Aussie Gov't Says Wiretap Laws Fine, Telcos 'Wrong' 127
mask.of.sanity writes "A top bureaucrat from the Australian Attorney-General's department has said telcos are wrong to complain about changes to the country's wiretapping laws, which will force them to report every product and network system change to law enforcement for approval, lest they affect the ability to intercept communications. The telcos argue there are simply too many products and network architecture changes to report and that it would become overbearing. It's the latest in a string of changes to communications law in the country, and comes as the government mulls data retention and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement."
Soft Tyranny (Score:5, Insightful)
Fight Back! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fight Back! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe they should comply very well... (Score:1, Insightful)
Great thinking, but one of the cheaper telco's would use the protest period to play nice and try and gain market share.
The protest wouldn't last long enough.
Got nothing to hide, but must still wear clothes. (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Australian Federal Police, ... noted that "there is nothing worse than to see criminals escape conviction because of technology"
Nothing worse? How about treating the populous like criminals even though they are innocent? If this doesn't qualify as worse to you, then you shouldn't be in law-enforcement or politics.
I just loathe the line of thinking exhibited by the police.
Cars are technology that help the vast majority of escaping criminals escape. Perhaps they all need tracking devices installed so that we know where everyone is going at all times.
Books convey technical information that may help a criminal escape. We should pass a law requiring all books read to be reported to the police as well.
Some rapists use condom technology to escape without leaving their DNA! Citizens should be required to keep a condom log detailing the time and date of each condom purchase and use.
Re:Why does it seem like (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, the U.S. isn't really going towards nanny state as that would imply an element of taking care of people rather than just watching them. It's more a Mommy Dearest state really.
Why they are REALLY complaining (Score:3, Insightful)
It really comes down to staff levels, firing everyone with a clue and bringing some (nowhere near enough) of them back as contractors on restricted hours.
Telstra is the unholy thing you get when a government monopoly is told to go out there and make money any way it can. Maintainance costs money and keeping track of it even more so.
The only other real competition is from the Singapore government owned Optus (another weird abomination) but their landline network is very small.
Civil liberties are important but not to Telstra, and most definately not to Optus.
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear government, we will now use purple wirenuts rather than buttsplices to join wires.
1 minute later: Dear government, we will not use off white butt splices rather than purple wirenuts to join wires
You've never worked around government much, I take it.
Most agencies are perpetually behind on their paperwork to begin with, so it's doubtful they'd even notice. If they did, the increased volume would justify hiring more staff, building their little empire.
And if you were obvious enough to where they realized you were screwing with them, they can punish you by conducting audits and investigations, or simply by dragging their feet on paperwork that you need.
Re:Fight Back! (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not being forced to store conversations, they're being forced to report changes in their network infrastructure. Any change in the networking, must be reported to law enforcement officials. Personally I don't see a problem with this, just email it across any time anything changes. Anything. Anything at all. How big do you think Telstra's DHCP logs get in a day? Quite big?
Strong medicine often only needs a couple of doses...
Re:Face meet palm (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it is worse than that.
Your post implies that corruption would be the greatest interference in network operations at the ISP.
My experience in my own country shows that those that work for the government do so because they lacked the skills (on many levels) to work in the private sector.
In order for the government to approve the changes, they would need to first understand them. Increasing the operational costs of the both the ISPs and the government at the same time.
Who decides who is right in the event of a disagreement? The idiot in the government who could not cut it in the private sector, or the well paid network engineer in the ISP?
This makes all the ISPs only as smart as the IT personnel the government hires to evaluate the approval requests...... yeah...... that will work out great.
Australia should just quit the fucking foreplay and eliminate all private sector technology companies and go with state run everything. At least approval would go faster since it all in house anyways.
Re:Political party against it (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then here you go.. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ [openrightsgroup.org]
Re:Maybe they should comply very well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, telcos need to dedicate manpower (or slow down their service to paying customers) to play that little game, whereas government can just throw 99% of these bogus reports into the trash where they belong, and only randomly spot check the remaining 1% to make sure that they are not just "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" repeated all over.
No, the most probably thing that will happen is that telcos will lie low, conveniently "forgetting" to report most changes, especially those that are trivial, hard to document, or on high pressure projects, and only submit one or two token change reports per year. Everybody will be happy, and the government bum paid for reading them will be just as lazy, and won't notice that between the report of the change from A to B, and the report of the change from C to D, the report from B to C was missing...
Re:Got nothing to hide, but must still wear clothe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately governments actually love extra pointless bureaucracy and paperwork, it's exactly what keeps them employed, "justifies" their payrolls, and keeps their departments and budgets "growing". That's one of the reasons they pass these economy-harming laws in the first place. Nothing would terrify a government department more than finding itself with little in the way of work to do ... come budget allocation time, that means cuts, and who wants to run a shrinking department?
We have a rigid change management process (Score:3, Insightful)
The government is welcome to join our conference bridge for change meetings every Tuesday. It's a1 hour meeting where all changes are discussed.
Everyone dreads attending.
Re:Fight Back! (Score:3, Insightful)
to report every product and network system change to law enforcement for approval the problem with the statement is the "for approval"
(although that's from the slashdot summary, probably not accurate.) But if they have to get approval, then when a technician needs to do a field replacement, say a part with a new mac address, sounds like he should call up his boss, who will call his boss, who will call his government contact, who will call someone else, when approval comes back a change eventually occurs. And if it disrupts some "investigation" the cops will then blame the technician, and ask for proof of who approved this change. So needing a log is inevitable.