Australian Police get online account takeover, data disruption powers | Hacker News Reader

Australian Police get online account takeover, data disruption powers

itnews.com.au

148 pointsadrian_mrd83 comments

FTA: “…agencies can take control of a person’s online account to gather evidence about serious offences without consent, as well as add, copy, delete or alter material to disrupt criminal activity and collect intelligence from online networks.” (emphasis added)

How is adding or altering data different than planting evidence?

>> How is adding or altering data different than planting evidence?

I guess it's considered as an undercover/impersonation/honeypot job.

This is going to be used for entrapment 100% Before they had to enter your life as a stranger, gain your trust, and convince you to break the law.

Now, they can assume the identity of someone you already trust and persuade you to break the law.

I was about to post the same extract and ask a slightly different question:

Does this break the chain of trust of evidence? How can any evidence, therefore, be admissible?

Digital / electronic evidence has always been on a bit of a shaky foundation, but this crumbles it to pieces.

I'm sort of hoping this is so badly conceived that it leads to a mistrial or ten and gets amended.. No chance of getting rid of it any other way :(

>> How is adding or altering data different than planting evidence?

> Does this break the chain of trust of evidence? How can any evidence, therefore, be admissible?

Just as advocatus diaboli: If you add a message to a bigger scale drug supplier in the name of one client, you could request an earlier delivery to some location of your choice. This would add content, but not plant any evidence - as the evidence would be the supplier handing you "the keys to the truck". I know nothing about australian law, but i am tempted to think that courts could burn serious time on such a case.

Of course this is dangerous b.s. to have in legislation.

A list of credit card numbers could be modified so that, for example, real people are not affected, and/or to add "watermark" card numbers that identify the precise origin of the dataset if it is ever used.

Hopefully there are strong guards against modified data being used to entrap, and also against modified data being used as evidence.

(I'm not yet sure whether these policies are sensible; just trying to figure out the legitimate uses for these powers rather than assuming the worst, although the latter can also be useful to prevent bad outcomes)

> Hopefully

Lol. You misunderstand the Australian government's propensity for shitfuckery.

I have to agree. That's the most naive thing I've read today. Powers are always abused to a degree, and some more than others. In the "decent" corner of the world the police have less powers, and I think we can extrapolate from that alone.

Evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk4XR6lsQ3o

This presumably does add a defense if you are ever dragged in front of a court accused of posting fruity things through your own account. You can argue that since government agencies have the power to do that as well now, it cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt that you did it.

Because the deception is aimed at other criminals and not a court.

  derpnet.com

  Criminal A: Drugs for sale wholesale
  Criminal B: I will buy pls
  Criminal A: Bring $1m to crossroads at midnight
  Criminal B: OK

  [Criminal B robs bank, gets caught, cops read social]
  [Cops take over account]

  Criminal B: I got the money, can we do 11:30 << written by cops
  Criminal A: Sure, I will be there with drugs
  ...
  Criminal A: Just pulling up
  Criminal A: Oh no

The cops impersonated Criminal B to deceive Criminal A but as long as they are truthful with the court about this it's legal. Please do not read this as an endorsement of cops' truthfulness or this law.

FTA: "She pointed to Operation Ironside, the huge ANoM bust earlier this year that resulted in the arrests of more than 290 people, as a reason for the need for the new powers."

So a successful police operation NOW is evidence that more powers are necessary? What kind of logic is that?

Now they can start their investigation of a suspected criminal element in the Labour Party and any other annoying opposition. These powers are a ruling government’s dream, let alone their financial master’s.

I suppose it becomes trivial to make everything "Labor's Fault(TM)" when you can arbitrarily inject data.

The bullshit, power-grasping logic of police bureaucracies?

Have they been all successfully prosecuted?

Wow.

I don't know how other Aussies feel about this, but to me this is so atrocious I just had to join HN to discuss it.

This is sufficient motivation to abandon my Australian citizenship entirely and move to a country that is not dominated by totalitarian-authoritarian policies designed to impede the progress of a free and open society.

This policy is clearly designed to make sure another Assange-type situation does not happen again.

Australians need to learn to watch their (digital) back with even more care and attention than previously. We do not have the rights we think we do.

Will you still abandon your Austrialian citizenship if you find out that no other first-world country meets your standards?

I doubt it.

A typically purile argument - "the other kids are doing it, why can't Australians also do it?" Just: no.

There are plenty of states that are still fighting this totalitarian-authoritarian effort. Austrian police can't modify peoples data online for their purposes.

>>> There are plenty of states that are still fighting this totalitarian-authoritarian effort.

Curious as to what states you believe those to be?

Germany. Austria.

The memory of the Stasi is still quite fresh in these societies collective consciousness.

Im sorry to say, but thats not true.

Worse than 20 years ago. Better than Australia.

Australia really went off the deep end now in 2021. Horrible mentality with cops who refuse to give their names going around knocking on doors asking if people know about protests being formed. What the actual fuck.

If you follow the NSW and Vic twitter feed for the daily COVID numbers, your post reads exactly like those bots that say something along the lines of "that's it, I'm denouncing my citizenship".

It gets a bit boring, and if you're doing this from a new, green, account, I'm going to assume you're an antagonist account trying to create division within the discussion.

These discussions aren't new, and they started with the AABill, and they've been discussed here for a while now - so why only now decide to "abandon my citizenship"?

I am disgusted by the mostly apathetic response in Australia to this terrible legislation.

It's just another thing to add to the pile.

Australians have got it too good to care about this sort of thing. Like western society and climate change, taking any kind of action gets in the way of enjoying the fucking weekend; don't be such a fucking downer. More sunshine I say!

I stopped writing to my federal member Jim Chalmers about the shitty legislation. I never get a response, I doubt his office even reads them.

> Australians have got it too good to care about this sort of thing. Like western society and climate change, taking any kind of action gets in the way of enjoying the fucking weekend; don't be such a fucking downer. More sunshine I say!

Nonsense. The problem is that the minority parties who oppose overreach like this are treated as dirty (Liberal Democratic Party) and the major parties all support crap like this. And we'll stay in this situation until the focus turns away from trying to ban recreational fishing[0] and steers back towards civil liberties. Of course, any mention of civil liberties today has you called an extremist in Australia by almost every single political party from Labour to the Greens.

[0] http://www.sportingshooter.com.au/latest/proposed-animal-cru...

For the record, the Greens are the only major party to oppose this overreach. (Major in the sense that they are the 3rd largest party outside of the ALP and the Liberal parties, and larger than the National party.[*])

From the article:

  Green Senator Lidia Thorpe described the bill as “terribly flawed” and “problematic”, cited comments in the Richardson review that existing powers were adequate, and criticised the lack of time to consider the government’s amendments.

  “Unsurprisingly, the two major parties are in complete lockstep with each other and they are leading us down the road to a surveillance state,” she said.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Party_of_Australia

The Greens do not support civil liberties. Opposing a single piece of the puzzle (digital surveillance, for now) doesn't change the ongoing assaults that the Greens party has been carrying out since their inception. The whole coal dependence Australia has is a direct consequence of the Greens rejecting alternatives like nuclear[0].

The entire political position of the Greens starts and stops at the 'think of the children' line and regularly makes deals with the major parties even though they have hostile positions. This is most clearly demonstrated in the ongoing attacks on trivial things like recreational fishing and the extremist positions the Greens takes on firearms ownership. Keeping in mind that this position on firearms includes supporting draconian-level surveillance powers being given to police, which essentially vetos their at-face position against digital surveillance today.

Some of their other positions include wanting to tax fast food, additional taxes on alcohol and forceful reacquisition of private service providers. This goes as far as giving the UN powers over Australian legislation and directly reducing Australia's sovereignty -- even for military defence[1]. Again -- hardly interested in civil liberties.

[0] https://greens.org.au/policies/nuclear-and-uranium

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-28/lapkin---the-greens27...

Given how little rights we are guaranteed in Australia by our constitution, I wouldn’t mind our government getting less sovereign and having higher powers to appeal to. The UN is a little dysfunctional at times with things like the rock paper scissor game of who on the security council will veto it this time, but the various UN departments tend to produce pretty decent stuff when it comes to “Human Rights” it’s not like we don’t have the lessons to learn after decades of watching the way the EU worksz

major parties all support crap like this

That's because the major parties represent what they think the people want, and the people aren't motivated enough (or actually don't give a shit) to get a different message through. Cue my commentary.

Every democracy gets the government they voted for.

Sadly, people that have even a little higher emotion than apathy towards this topic are in the minority of the minority.

There’s a difference between apathetic and powerless. Everyone I’ve talked to about this including my non-techie family all “care” and agree it’s total bullshit, multiple called/wrote in against it, but every single one of us knows nothing we do will ever stop or change anything.

What are we supposed to do exactly? Write in and have them completely ignore us? Protest in the streets.. oh wait that’s illegal now. Speak up online against them and have counter terrorism units push our mums down stairs?

ever thought about, idk, breaking those protest laws? This defeatist attitude is exactly how totalitarian states are established. God forbid people put down the hamburgers and actually fight for something though.

Time to drop all Atlassian products.

Fortunately they removed Server licenses (you have to pay millions for the Datacenter ones or use Cloud) just in time for these new laws.

I am interested to hear what atlassian have to say about it, they have been quite pro-australian. But.. what effort do you think the AU police are going to put in to get the data out of your JIRA tickets?

Because if you want to punish Australia for it's poor laws that seems a weak lever to pull.

And if your concern is MITM between servers, virtual machines or clients- well USA has had sufficient inference, probably by government actors, that some big players instituted SSL inside the data centers- I presume after finding taps.

This is legislation to say they can do that sort of thing- it just seems to happen elsewhere but under some seal of secrecy. At least they acknowledge it.

Was more thinking about Confluence than Jira

Where there is troves of data and schematics about various companies infrastructures

Atlassian products are varied across different jurisdictions. Chances are that if you’re using an Atlassian product in the USA, all your data is hosted in the USA too.

Source: I work for Atlassian, platform stuff

At the end of the day though, Atlassian won't even sign NDAs with it's clients.

Make of that what you will.

I'm an EU customer but my Atlassian Cloud contract is still between me and Atlassian Pty Ltd in Australia.

So wherever the data is, the problem is still the same in my opinion.

Atlassian helped with the COVIDSafe app, and one of their founders came here and telling us to trust the government, they know what they're doing, they won't spy on us.

... and then the spy agencies requested access to said app data.

Their BitBucket Server to Cloud migration tools are atrocious. Gitlab actually provides a smoother migration process, as it migrates any Pull Requests as well as everything else that the Atlassian tools did.

Is this the same thing or related to Australian police having the power to compel (under threat of 10 years imprisonment to those who refuse) systems administrators to aid in investigations? I'm not Australian but seeing these sorts of laws being implemented in other commonwealth countries is concerning given how often they spread.

No, those were the Assistance and Access provisions that passed a few years back.

For what it's worth, I found the article I was thinking of: https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2021/help-government-hack-or-f...

Interesting, that article then links to another article discussing the amendments I was referencing: https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2021/encryption-act-has-cost-a...

It's pretty much an extension of that law, which was already questionable.

As an Australian, with the minimal amount of the type of crime that these bills are said to be aimed at in comparison to other parts of the world (like those that actually have physical borders with other countries 'n' shit), it feels as if Australia is being used as a pilot country for the ratcheting (rat-shitting) up of this kind of control to (either or both) gauge public reaction and point to as an example of "well, they implemented it first, so there's precedent" for other five-eyes countries.

I really wonder how all of this will work out once we get the first brain implants. Mobile phones are coming close to that but imagine police can add/remove/tamper with your memory at will…

I’d literally jump off a cliff before considering any kind of brain implant designed to be a computer interface that I wasn’t completely and legally in control of.

If it lets a computer read anything out of my skull it’s going to be 100% under my own control. Like open source, and legally protected from any of these kinds of laws.

The USA has things like the 4th and 5th amendments to protect from crossing that line, Australia’s law has no such inviolate rights.

I tried to tell people that this and worse would happen from the AABill but nobody actually cared. Even talking to a lot of tech-savvy people and tech-savvy lawyers, nope... at most, people raised an eyebrow but couldn't really care less.

If people don't actually care, what more can someone do :(

They won't care until the stories of ordinary people suffering the consequences start emerging. But if the state can portray any victim of this legislation as a criminal, even plant digital evidence that they were conducting criminal activity, then it'll still go unheeded.

What we need is good (investigative) journalism to keep the politicians and oligarchs in check. But the business model for that got destroyed and now we just have Murdoch and clickbait.

Apparently Murdoch isn't a fan of the recent 4 Corners story about the lawsuits against Fox for towing Trump li(n)es about "stolen election!!, so Imma go home and watch it, and I suggest you do too.

Thousands of police and military on the streets maintaining "order". People essentially under house arrest and not allowed to assemble or travel. And now this.

We prevented thousands of deaths, perhaps tens of thousands, with lockdowns. And many more serious illnesses. It was and is still worth it.

How do you know this? Is there a control group?

Did government and media propaganda tell you this?

It's quite clear that during 2020, the case numbers flattened then declined once the lockdown restrictions reached a certain level. (I live in Melbourne so experienced it first hand). Other Australian cities and NZ have been able to contain outbreaks with short lockdowns, and have been able to keep the countries Covid-free, more than any other countries. There is no other plausible explanation for the suppression of the virus that was achieved in 2020.

(For what it's worth, with emergence of the delta strain, suppression measures are not working so well, and the government policies are having to adjust, which is starting to happen now in Victoria).

> Is there a control group?

Yes, almost every other region in the world. Compare our deaths per capita vs countries that took the approach you would have preferred.

"I will sacrifice literally anything to save an unknown number of lives"

Unfortunately many people still defend it and cheer for it. Fear is a powerful emotion and politicians know how to exploit it. Especially when the enemy is invisible and everyone you meet is a potential 'threat'.

If you recall the takeover of the criminal encrypted mobile network used by drug smugglers recently.

That case started around the same time the Australian Government introduced new online data laws. It had to be urgently rushed through with no reason (at the time) given.

The investigation was done by the US with help from Australia Government - I wonder why?

This is just the next step in those laws.

Edit:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/8/22524307/anom-encrypted-me...

Good grief. I have had about enough of the internet. It’s not worth the dystopia.

It's a penal colony again.

They require to be “reasonably necessary, and proportionate” ...sound ambiguous to me, and most importantly, what is "serious offences" or "serious criminal activity on the internet". It says crimes that carry jail time of three or more years. I assume that is minimum sentence. Does not sound extremely serious.threat to harm gives 5years , stalking 3 years, the police will have a field day with this, just think how often these happen online.

When the Deputy Premier of NSW can sic the anti-terror Fixated Persons Unit onto comedians because they don't like their criticism, one has to question how low the bar is on "reasonbly necessary, and proportionate".

China Lite

china.au

Obvious xenophobia aside, Australia is hardly trying to remake itself in China's image.

North Korea with food and surf.

Except for the minor fact that you can move to a different country whenever you feel like it.

Not right now you can't. Australians are flat out not allowed to travel outside the country during the pandemic unless you're attending the Olympics or a politician

> “What’s worse, the data disruption and network activity warrants could be issued by a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – really?" she said.

> "It is outrageous that these warrants won’t come from a judge of a superior court that is appointed on their personal capacity.”

I'm having trouble with the terminology here, but does that mean that these types of warrants could be issued by the equivalent of a magistrate, rather than a judge?

yes.

Not just that, but in what are effectively civil cases of unfair dismissal

no, it means they can be issued by a member of a large tribunal, they are bureaucrats, not even lawyers. (the Administrative Appeals Tribunal). Normally they deal with whether paperwork for such things as licenses or your dole check have been filled in properly.

Dictatorship, plain and simple

wait till india gives their honest and upright police force these and more serious powers to fight "injustice and terrorism".

But think of the children!

That's a dangerous move.

All in the name of safety.

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