Controversial Australian encryption laws could pass parliament soon | Hacker News Reader

Controversial Australian encryption laws could pass parliament soon

news.com.au

29 pointstonteldoos11 comments

We are under unprecedented levels of surveillance, with drones, street cameras (possibly with automatic face and gait identification), credit card transactions monitored, phone location logged via cell towers, cars via license plate scanners, pervasive internet monitoring by numerous actors, etc. And that's all -before- someone is actively targeted by the police, which can result in bugs placed in the home, car, and on computers, recording conversations, recording passwords as they're typed in through compromised keyboards or usb cables, or using telescopic lens and a camera, or one of those fancy through-wall-radars. Forensic science has also advanced, allowing traces of suspicious chemicals to be detected on a person, their DNA identified anywhere they shed dead skin cells,

Almost the only scrap of privacy left is due to encryption (easily circumvented by planting bugs), yet they want to strip away even that, claiming we have so much more privacy than ever before, that it's making police work impossible??

As an insight into how well thought out these laws are, then-PM Malcolm Turnbull said the following when announcing these laws in 2017:

"The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only laws that apply in Australia is the law of Australia."

A disappointing case of "let's just make a law, then the nerds can figure it out."

What a funny statement! Thankfully, mathematics does not care about an uneducated politician's beliefs.

Sadly, they will only end up harming the privacy of normal citizens, while adept criminals shift towards truly secure schemes.

Encryption == Liberty

It honestly sounds like satire.

He's not entirely dumb and I've always got the impression that he's not a fan of his own party.

I suspect he knows exactly what he was saying and how stupid it was. But behind him everyone was aggressively nodding their heads.

He's a very intelligent man who as a barrister understands the power of language.

When a very intelligent man who understands the power of language says something so obviously false, it makes me almost certain there is something larger at play here.

The thing that smells bad to me is the combination of

1. They want it to be rushed through

2. It's unprecedented in the western world

3. Australian Governments never do anything unprecedented

Something else is at work, be it straight-up politics, an actual valid suspected terrorist threat, pressure from the US / 5-eyes. Whatever it is, there's no way that unprecedented legislation should be rushed through. EVER.

The same recipe is used in trade agreements and by 5-eyes:

1 - get someone else to write it into local law (if they're small like AUS) or a trade agreement

2 - then get the folks "back home" to pass the same laws because "our international partners demanded it"

You can see that blatantly in TPP: as soon as the US dropped out the other participants ripped out some of (sadly not all of) the worst crap the US was trying to cram into it and passed a much better (IMHO) agreement.

Clearly in this case the US and/or UK are leaning on AUS to do this. There's no significant domestic call for it.

Yes, that's also odd. Australia has been relatively un-touched by terrorism. We've had some lone crazies, but they're just individual mental cases as opposed to a semi-organised cell.

There was a group of three people recently arrested for planning some kind of shooting, but the point is they were discovered and arrested. With the current set of laws.

So some Australian law enforcement entity tells Apple to push an update to a suspects phone that borks the encryption. Apple pretty much has to say no, otherwise they would get in trouble with the US government, which they are currently at odds with for the same refusal.

Then what?

Ignoring the obvious and gigantic privacy implications of this...

This will kill the Australian software industry because Australian software cannot be trusted worldwide from now on.

I suspect Australian politicians are doing what is demanded as a price for retaining the countries current intelligence, military and trade status.

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