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Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

nytimes.com

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Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#71

Post by chiaro »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #22
sanderjd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing much about the Australian system, I suspect the protections in the Constitution are equivalent, but not those in "common law and other legislation". In the US, the protections in the Constitution + Bill of Rights are considered much more fundamental than our common law and other legislation because it requires an amendment to override those protections, and amendments require an enormous level of nati…

> I suspect the protections in the Constitution are equivalent, No, Australia has nothing like the Bill of rights, even if some bits of the constitution cover the same ground very partially. To give a flavour of this, our constitution prohibits an established church using language very similar to the US 1st Amendment. But the silence about freedom of speech is deafening. In the '90s the High Court decided there had t…

Common law rests heavily on stare decisis. The precedent set in Australian Communist Party v Commonwealth is not likely to be overturned, as far as free political speech and organisation goes.

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#72

Post by sdrothrock »

yesenadam wrote: post #57
freedomben wrote: post #18

The headline is a little misleading. It's much more terrifying than that. It isn't just Australia. It is the US, Australia, Canada, UK, and New Zealand all together (known as the "Five Eyes")[1]. Australia is just the country that put the memo together. > The "Five Eyes", often abbreviated as "FVEY", refer to an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.…

Gee, I hadn't heard of that. The Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam only learnt of it when the Attorney-General raided ASIO, Australia's version of the FBI, in 1973. Wikipedia says UKUSA is pronounced yoo-koo-SAH . Rather appropriate - yakuza are "members of transnational organized crime syndicates"...

> Rather appropriate - yukuza are "members of transnational organized crime syndicates"

That would be "yakuza." (YAH-koo-zah)

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#73

Post by ddeck »

wp381640 wrote: post #68
ddeck wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Australia's version of the FBI Not to nitpick, but ASIO is closer to Australia's version of the CIA, as they are primarily focused on foreign "adversaries". Australia has the Australian Federal Police, which is their version of the FBI. https://www.asio.gov.au/what-we-do.html

ASIS[0] is CIA (foreign intel) - ASIO would be the FBI's counter-intel department ASIS is also the department that was secret between its founding in 1952 until 1972 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Secret_Intelligence...

And is also the department that famously decided to conduct a mock hostage rescue training exercise in a 5-star hotel without obtaining permission or even notifying the hotel management and staff.

When ASIS operators were refused entry into a hotel room, they broke down the door with sledgehammers. The hotel manager, Nick Rice, was notified of a disturbance on the 10th floor by a hotel guest. When he went to investigate, he was forced back into the lift by an ASIS operator who rode the lift down to the ground floor and forcibly ejected Rice into the lobby.

Believing a robbery was in progress, Rice called the police. When the lift started returning to the ground floor, ASIS operators emerged wearing masks and openly brandishing 9mm Browning pistols and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, two of them with silencers[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Secret_Intelligence...

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#74

Post by tomjakubowski »

peteretep wrote: post #64
oldandtired wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true. However, in Australia, all interrogations have to be filmed completely. Law enforcement cannot lie to the interviewees, kidnapping of targets is not allowed. If Any law enforcement fails to do the correct thing in these areas, courts here will throw out the case. We had a relatively high profile "terror" case here which was thrown out for incorrect procedural actions (starting with the kidnapping of…

> If Any law enforcement fails to do the correct thing in these areas, courts here will throw out the case. Parliament do have the right -- however -- to simply pass a law that says "oldandtired goes to jail forever" with a simple majority.

Not so, says the highest Australian court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder#Australia

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#75

Post by oldandtired »

peteretep wrote: post #64
oldandtired wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true. However, in Australia, all interrogations have to be filmed completely. Law enforcement cannot lie to the interviewees, kidnapping of targets is not allowed. If Any law enforcement fails to do the correct thing in these areas, courts here will throw out the case. We had a relatively high profile "terror" case here which was thrown out for incorrect procedural actions (starting with the kidnapping of…

> If Any law enforcement fails to do the correct thing in these areas, courts here will throw out the case. Parliament do have the right -- however -- to simply pass a law that says "oldandtired goes to jail forever" with a simple majority.

True, they could and at various times this kind of action has been done by various state governments in the past. But the political backlash has been very large. One is able to challenge the validity of such legislation and the government of the day has to show cause as to why this is valid before the courts.

The problem with the currently enacted terror legislation (approved by both sides) is that only an administrative change in a definition is required. This does not (as far as I can ascertain) require this to even go back to parliament for approval.

The point is that we do have certain rights before the courts that they will enforce. These are not constitutional rights but they are there.

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#76

Post by ehnto »

I found the Assistance Bill to be relatively palatable although still disagreeable and I have emailed in to the forum saying I think it should not pass.

I was just surprised that it had so much awareness of the concerns around what it was doing.

The most worrying part for me was the enabling of remotely serving a warrant. In other words, if they had a warrant for your device they could hack your device instead of physically recovering it. This would mean their cybersecurity team will be broadening it's capabilities and weaponry in that area.

That is worrying. Much in the same way I don't want police cruising town in armoured vehicles with a small arsenal, I am not too hot on investigators being able to sick the hounds on an unsuspecting network. Collateral is a real issue in the digital world too. What if my org network goes down because a warrant was being served remotely on an employee and their exploits were not precision enough?

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#77

Post by ThrustVectoring »

tananaev wrote: post #3

It seems like they are just making it more explicit that companies must cooperate with the police. Isn't it already the case anyway if there is an appropriate court order? At least they are not suggesting to compromise or limit encryption in any way. What I fail to understand is how all this would help fighting crime. Criminals and terrorists can easily use end-to-end encryption for the communication. There is plenty…

>Criminals and terrorists can easily use end-to-end encryption for the communication.

They use applications that take unencrypted plaintext, encrypt it, send it to the recipient's device, decrypt it, and show it as plaintext.

The law is designed to give a staggering amount of authority to use commercial resources to compromise a specific device or installed application in order to read off the plain text before encryption or after decryption and send it to the Australian government. So the "bad guys" would be using what appears to be, say, Signal, except the developers got a notice to send you an app update that swaps out actually encrypting things with "send a copy to the feds and then encrypt things".

Any company developing software or systems that ensures that you have installed what you think you have can be ordered to compromise their systems so that an Australian court order breaks the system. So if your copy of Windows is set up to reject push updates unless they've been signed by Microsoft, well, the Australians can order Microsoft to sign some binaries and push them to you.

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#78

Post by yesenadam »

sdrothrock wrote: post #72
yesenadam wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, I hadn't heard of that. The Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam only learnt of it when the Attorney-General raided ASIO, Australia's version of the FBI, in 1973. Wikipedia says UKUSA is pronounced yoo-koo-SAH . Rather appropriate - yakuza are "members of transnational organized crime syndicates"...

> Rather appropriate - yukuza are "members of transnational organized crime syndicates" That would be "yakuza." (YAH-koo-zah)

Of course, thank you! Corrected.

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#79

Post by ThrustVectoring »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #47

This method won't work for most 'after the event' scenarios, such as the San Bernadino case, because the subjects are often deceased, and so unlikely to be updating the software on their phones or computers, so it can only possibly apply "upon suspicion". ie. pre-crime... This opens up questions as to how someone becomes 'suspicious' if their communication is already encrypted. And if they're already a person of inte…

>How long would it take to develop and deploy a targetted version of a program?

Not particularly relevant - they can require a targeted version of the program be developed before someone comes under suspicion.

>What's the likelihood of the target updating their program during the useful window of time?

Doesn't matter - they can require a force-push update system be built to silently update a specific customer's app version. The law is broadly enough worded that they can order whatever software is in their way to become broken upon receipt of a court order.

>Is this timeframe going to be of use to law enforcement?

Yes, because the law will allow them to force commercial companies to build automated, scaled systems.

>If the timeframe is justified, what's the time limit? Is 'suspect' going to have their comms intercepted for the foreseeable future? At what point is the well deemed to be dry?

We'll never know, because it's designed to be used in secret.

Re: Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level

#80

Post by throwawayperson »

aussiethrow1234 wrote: post #60

40 years ago my parents emigrated from an authoritarian South-East Asian country with a dubious human rights record to come to Australia where their kids could enjoy freedom and opportunity away from all that. Today, I see this announcement in the news and I am wondering which country I can emigrate to with my own kids because I am disgusted with the increasing authoritarian bent of our government, as well as our plu…

I guess that's how market economy works.
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