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Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

abc.net.au

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Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#331

Post by joshschreuder »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #260
colpabar wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

That so many people were against it?

There was 300ish responses. The tech community and savvy individuals are strongly against it, but the vast majority of people don't care or absolutely don't understand what's at stake here.

As with most deeply technical issues, it is hard to communicate to the general population exactly what the proposed problem and solution is, so the politicians are allowed to freely pass legislation (without understanding it themselves mostly) without much opposition besides the vocal minority.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#332

Post by brokenmachine »

aiisahik wrote: post #308

As an Australian citizen who has spent many years in the US, I can say that this law is in line with the main ideology of the Australian government: extreme parentalism. You run a red light: fine for $450 in the mail. No court date, no arguments. You exceed the speed limit by 5km/h: $200 fine in the mail. No arguments. It is brutal but it's hard to deny that it works. Australia has some of the lowest per capital road…

They are trying to secretly force tech companies into unpaid labour to destroy the security of their own products in their ham-fisted stupid attempts however.

This is much worse than the authoritarian way they handle traffic fines.

There is no legal representation, no judicial oversight and no actual definitions of essential terms in the bill.

Make no mistake, this is a dictatorship.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#333

Post by joshschreuder »

cyphar wrote: post #20
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.

It's 100% posturing and optics. There was nothing achieved by passing this law at the last day of sitting.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#334

Post by brokenmachine »

cyphar wrote: post #205
acutesoftware wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the scary part about this - a company is not allowed to tell people when the data was accessed

They are allowed to provide statistical information (in 6-month windows). Still completely useless in a practical sense.

No. That was an amendment that was not passed.

We got the full dictatorship version with no reporting at all.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#335

Post by jjcm »

anotherhuman0 wrote: post #201

Somebody over on Reddit [1] went through all the submissions (there was a consultation period) and summarised and tallied them [2]. Fully 99%+ of submissions were against the bill. A sad day for democracy indeed. A church in Tasmania was in favour, because child pornography. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/a3j466/assistanc... 2. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dowpZ_Xtr1N_DgkHJN8i...

Oh hey, pwnies from reddit here! It wasn't just me, it was myself and a bunch of my coworkers over at Atlassian. As one of the larger Australian tech companies, many of us are somber today to see this passed.

For context, here was the letter we sent: http://i.imgur.com/yRrZHAq.jpg

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#336

Post by brokenmachine »

Tor3 wrote: post #107
brokenmachine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God this is so true. I am so ashamed of our so-called representatives. Please, Apple, do what you know is right and disable all iPhones in Australia. Google, please do the same with Android. If you have a website, geoblock Australia from it. Quarantine us from the world. We are sick and will infect you all.

> If you have a website, geoblock Australia from it. Just did.. won't even respond to icmp. My Tokyo and UK sites.

Thanks.

Actually, if it's possible, you could redirect to a page saying the reason you are blocking, that would be even better.

Seriously the world should quarantine us.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#337

Post by brokenmachine »

daemin wrote: post #174
brokenmachine wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even this draconian bill I don't think has the power to make telcos mitm sites hosted overseas, does it? But who knows, this bill seems to be the Christmas gift that keeps on giving! Merry Totalitarian Christmas, everyone!!

Setting up a MITM would just be a small request from a low level technical employee. Just make packets from this IP go to this other IP for this one account.

But if that foreign site is using https then the telco couldn't know which account is logging in.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#338

Post by cyphar »

brokenmachine wrote: post #334
cyphar wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are allowed to provide statistical information (in 6-month windows). Still completely useless in a practical sense.

No. That was an amendment that was not passed. We got the full dictatorship version with no reporting at all.

The section on statistics was in the first reading of the bill.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#339

Post by cyphar »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #324
cyphar wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warrant canaries are illegal in Australia, at least in the case of other kinds of secret warrants. I would be very surprised that a judge would (given the existing laws that have similar properties) consider a warrant canary legal. (For those wondering how they can be illegal, in Australia it's illegal to state the existence or non-existence of certain kinds of secret warrants. So a statement of a canary is, itself,…

So if I was an Australian citizen, I'd be committing a crime by saying: I have not had any communications requesting investigative cooperation from any Australian law enforcement or intelligence agency.

No, it would be an offense to make a statement about the existence or nonexistence of a journalistic information warrant.

But I believe the bill which passed actually includes the ability to publish aggregated statistics about how many notices you've received. Removing the need for warrant canaries.

(And you wouldn't have to be a citizen, just a subject of Australian law which means that you are either a citizen, are a constitutional corporation, or physically present within Australia. Same as any other nation's laws.)

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#340

Post by cyphar »

manicdee wrote: post #306
cyphar wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you are reading it as though the words mean what a technical person means by "systemic weakness" (such as weakening the crypto in an app in order to target a user). This is not what the words mean (and this entire bill and discussion around it is full of Orwellian doublespeak -- they redefine the word "backdoor" to mean 0-day for instance). The words aren't defined at all in the bill (which should…

Noting that you can’t seek legal advice because you’re not allowed to talk to anyone about the request.

Obviously the section on disclosure doesn't involve talking to your own legal representation (there is common law on this already). But even if there wasn't common law covering this it's explicitly allowed in Sect 317ZF.3e. You can even reveal it in a legal proceeding under Sect 317ZF.3b.

Australia may be leading the path toward a Kafka-esque state but we're not there yet.

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