AU Government Demands Universal Wiretapping

StonyandCher writes "The Australian government is pushing a bill to force all telecommunications providers to facilitate lawful data interception across fixed and mobile telephone systems, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Instant Messaging (IM) and chat room discussions. Sweeping reforms will make it easier than ever for law enforcement to intercept communications if amendments to the Telecommunications (Interceptions) Act are agreed upon by a Senate standing committee. This follows from a story earlier this week where the Australian government is legislating to allow employers to snoop on employees' email and IM conversations."

Re:What's the deal with Australia the last few yea

[WaltBusterkeys]

Have they actually had any circumstances justifying such Draconian legislation?

The headline is incredibly misleading.

The law, like the US CALEA, just says that law enforcement needs to be able to tap into the system upon showing a lawful warrant. It's a technical standardization measure, not a warrantless wiretap measure.

It makes it easier to abuse the system, but nothing about this law allows warrantless wiretaps. It makes it possible for law enforcement to have a standardized set of hardware used to access lawful (with warrant) wiretaps.

Re:VOIP

[Quattro Vezina]

IP phones can and do support TLS encryption over the SRTP [wikipedia.org] media protocol. Not all of them use or support this feature, but TLS/SRTP calls happen.

I work at a VoIP-related company, and trust me, we deal heavily with TLS/SRTP calls.

Re:They took guns away, so who's left to stop them

[Trentus]

Didn't they really only take away semi-automatics? You know, the one's that can kill a lot of people in a very short amount of time? Admittedly, I was only about 8 at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, so my understanding of what took place following is a little hazy, but from what I remember, they put a ban on semi-automatic weapons, and it was made mandatory that you have a firearms license and register each firearm you own.

So, we still have guns, but in order to get them, you must be at least 18 years of age, licensed, and the weapons must be registered and kept in secure storage.

Re:What's the deal with Australia the last few yea

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

America has significant influence over Australia, that's for sure. In this case, however, it's more of a response to conservative values within Australia. There's been a big growth in public awareness of the darker sides of the internet and communications in general. There was a big program whereby people could gain access to a variety of free client-side net filters, for example. Generally, Australia has grown more conservative (possibly indirectly from US influence), and this policy is the result.

Re:Fitting for ...

[rohan972]

Well, if we have the presumption that we are not crims, then why did we have to give up our guns? A nation of people who were presumed innocent until proven guilty would not be required to give up their firearms. Really though, that just stems from a greater problem, which is that Australians generally have never given a moments thought as to what liberty is, despite having the concept in our national anthem. You might be surprised how often I have spoken to people about liberty and it is the first time they've ever heard anything like it.

Vote LDP http://www.ldp.org.au/ [ldp.org.au]