- Australia - The Assistance Access Bill 2018
- ===========================================
- The government is gearing up to attack the privacy of all Australians as well as all internet users of the world.
- Sounds like a conspiracy theory right? Well unfortunately you'd be wrong.
- You can have a read of the proposed legislation here:
- https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-assistance-access-bill-2018.pdf
- This legislation will force companies and individuals who have created "services" to weaken the security of the service.
- This will be done through purpose built "tools" either created by the service/individual in question or a government agency.
- These tools can be baked in to the service (apps, software, web sites etc).
- The legislation literally includes everyone who’s ever written an app or hosted a Web site worldwide.
- Google, Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc.
- Simply because of one Australian user of the service who is a person of interest to Australian Government agencies.
- You might think that they would just target certain individuals who are of interest. However, this will not be the case.
- The Snowden revelations (https://edwardsnowden.com/revelations/) proved that Governments cannot be trusted.
- Australia was right alongside the NSA and GCHQ in breaching the privacy of their own citizens.
- We would be fools to fall for the same trick again.
- The government says this isn't a backdoor.
- However the tools they are eluding to are more commonly known to all of us as spyware (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware)
- The usual excuses are used as to why this is needed. Sex offenders and terrorists.
- In the example given at homeaffairs.gov.au think about why a sex offender was allowed access to the internet at all.
- Hackers get 10 years or more in prison and then aren't allowed to access the internet while on parole for years in some cases.
- This example is simply caused by a problem stemming from the courts inability to hand out adequate sentences. Not encryption.
- The government knows just as well as we do that criminals will just adapt.
- Causing criminals to adapt will mean that eventually they will create their own methods to stay hidden online.
- An example of this is decentralized communication that doesn't involve centralized services.
- The communications operate on local information, not the instructions of any commanding influence.
- Services like these are already readily available and would be quite trivial for criminals to adapt to.
- This will leave hardworking law abiding citizens, Australian or not, to be monitored and have their privacy stripped.
- Comments are open until 10 September 2018 so please express your concerns by contacting:
- Read more:
- https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistance-and-access-bill-2018
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/trust-us-were-secretly-working-foreign-government-how-australias-proposed-crypto
- https://mashable.com/2018/08/14/australia-encryption-laws-tech/
- https://www.innovationaus.com/2018/06/An-encryption-bill-with-holes-in-it
- https://www.itnews.com.au/news/govt-finally-reveals-how-it-plans-to-target-encryption-500156