[AusNOG] Assistance and Access Bill moves to PJCIS

[Philip Loenneker]

This is of course assuming that they allow for a strongly encrypted method of delivery to the agency that requested the data... 
I suspect intercepting that data stream may be of particular interest to some groups.

-----Original Message-----
From: AusNOG <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net> On Behalf Of Paul Brooks
Sent: Friday, 23 November 2018 2:47 PM
To: alex at samad.com.au
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Assistance and Access Bill moves to PJCIS

On 23/11/2018 11:37 AM, Alex Samad wrote:
> Wondering what the implications of this bill and the recent China was 
> stealing our traffic....
>
> So in theory could china steal / sniff our traffic and because of 
> these weakening of encryption allow china to snope on our stuff
>
> A
In theory no - this bill doesn't weaken encryption, and explicitly doesn't allow any changes that would weaken encryption.

This bill seeks to bypass encryption entirely by giving the agencies easier access to get into devices and the back-end databases of apps and websites, to see what is stored in there -bypassing unlock codes, PINS, thumbprint readers etc on devices for example. So for traffic being sniffed 'in the middle' the information is still sent/received as fully encrypted - and man-in-the-middle snooper won't see anything.
But if the authorities get hold of your phone or PC, they'll have easier access to look into your sent/received message stores and read whats in there, which is stored in your device un-encrypted.

In practice, if they balls-up the change request given to the device manufacturer or app/website developer, anything could happen.

P.
_______________________________________________
AusNOG mailing list
AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog