8 ms·

Canberra asks to introduce detection capabilities in encrypted communication

172 points by stanislavb 5y ago

randomhodler84 5y ago
Oh hey cool, apple, you know that new system you built? Well we now have 4 new classes of content we want to purge from people’s devices. The system is proposed and governments are already passing laws to exploit it. Fuck all consumer tech.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
That was not even a week between Apple announcing local content scanning, to the Australian government taking a bill from under the table announcing "here's one we prepared earlier". > As such, the government has prepared a consultation paper [PDF] and is accepting submissions until 15 October 2021. Lol. There were thousands of submissions for the AABill and only a handful were read let alone published. This "community consultation" is nothing but a farcical checkbox. The Australian Government have ruined any prospect of a brightful Australian digital future.
- stephen_g 5y ago
  Yes, the "public consultation" was much the same on this bill as the AAbill. Almost universally negative from the public, the "opposition" party came out again and said "This is hugely flawed. We're going to vote it though but we don't like it". It's farcical and absurd.
  - mrslave 5y ago
    Yes, the illusion of choice by the opposition party. Even during an election they barely differentiate. It descends from policy into brand marketing that makes me wonder if I only now get the joke behind the Duff Bowl in that old Simpsons episode.
    - werwqweqwe 5y ago
      Have people here read "Game of Mates" by Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters? I found it hugely illuminating and I really felt like it described mechanisms, and identified dynamics, which I had been aware of but only vaguely able to articulate. Of course the obvious question, is what can concerned citizens do?
      - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
        To be honest, there's nothing we can do. Clearly, the opposition isn't, and the smaller parties like the Greens and Reason don't hold any leverage. I've given up trying to convince people of the government encroachments. In the end, nobody will care anyway as long as they can drink their Victory Gin.
      - bigiain 5y ago
        > what can concerned citizens do? What can they do that's effective? Nothing. Build guillotines, maybe?
WatchDog 5y ago
Another day, another authoritarian overreach by our nanny-state government. Presumably with these changes, apps like Signal will cease to service Australia.
- ggm 5y ago
  Has signal withdrawn service in any economy? Not "has any economy blocked signal" but has signal done geo-IP to say "nope: we don't let you do this"
  - bobiny 5y ago
    I don't think so. I've read it is removed from app stores in Iran and China. A few other countries like Egypt try to block it.
- bobiny 5y ago
  I guess it would be a win for Android - if Signal is removed from AU app store and/or blocked by local ISPs (like in Russia), the way would be to sideload and use VPN.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Why would they need to withdraw service anyway? How can the fines be enforced? I assume the best the government could do is block access to the service but I see no reason why a foreign company needs to care about this law unless they have offices/employees/paying customers in the area.
  - h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
    If the treatment of Assange has taught us anything, it's that crossing borders to catch your prey just requires a little extra leverage
kfprt 5y ago
When you surrender your rights you should expect to never get them back.
- chii 5y ago
  rights are paid for in blood. And sold for pennies.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    They were paid (even pennies) for the guns that were steamrolled/smelted over there?!
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    > Rights are paid for in blood. And sold for pennies. Oh, if I could give you ten upvotes. Very, very, very well put. Today you have made culture. (Are you paraphrasing anyone? The formulation seems original.)
    - chii 5y ago
      it's original - i just made it up on the spot, but it may have been influenced by popular culture which mentions such ideas.
- shell0x 5y ago
  Australia doesn't even have a bill of rights. Privacy is almost non-existent. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-does-australia-go-it-alone-without-a-protective-bill-of-rights/news-story/2d886cabddc5096007a0b85208c5f911 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-does-austral... Australia has agreed to abide by these conventions by protecting the human rights of its citizens and other peoples. However, we are unique among democratic nations in not having brought about a national bill of rights to make these obligations part of our domestic law. The best we have are the human rights acts in the ACT, Victoria and now Queensland. As a result, Australians are often left to complain to the UN when their human rights have been breached as they have no remedy at home.
chrismorgan 5y ago
I expect the discussion here to focus on the encryption part, but very little of this is actually about encryption. The full draft is worth reading, it’s not long: https://www.communications.gov.au/file/52396/download?token=g5mtd5WJ https://www.communications.gov.au/file/52396/download?token=.... In fact, I suspect the discussion here might be more beneficial if the link for this were changed from the ZDNet article to the actual draft PDF. Here’s the full text of the part about encryption: > 8 Additional expectation—provider will take reasonable steps regarding encrypted services > If the service uses encryption, the provider of the service will take reasonable steps to develop and implement processes to detect and address material or activity on the service that is or may be unlawful or harmful. In other words: you can’t just hide behind end-to-end encryption and say it’s out of your hands, you’re still at least somewhat responsible for what happens through your channel if you’re deliberately operating it as a communications channel. (And section 9 is much the same thing but about anonymity.) Certainly all of divisions 1 and 2 is described in impressively vague terms; in practical terms, sections 5 and 6 say roughly nothing, and section 7 says “actually we’re not defining things, it’s up to the commissioner to decide what it means”. Divisions 3 and on are a good deal more specific, giving some insights into what sorts of things would need to be implemented on the client side in an end-to-end encryption scenario. (Would the recent Apple stuff match? I’m not certain, as I haven’t paid close enough attention to that to know, but this Determination is about communication, not storage—notwithstanding possible interpretations of Division 3—so I suspect not.) I’m sighing at clauses 17(1)(d) + 17(2)(a) which say that documents like terms of service “must be written in plain language”, and having a happy dream of a world where large companies actually got taken to task by government for writing their terms of service in legalese.
- stephen_g 5y ago
  Yeah, we have a big problem with this kind of thing in Australia - a lot of legislation is being written in more and more vague terms, with more and more things delegated either to the cabinet ministers or (as in this case) unelected bureaucrats to make decisions. More and more laws have the fuzzy kind of "oh, also anything else that we feel like it applies, we'll know it when we see it" kind of clause in their definitions. The problem is that apart from making for literally just bad laws, it's actually moving away from the principle of "the rule of law" into more and more arbitrary territory - and this isn't just in areas like this, but things like but energy policy, awarding of grants, etc. More and more, Government tenders go as "preferred tenders" rather than open/competitive tenders, and there's just been a big scandal about over a billion dollars of grant programs (in sports, commuter car parks, regional development, etc.) being used around the last election specifically targeted to seats held by the party or marginal seats they wanted to win - with no merit based procedures being followed. But many people might have missed the whole thing, if they mostly only read News Ltd. papers (70% of readership) or watch Sky News here, which curiously didn't report on it... It's really a big mess, everything seems to be getting more and more corrupted...
MikeUt 5y ago
Isn't it strange? Naively one might expect that as surveillance capabilities grow, laws that mandate cooperation with state surveillance would be relaxed or removed. "We have cameras on every street corner, location data on every phone, metadata on every phone call, fingerprints and cheap DNA analysis, so we can drop the requirement that ID must be shown when renting a hotel room." But the opposite happens - the more surveillance we are subjected to, the more laws are introduced to reduce our privacy even further.
villgax 5y ago
I think its' about time to go back to blackberry messaging days with person level invitations & complete P2P networking. Heck security by having every device be encrypted with a different scheme/similar
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  The past was not that pretty - RIM handed out the keys like candy to intelligence agencies around the world. We just can’t ever have nice things that lots of people use. States require visibility first, then censorship/control.
  - bigiain 5y ago
    Very small webs-of-trust? Keysharing parties? PGP-style, but with modern forward ratchet crypto? Personal builds of the Signal apps that you share by installing them on your trusted friend's phones, and a backend you or a trusted friend host yourself on virtual servers outside Australian/FiveEyes jurisdiction? (Give up and destroy all your electronic devices and only ever communicate with people you're in the same room as?)
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      I am going to destroy all my consumer devices, build firm/softwarez from source reproducibly, and never trust Apple again.
      - bigiain 5y ago
        What are you gonna run your firmware/software on? It's not easy to find SOCs without proprietary firmware blobs _somewhere_. I really like the idea of Bunnie Huang's Precursor, but its a fair way from retail availability still, and I doubt it'll be inexpensive enough to be able to convince enough friends to acquire one to make it any use socially. I'm vaguely thinking of building a few devices with a TTGO TBeam and a Pi Zero, that can do medium range (1-10km-ish) LORA point to point and mesh networked shared-key encrypted comms to avoid touching the internet as much as possible, and that can provide (low data rate) mesh wifi bridges so other wifi devices can use the LORA mesh. Theres a project called Meshtastic that provides the bulk of that already on those TTGO boards, with a USB/serial/bluetooth API with some nice python example code. That'd still be "trusting" a bunch on non audible code on the TTGO and RasPi boards though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
runawaybottle 5y ago
So what are we all moving to? PureOS? Need a good phone (Librem?).
perihelions 5y ago
Related (maybe?) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48511217 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48511217 In 2019, Australian federal police raided the home of a journalist, in response to her reporting on secret government plans to enact warrantless digital surveillance. edit: I *think* this is the report she was raided for, https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/spying-shock-shades-of-big-brother-as-cybersecurity-vision-comes-to-light/news-story/bc02f35f23fa104b139160906f2ae709 https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/spying-shock-shad... >"IF two Federal ministers approve, the emails, bank records and text messages of Australian citizens could be seen by digital spies. No warrants would be required and it would all be legal — and done so you’d never know." >"The power grab is detailed in top secret letters between the heads of the Department of Home Affairs and Defence, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, which outline proposed new powers for Australia’s electronic spy agency — the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)." (There haven't been any HN threads about this, btw -- as far as I can tell).
- vermilingua 5y ago
  There were plenty of threads. This was in regards to the AABill, which was lukewarmly discussed here in the leadup to its enactment into law.
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  I find it amazing how someone could argue its OK to remove the judiciary and two Federal ministers is as good. If your going to the lenght of getting federal ministers to sign off, why is it so hard/worse to bring in an independent judge? I'd love for the people behind this to try and cite some cases where the current system has caused terrorists or whatever criminal to escape. Something else I'd like to see is 2 rules: - Passing information of a another countries own citizens to that country is banned, or where its seems likely that it will be passed on. Stop this we'll monitor your people and you monitor ours swap as its effectively the same as spying on your own without warrant. - Any citizen that is spied on gets a copy of the what and why ~15 years later. Long enough so its not going to disturb any investigations, and it hold govt to account so if loads of people start seeing they are spied on we can question what the govt is doing.
anothernewdude 5y ago
Only reasonable steps? So nothing then.
ivanstame 5y ago
AU people gone wild!
bigbaguette 5y ago
Reminder that Australian citizens wanting to leave the country need to ask for permission from the border force, and the exemption process has been quite opaque, and denounced as arbitrary in some cases. Oh and also, this decryption bill from 2018, forcing employees to install backdoors at the request of intelligence agencies without being able to warn senior management.
- grecy 5y ago
  The law also just quietly changed so that Australians in Australia who normally reside in another country now even need to apply for and be granted an exemption before they're permitted to leave. I'm here now, and it feels all kinds of strange to be "stuck", when I don't even live here - no house, no job, etc.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Are they paying for your expenses?
    - grecy 5y ago
      no, nothing.
  - type0 5y ago
    as always, it's a jail
temeritatis 5y ago
> cyberbullying material targeted at an Australian child Oh that didn't take long
jonplackett 5y ago
Now we’re sliding on the slippery slope.
- vermilingua 5y ago
  We have been for years, this is just the aftershock of 2018's shitshow.
okokwhatever 5y ago
We, as a society, won't be remembered as the people of freedom anymore but those who lost it for nothing substantial (devices and social networks...). It's a tragedy.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > lost it for nothing substantial (devices and social networks I do not understand these arguments: they seem to imply an exchange, and there is none. Basic dignity is threatened without a positive counterpart, with the possible exception of more security. And I am very diffident of the "security" effect. There are countries which implement constant and pervasive tracking: their history of 5..10 burglaries per thousand houses per year are not shrunk to a small fraction, for example.
eric4smith 5y ago
A lot of people don't realize that Australians cannot leave Australia -- for quite some time now. On the basis of the current "situation". I can see them restricting entry, but restricting leaving??? You have to go through pretty tough hurdles to get permission to leave the country. And the courts have ok'd the government's power to do this. I'm saying this, because I'll probably never go to Australia, but the government there is actually one of the worst in the universe of "free" countries right now. The right to travel -- man... that's one of the things that we hated the Soviet Union, East Berlin and North Korea for... and now... Australia. And on top of that, adding more surveillance powers. What's going on down under???
- switch007 5y ago
  > A lot of people don't realize that Australians cannot leave Australia -- for quite some time now. Do you mean pre COVID? When I visited 10 years ago I had to pass through a checkpoint (maybe customs) after checking in, before security. I’ve always wondered what that’s for as we don’t have that in the UK. Many countries now effectively have instigated a permission to leave the country system. It’s highly worrying. Many many freedoms have come under assault since early 2020
  - robbiep 5y ago
    It’s post covid, and it’s ostensibly to ensure that they don’t just want to come back again soon which will cause more upset with the government because they will ‘take’ away incoming seats from stranded Australians (currently around 30,000 trying to return to the country, and only I think 3-4000 allowed in a week at present). Not sure what you mean about coming into the country, the steps seem the same to me (inbound into australia) as they do for both the UK and the US - passport control, pick up bag, customs, out. Been the same for as long as I’ve been regularly travelling in and out (~18 years)
    - switch007 5y ago
      > Not sure what you mean about coming into the country, Sorry, I meant on departure from Australia. I distinctly remember going through something like passport control on departure. "When departing Australia, you need to present your passport, completed Outgoing Passenger Card and boarding pass to an ACBPS officer" [0] Though the paper based Outgoing Card seems to have been deprecated in 2017 (before my visit) I don't really have an opinion but the concept was alien to me at the time. Maybe the process is/was less obvious in UK, split between the airlines, advanced passenger info etc. [0] https://assets.ctfassets.net/v228i5y5k0x4/2rMXkdDstm6okc0cgogUYE/2f87d17bb0d1b99d2f8d6697712e2742/GuideforTravellers.pdf https://assets.ctfassets.net/v228i5y5k0x4/2rMXkdDstm6okc0cgo...
8eye 5y ago
australia has become a police state, i knew this was gonna happen after they introduced gun laws, this is scary no matter what you believe, i am sorry, i try to be a positive person but where is the line? who is serving who? what is a democracy and when is a country not a democracy anymore? and lastly, are australians okay with this type of overreach? i don’t know maybe the media outlets are covering this wrong.
igornadj 5y ago
Would love to see tech leave Australia, it seems to be the only way
joshka 5y ago
A pet peeve of mine (as a former Canberran) is substituting Canberra to mean the Australian Government.

172 points by stanislavb 5y ago

Oh hey cool, apple, you know that new system you built? Well we now have 4 new classes of content we want to purge from people’s devices. The system is proposed and governments are already passing laws to exploit it. Fuck all consumer tech.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

That was not even a week between Apple announcing local content scanning, to the Australian government taking a bill from under the table announcing "here's one we prepared earlier". > As such, the government has prepared a consultation paper [PDF] and is accepting submissions until 15 October 2021. Lol. There were thousands of submissions for the AABill and only a handful were read let alone published. This "community consultation" is nothing but a farcical checkbox. The Australian Government have ruined any prospect of a brightful Australian digital future.

stephen_g 5y ago
Yes, the "public consultation" was much the same on this bill as the AAbill. Almost universally negative from the public, the "opposition" party came out again and said "This is hugely flawed. We're going to vote it though but we don't like it". It's farcical and absurd.
- mrslave 5y ago
  Yes, the illusion of choice by the opposition party. Even during an election they barely differentiate. It descends from policy into brand marketing that makes me wonder if I only now get the joke behind the Duff Bowl in that old Simpsons episode.
  - werwqweqwe 5y ago
    Have people here read "Game of Mates" by Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters? I found it hugely illuminating and I really felt like it described mechanisms, and identified dynamics, which I had been aware of but only vaguely able to articulate. Of course the obvious question, is what can concerned citizens do?
    - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      To be honest, there's nothing we can do. Clearly, the opposition isn't, and the smaller parties like the Greens and Reason don't hold any leverage. I've given up trying to convince people of the government encroachments. In the end, nobody will care anyway as long as they can drink their Victory Gin.
    - bigiain 5y ago
      > what can concerned citizens do? What can they do that's effective? Nothing. Build guillotines, maybe?

WatchDog 5y ago

Another day, another authoritarian overreach by our nanny-state government. Presumably with these changes, apps like Signal will cease to service Australia.

ggm 5y ago
Has signal withdrawn service in any economy? Not "has any economy blocked signal" but has signal done geo-IP to say "nope: we don't let you do this"
- bobiny 5y ago
  I don't think so. I've read it is removed from app stores in Iran and China. A few other countries like Egypt try to block it.
bobiny 5y ago
I guess it would be a win for Android - if Signal is removed from AU app store and/or blocked by local ISPs (like in Russia), the way would be to sideload and use VPN.
SilverRed 5y ago
Why would they need to withdraw service anyway? How can the fines be enforced? I assume the best the government could do is block access to the service but I see no reason why a foreign company needs to care about this law unless they have offices/employees/paying customers in the area.
- h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
  If the treatment of Assange has taught us anything, it's that crossing borders to catch your prey just requires a little extra leverage

kfprt 5y ago

When you surrender your rights you should expect to never get them back.

chii 5y ago
rights are paid for in blood. And sold for pennies.
- atatatat 5y ago
  They were paid (even pennies) for the guns that were steamrolled/smelted over there?!
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > Rights are paid for in blood. And sold for pennies. Oh, if I could give you ten upvotes. Very, very, very well put. Today you have made culture. (Are you paraphrasing anyone? The formulation seems original.)
  - chii 5y ago
    it's original - i just made it up on the spot, but it may have been influenced by popular culture which mentions such ideas.
shell0x 5y ago
Australia doesn't even have a bill of rights. Privacy is almost non-existent. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-does-australia-go-it-alone-without-a-protective-bill-of-rights/news-story/2d886cabddc5096007a0b85208c5f911 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-does-austral... Australia has agreed to abide by these conventions by protecting the human rights of its citizens and other peoples. However, we are unique among democratic nations in not having brought about a national bill of rights to make these obligations part of our domestic law. The best we have are the human rights acts in the ACT, Victoria and now Queensland. As a result, Australians are often left to complain to the UN when their human rights have been breached as they have no remedy at home.

chrismorgan 5y ago

I expect the discussion here to focus on the encryption part, but very little of this is actually about encryption. The full draft is worth reading, it’s not long: https://www.communications.gov.au/file/52396/download?token=g5mtd5WJ https://www.communications.gov.au/file/52396/download?token=.... In fact, I suspect the discussion here might be more beneficial if the link for this were changed from the ZDNet article to the actual draft PDF. Here’s the full text of the part about encryption: > 8 Additional expectation—provider will take reasonable steps regarding encrypted services > If the service uses encryption, the provider of the service will take reasonable steps to develop and implement processes to detect and address material or activity on the service that is or may be unlawful or harmful. In other words: you can’t just hide behind end-to-end encryption and say it’s out of your hands, you’re still at least somewhat responsible for what happens through your channel if you’re deliberately operating it as a communications channel. (And section 9 is much the same thing but about anonymity.) Certainly all of divisions 1 and 2 is described in impressively vague terms; in practical terms, sections 5 and 6 say roughly nothing, and section 7 says “actually we’re not defining things, it’s up to the commissioner to decide what it means”. Divisions 3 and on are a good deal more specific, giving some insights into what sorts of things would need to be implemented on the client side in an end-to-end encryption scenario. (Would the recent Apple stuff match? I’m not certain, as I haven’t paid close enough attention to that to know, but this Determination is about communication, not storage—notwithstanding possible interpretations of Division 3—so I suspect not.) I’m sighing at clauses 17(1)(d) + 17(2)(a) which say that documents like terms of service “must be written in plain language”, and having a happy dream of a world where large companies actually got taken to task by government for writing their terms of service in legalese.

stephen_g 5y ago
Yeah, we have a big problem with this kind of thing in Australia - a lot of legislation is being written in more and more vague terms, with more and more things delegated either to the cabinet ministers or (as in this case) unelected bureaucrats to make decisions. More and more laws have the fuzzy kind of "oh, also anything else that we feel like it applies, we'll know it when we see it" kind of clause in their definitions. The problem is that apart from making for literally just bad laws, it's actually moving away from the principle of "the rule of law" into more and more arbitrary territory - and this isn't just in areas like this, but things like but energy policy, awarding of grants, etc. More and more, Government tenders go as "preferred tenders" rather than open/competitive tenders, and there's just been a big scandal about over a billion dollars of grant programs (in sports, commuter car parks, regional development, etc.) being used around the last election specifically targeted to seats held by the party or marginal seats they wanted to win - with no merit based procedures being followed. But many people might have missed the whole thing, if they mostly only read News Ltd. papers (70% of readership) or watch Sky News here, which curiously didn't report on it... It's really a big mess, everything seems to be getting more and more corrupted...

MikeUt 5y ago

Isn't it strange? Naively one might expect that as surveillance capabilities grow, laws that mandate cooperation with state surveillance would be relaxed or removed. "We have cameras on every street corner, location data on every phone, metadata on every phone call, fingerprints and cheap DNA analysis, so we can drop the requirement that ID must be shown when renting a hotel room." But the opposite happens - the more surveillance we are subjected to, the more laws are introduced to reduce our privacy even further.

villgax 5y ago

I think its' about time to go back to blackberry messaging days with person level invitations & complete P2P networking. Heck security by having every device be encrypted with a different scheme/similar

randomhodler84 5y ago
The past was not that pretty - RIM handed out the keys like candy to intelligence agencies around the world. We just can’t ever have nice things that lots of people use. States require visibility first, then censorship/control.
- bigiain 5y ago
  Very small webs-of-trust? Keysharing parties? PGP-style, but with modern forward ratchet crypto? Personal builds of the Signal apps that you share by installing them on your trusted friend's phones, and a backend you or a trusted friend host yourself on virtual servers outside Australian/FiveEyes jurisdiction? (Give up and destroy all your electronic devices and only ever communicate with people you're in the same room as?)
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    I am going to destroy all my consumer devices, build firm/softwarez from source reproducibly, and never trust Apple again.
    - bigiain 5y ago
      What are you gonna run your firmware/software on? It's not easy to find SOCs without proprietary firmware blobs _somewhere_. I really like the idea of Bunnie Huang's Precursor, but its a fair way from retail availability still, and I doubt it'll be inexpensive enough to be able to convince enough friends to acquire one to make it any use socially. I'm vaguely thinking of building a few devices with a TTGO TBeam and a Pi Zero, that can do medium range (1-10km-ish) LORA point to point and mesh networked shared-key encrypted comms to avoid touching the internet as much as possible, and that can provide (low data rate) mesh wifi bridges so other wifi devices can use the LORA mesh. Theres a project called Meshtastic that provides the bulk of that already on those TTGO boards, with a USB/serial/bluetooth API with some nice python example code. That'd still be "trusting" a bunch on non audible code on the TTGO and RasPi boards though.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

runawaybottle 5y ago

So what are we all moving to? PureOS? Need a good phone (Librem?).

perihelions 5y ago

Related (maybe?) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48511217 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48511217 In 2019, Australian federal police raided the home of a journalist, in response to her reporting on secret government plans to enact warrantless digital surveillance. edit: I *think* this is the report she was raided for, https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/spying-shock-shades-of-big-brother-as-cybersecurity-vision-comes-to-light/news-story/bc02f35f23fa104b139160906f2ae709 https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/spying-shock-shad... >"IF two Federal ministers approve, the emails, bank records and text messages of Australian citizens could be seen by digital spies. No warrants would be required and it would all be legal — and done so you’d never know." >"The power grab is detailed in top secret letters between the heads of the Department of Home Affairs and Defence, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, which outline proposed new powers for Australia’s electronic spy agency — the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)." (There haven't been any HN threads about this, btw -- as far as I can tell).

vermilingua 5y ago
There were plenty of threads. This was in regards to the AABill, which was lukewarmly discussed here in the leadup to its enactment into law.
Gustomaximus 5y ago
I find it amazing how someone could argue its OK to remove the judiciary and two Federal ministers is as good. If your going to the lenght of getting federal ministers to sign off, why is it so hard/worse to bring in an independent judge? I'd love for the people behind this to try and cite some cases where the current system has caused terrorists or whatever criminal to escape. Something else I'd like to see is 2 rules: - Passing information of a another countries own citizens to that country is banned, or where its seems likely that it will be passed on. Stop this we'll monitor your people and you monitor ours swap as its effectively the same as spying on your own without warrant. - Any citizen that is spied on gets a copy of the what and why ~15 years later. Long enough so its not going to disturb any investigations, and it hold govt to account so if loads of people start seeing they are spied on we can question what the govt is doing.

anothernewdude 5y ago

Only reasonable steps? So nothing then.

ivanstame 5y ago

AU people gone wild!

bigbaguette 5y ago

Reminder that Australian citizens wanting to leave the country need to ask for permission from the border force, and the exemption process has been quite opaque, and denounced as arbitrary in some cases. Oh and also, this decryption bill from 2018, forcing employees to install backdoors at the request of intelligence agencies without being able to warn senior management.

grecy 5y ago
The law also just quietly changed so that Australians in Australia who normally reside in another country now even need to apply for and be granted an exemption before they're permitted to leave. I'm here now, and it feels all kinds of strange to be "stuck", when I don't even live here - no house, no job, etc.
- atatatat 5y ago
  Are they paying for your expenses?
  - grecy 5y ago
    no, nothing.
- type0 5y ago
  as always, it's a jail

temeritatis 5y ago

> cyberbullying material targeted at an Australian child Oh that didn't take long

jonplackett 5y ago

Now we’re sliding on the slippery slope.

vermilingua 5y ago
We have been for years, this is just the aftershock of 2018's shitshow.

okokwhatever 5y ago

We, as a society, won't be remembered as the people of freedom anymore but those who lost it for nothing substantial (devices and social networks...). It's a tragedy.

mdp2021 5y ago
> lost it for nothing substantial (devices and social networks I do not understand these arguments: they seem to imply an exchange, and there is none. Basic dignity is threatened without a positive counterpart, with the possible exception of more security. And I am very diffident of the "security" effect. There are countries which implement constant and pervasive tracking: their history of 5..10 burglaries per thousand houses per year are not shrunk to a small fraction, for example.

eric4smith 5y ago

A lot of people don't realize that Australians cannot leave Australia -- for quite some time now. On the basis of the current "situation". I can see them restricting entry, but restricting leaving??? You have to go through pretty tough hurdles to get permission to leave the country. And the courts have ok'd the government's power to do this. I'm saying this, because I'll probably never go to Australia, but the government there is actually one of the worst in the universe of "free" countries right now. The right to travel -- man... that's one of the things that we hated the Soviet Union, East Berlin and North Korea for... and now... Australia. And on top of that, adding more surveillance powers. What's going on down under???

switch007 5y ago
> A lot of people don't realize that Australians cannot leave Australia -- for quite some time now. Do you mean pre COVID? When I visited 10 years ago I had to pass through a checkpoint (maybe customs) after checking in, before security. I’ve always wondered what that’s for as we don’t have that in the UK. Many countries now effectively have instigated a permission to leave the country system. It’s highly worrying. Many many freedoms have come under assault since early 2020
- robbiep 5y ago
  It’s post covid, and it’s ostensibly to ensure that they don’t just want to come back again soon which will cause more upset with the government because they will ‘take’ away incoming seats from stranded Australians (currently around 30,000 trying to return to the country, and only I think 3-4000 allowed in a week at present). Not sure what you mean about coming into the country, the steps seem the same to me (inbound into australia) as they do for both the UK and the US - passport control, pick up bag, customs, out. Been the same for as long as I’ve been regularly travelling in and out (~18 years)
  - switch007 5y ago
    > Not sure what you mean about coming into the country, Sorry, I meant on departure from Australia. I distinctly remember going through something like passport control on departure. "When departing Australia, you need to present your passport, completed Outgoing Passenger Card and boarding pass to an ACBPS officer" [0] Though the paper based Outgoing Card seems to have been deprecated in 2017 (before my visit) I don't really have an opinion but the concept was alien to me at the time. Maybe the process is/was less obvious in UK, split between the airlines, advanced passenger info etc. [0] https://assets.ctfassets.net/v228i5y5k0x4/2rMXkdDstm6okc0cgogUYE/2f87d17bb0d1b99d2f8d6697712e2742/GuideforTravellers.pdf https://assets.ctfassets.net/v228i5y5k0x4/2rMXkdDstm6okc0cgo...

8eye 5y ago

australia has become a police state, i knew this was gonna happen after they introduced gun laws, this is scary no matter what you believe, i am sorry, i try to be a positive person but where is the line? who is serving who? what is a democracy and when is a country not a democracy anymore? and lastly, are australians okay with this type of overreach? i don’t know maybe the media outlets are covering this wrong.

igornadj 5y ago

Would love to see tech leave Australia, it seems to be the only way

joshka 5y ago

A pet peeve of mine (as a former Canberran) is substituting Canberra to mean the Australian Government.