[AusNOG] Assistance and Access Bill moves to PJCIS

Thu Mar 28 12:33:14 EST 2019

The silence on the Assistance and Access Act since it passed in December
has been deafening. It was firmly understood, on representations by the
Liberal Government, that the bill passed was passed as an expedient, yet
now we have the third report from PJCIS due 3rd April, and yet another
round of submissions from corporations large and small, industry luminaries
and human rights and legal experts, all saying that basically we're where
we were back in September 2018, when Dutton rather disingenuously reported
to the House that:

"The government has consulted extensively with industry and the public on
these measures and has made amendments to reflect the feedback in the
legislation now before the parliament."

Yet no matter how many submissions are made to how many parliamentary
committees, we now seem stuck with a deeply flawed Act, the Liberals are
walking backwards on the Labor amendements, while the country's police
forces now operate with sweeping interception powers well beyond what's
necessary and proportional.

Kind regards

Paul Wilkins

On Thu, 14 Feb 2019 at 12:03, Paul Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ACIC in their submission seem to be making the case, that as police now
> have EA powers under the Act to surveil targets, so too should the ACIC
> have EA powers to surveil the police.
>
> https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=989cabd1-5e9f-4fc3-a961-9a8b94683e7b&subId=666446
>
> I think however this too is wrong, and that two wrongs don't make a right.
> The police should never have been given EA powers to break encryption when
> all they need is legal intercept. And then ACIC too could have LI powers.
>
> As I point out in my latest PJCIS submission,
>
> https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=4d150922-3809-4487-aa2f-f8976f2b3789&subId=666483
> there's a basic difference between Legal Intercept and Exceptional Access,
> where EA you need read/modify/write/delete rights, whereas LI is read only.
>
> If you restrict access by the police to read only, a very large chunk of
> the ensuant vulnerabilities go away. Further, the amount of damage the
> police can do on a magical mystery tour of your data centre is contained.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Paul Wilkins
>
>
> On Thu, 24 Jan 2019 at 13:27, Robert Hudson <hudrob at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The government said they'd consider them, not that they'd implement them.
>>
>> I have very little faith at all that without significant pressure being
>> brought to bear, that the government response would be anything more than
>> "we consider them, and decided no, we're happy as we are".
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Jan 2019 at 13:03, Paul Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Labor's amendments haven't been forgotten, and will have to be dealt
>>> with eventually, when the time comes for the PJCIS to table their April
>>> recommendations.
>>>
>>> Noone is forgetting that the Act was passed as an interim measure, to
>>> allow law enforcement to deal with the Christmas break with new powers. It
>>> would be a serious breach of faith for the government to renege on the
>>> outstanding amendments.
>>>
>>> Kind regards
>>>
>>> Paul Wilkins
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2019 at 13:24, Michelle Sullivan <michelle at sorbs.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Paul Wilkins wrote:
>>>> > Obviously this has been in limbo over the Christmas break. There's 2
>>>> > really important issues, on hold because of this.
>>>> >
>>>> > 1 - When or if the PJCIS will call for public comment on the Act as
>>>> > passed.
>>>> >
>>>> > 2 - The appearance of the Labor amendments.
>>>> >
>>>> > So we probably won't see any developments until Parliament resumes
>>>> > 12th February.
>>>>
>>>> I'll lay money there will be no amendments (passed), there will be an
>>>> attempt to force Apple etc to write in a weakness which will be
>>>> challenged.  There will be many people that will not update their
>>>> iOS/Andriod anytime soon.  Personally I stopped updating the moment
>>>> this
>>>> bill was passed - particularly as there is at least one Apple update
>>>> that stated, "No bug/security fixes"...
>>>>
>>>> What you will most likely find (and the idiots over in the ACT haven;'t
>>>> worked it out yet) is that the terrorists have some very smart people
>>>> "working" for them and they probably already jailbreak their phones and
>>>> install their own messaging software on it.. (not that you need to
>>>> jailbreak when you can use the 'team' functionality in xcode to install
>>>> non apple approved apps on your phone.)
>>>>
>>>> Of course the highly amusing part is how easy it is to plugin to online
>>>> services and how easy it is to run your own asymmetric cryptography...
>>>> I
>>>> suspect it would be trivial to put your own encryption over the top of
>>>> any of those services/apps that allow such (and some already do -
>>>> recently came across a plugin to the mailapp that has a custom
>>>> encryption/decryption mechanism which is used by a bank for secure
>>>> messaging.  This means as posted elsewhere any interception would have
>>>> to be by screen capture and keyboard interception on the device, which
>>>> I
>>>> personally would immediately class as a systemic weakness because if I
>>>> were doing it i'd be cut/pasting messages into my own non-internet
>>>> connected app for encryption/decryption so you can capture what you
>>>> want
>>>> off imessage, facebook messenger etc... you'd still be getting
>>>> encrypted
>>>> blocks of data.. and if you capture everything you have online banking
>>>> passwords and everything else that goes with that and there one thinks
>>>> about who else can see the captures....
>>>>
>>>> This is what you get when you have people in charge that have interest
>>>> in obtaining data they are not entitled to.
>>>>
>>>> At least the Queensland police will not get voice recorded giving out
>>>> new locations to abusive ex-husbands, now they can protect themselves
>>>> by
>>>> just accessing the phone of the wife in hiding..
>>>>
>>>> ... anyone seen my foil hat today I seem to have misplaced it....? :P
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Michelle Sullivan
>>>> http://www.mhix.org/
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>
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