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The timing of this story was incredibly suss. Right before they launched this campaign against encryption, and it just doesn't pass the sniff-test.

Why can't they do some old fashioned police work and interview the girls? Get a warrant and physically monitor his movements to catch him visiting them, or them visiting him? You know... investigate. It's what we pay you to do.

They don't get to treat every single one of us as criminals just because they can't be bothered getting off their arses and doing some work. If I tried to make that excuse to my boss (and I'm public sector like them), they'd laugh at me and tell me to get to work or find a new job.

They also assume he's guilty whilst simultaneously claiming they have no evidence to demonstrate to a court that guilt. That's contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art.11).

That's a great point. The whole tone is "we know he is guilty but traditional policing methods have been unable to prove that, therefore we must have these additional powers to prove what we already know".

Also...

> Enquiries showed that he was contacting these females

What are these mysterious enquiries? Why not follow up on those? If one or more of those victims was willing to give access to their devices/accounts they'd get the evidence they needed anyway.

> What are these mysterious enquiries? Why not follow up on those?

I know this is a rhetorical question, but the answer is that the whole "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" angle is a façade. The real reason to implement any of this is to gain more power over the populace by making meaningful resistance of the government harder.

FTR, Australia long ago gave up any pretence to being an honest supporter of the UNDHR. It has breached it many, many times in recent years, and cynically covers this fact up by referring to the individuals involved as "illegal entrants", "illegal immigrants" and "unauthorised arrivals" .. justifying a long list of heinous crimes committed against these individuals.

Do not fool yourself: Australia is on a slippery slope towards a heinous future, and ignoring the UNDHR is one of the key steps it is taking towards that event horizon. It has never given a damn about the rights of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, by way of example ..

> Due to an inability to access his phone as well as the fact that he used encrypted communication methods such as Snapchat and Facebook Messenger, Victoria Police was unable to access evidence which would have enabled them to secure a successful prosecution and identify further victims and offences.

That's a textbook example of begging the question, huh. Without the alleged evidence, they don't know if they would have been able to get a conviction or not.

It also presumes that none of the parents of those minor children would let police look at their kids' phones. If I were a parent in that situation and the police wanted to see what messages the accused had sent to my child, I've break the speed of sound on my way to the police station to hand it over.

So all in all, what they intended was "OMG please think of the children". What I heard was "we have incompetent police who don't understand how the justice system is supposed to work".

From what I understood Whatsapp does regularly work with the police. The contents is encrypted. But you can easily monitor who communicates with whom. So if one person is unwilling, you can check if the other is willing.

I find it more worrisome that going after one person is more important than the privacy of a huge group.

Why must we all open our communication just because of a few sick individuals who are already imprissioned or under surveillance?

I don't think the justification for spying on you is really why they want to spy on you.

Australia is terrified that its war crimes are going to be discovered in the next few years, and therefore there is a push on to make encryption unusable for the general public.

If the general public knew what the ADF were doing, there would be bodies hanging from the flagpoles in Canberra. This move is a direct response to the fear that officials have, of Australians learning the truth about how the ADF is being used to effectively destroy civilisation in the Middle East and around the world.

However, the truth is out there, and it will be known. The clock is ticking for those who have allowed us all to be conned into the lies and trickery of the so-called 5-eyes new world order.

What's the connection between usable crypto and disclosure of these crimes?

If they have the ability to spy on every single communication, the chances of pulling off a leak are much, much lower. Wikileaks is still alive and running today because of encryption. Once this changes, we won't have transparent societies for anyone but the holders of the keys ..

Yeah, that's not completely unfair.

I tend to think that leaks will always happen, regardless of communications media, surveillance, and encryption. But your point isn't entirely unfounded.

Australia passed a law earlier this year[1] which now has a mandatory 25-year minimum sentence for anyone who leaks government information. They're definitely trying to stop leaks from happening, and it's fucking disgraceful.

I also just discovered that this law also criminalises (with a 10-year prison sentence) creating software vulnerabilities in anything that is part of public infrastructure. This means that you could arguably give any software engineer (that has ever worked on free software the government uses) a mandatory 10-year prison sentence for being a saboteur because they were "reckless".

[1]: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018A00067

Absolutely none, obviously.

You'd be surprised at what "a few sick individuals" can do to civilized society.

Especially when they are in power and can operate in unfettered secrecy, away from civil society - the only really truly effective governor of heinous human activities such as those enacted by the current mob of Australian politicos/oligarchs.

Kissinger, Cheney, Clinton, Bolton... I think we're past the point of surprise with this phenomenon.

>Victoria Police received intel that he was breaching his RSO and parole conditions by contacting a number of females typically between 13 and 17 years of age. Enquiries showed that he was contacting these females and offering them drugs in return for sexual favours

That makes it sound as if they've got enough. Metadata Retention, which was legislated a couple of years ago, would be able to join the dots. Can't see the content, can match up sources, destinations, locations, and timestamps. Case closed - or at least it's up to a jury from there.

It's like they're requiring a high definition video of a murder being committed before they can charge someone for the murder even though they've got the murder weapon, motive, opportunity, and all those other things that almost guarantee a conviction.

Additional thought: What if the messages were deleted off the phone as soon as they were sent? Or accounts were added to the phone, messages sent, message deleted, account removed from phone? Like a smart criminal would do? The way they're desperately wanting this data makes it sound as if a lack of it could be used as defense evidence, which is NOT what the authorities would want at all.

They've got enough to make a convincing case. A smoking gun is a luxury, not a requirement.

> encrypted communication methods such as Snapchat and Facebook Messenger

neither of these are encrypted communication methods.

FB Messenger has an encrypted mode (though I've never seen anyone use it!).

The justification is playing on people who don't know why encryption is necessary. It's nothing more than "but think of the children" crap.