracked. Along with that I must accept that petty crime is going to happen, because I am not the only one walking down the street without being monitored. I think that crime needs to be reevaluated. There needs to be a good financial analysis of where the time and attention is best spent, they cannot find all crime all of the time (which feels like the goal)
  - torified 7y ago
    Finding all crime is not the goal. As the KGB saying goes, "Everyone has committed a crime, it's about who we decide to prosecute".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]