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Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

abc.net.au

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Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#11

Post by ENGNR »

askaboutit wrote: post #7
TheChaplain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Atlassian Australian? Or did they move?

They’re Australian but have offices in other countries. I believe they would move for the right reasons. This seems like a pretty big reason, considering they’re targeted at enterprise. But move where? UK will have this next, America does this without any laws at much greater effect and scale.

Iceland? Switzerland?

They'd need the system admins, CI infrastructure and code review team to be in a jurisdiction free of this kind of thing, and then treat all changes subject to laws like these as hostile

The alternative is sell software that everyone knows has backdoors. Pretty hard business case to make

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#15

Post by healsjnr1 »

This is another thing that adds to my deep sense of shame to live in this country (sadly, that list is long and growing).

This bill does nothing to prevent the kinds of things it is intended to prevent. The apps this law targets were engineered specifically to prevent this kind of interference. The idea that passing legislation will suddenly change that, magically allowing decryption of messages is beyond idiotic.

The legal and technical barriers to getting anything useful from this legislation are huge. Not to mention the ease with which this can be bypassed (run OpenVPN and IRC on an overseas server, done).

The justification for rushing this was so that Australia could be kept 'safe' over Christmas. It's beyond difficult to describe how ridiculous that is.

Edit: Sorry, I also have to add that in the same sitting of Parliament the government also filibustered legislation that would have enabled medical evacuation of refugee children from child detention on Nauru. It's been a bad day for Human rights in Australia.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#16

Post by steve_taylor »

CalRobert wrote: post #5

How can someone know whether their software is compromised by this?

Officially, they can’t, but you can be absolutely certain that iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram are going to be immediately targeted with TCNs (technical capability notice), requiring them to bundle Australian government spyware and requiring that those apps send all conversations to the spyware.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#17

Post by cyphar »

ENGNR wrote: post #13

Doesn't this also effect git repositories maintained by Australians? (I say this as an Australian who wants secure software) All it takes is one malicious npm package

As an Australian software developer who has written encryption software in the past, I'm also very concerned. I'm also doubly concerned that projects will now reject my patches because of my nationality. What an amazing shitshow of a government.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#19

Post by cyphar »

steve_taylor wrote: post #16
CalRobert wrote: post #5

How can someone know whether their software is compromised by this?

Officially, they can’t, but you can be absolutely certain that iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram are going to be immediately targeted with TCNs (technical capability notice), requiring them to bundle Australian government spyware and requiring that those apps send all conversations to the spyware.

This isn't quite true. The bill allows companies to provide statistics on how many TARs, TANs, and TCNs they've been served within a 6-month window. The obvious problem is that nothing stops them from lying or just omitting that information -- because why would you admit that your software is insecure?

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#20

Post by cyphar »

healsjnr1 wrote: post #15

This is another thing that adds to my deep sense of shame to live in this country (sadly, that list is long and growing). This bill does nothing to prevent the kinds of things it is intended to prevent. The apps this law targets were engineered specifically to prevent this kind of interference. The idea that passing legislation will suddenly change that, magically allowing decryption of messages is beyond idiotic. Th…

> It's beyond difficult to describe how ridiculous that is.

Especially since ASIO (who really wanted this bill to pass) has stated that even if the bill passed today, they wouldn't have the necessary powers before Christmas.

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