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Australia Encryption Government

Australians Who Won't Unlock Their Phones Could Face 10 Years In Jail (sophos.com) 223

Posted by EditorDavid from the not-passing-Go dept.
An anonymous reader quotes the Sophos security blog: The Australian government wants to force companies to help it get at suspected criminals' data. If they can't, it would jail people for up to a decade if they refuse to unlock their phones. The country's Assistance and Access Bill, introduced this week for public consultation, strengthens the penalties for people who refuse to unlock their phones for the police. Under Australia's existing Crimes Act, judges could jail a person for two years for not handing over their data. The proposed Bill extends that to up to ten years, arguing that the existing penalty wasn't strong enough...

[C]ompanies would be subject to two kinds of government order that would compel them to help retrieve a suspect's information. The first of these is a "technical assistance notice" that requires telcos to hand over any decryption keys they hold. This notice would help the government in end-to-end encryption cases where the target lets a service provider hold their own encryption keys. But what if the suspect stores the keys themselves? In that case, the government would pull out the big guns with a second kind of order called a technical capability notice. It forces communications providers to build new capabilities that would help the government access a target's information where possible. In short, the government asks companies whether they can access the data. If they can't, then the second order asks them to figure out a way....

The government's explanatory note says that the Bill could force a manufacturer to hand over detailed specs of a device, install government software on it, help agencies develop their own "systems and capabilities", and notify agencies of major changes to their systems.
"[T]he proposed legislation also creates a new class of access warrant that lets police officers get evidence from devices in secret before the device encrypts it, including intercepting communications and using other computers to access the data. It also amends existing search and seizure warrants, allowing the cops to access data remotely, including online accounts."
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Australians Who Won't Unlock Their Phones Could Face 10 Years In Jail More

Australians Who Won't Unlock Their Phones Could Face 10 Years In Jail

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  • More or Less Rights (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Dangerous shift...

  • Great ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:38PM (#57151566)

    Ten years for forgetting my pin number. I have done that.
    They might just as well lock everyone up in advance, just in case.

    • I keep my password on a written piece of paper in my wallet. It's 25 digits long, numbers letters symbols. Upon being arrested, I ate said paper.
      • Very clever. That's 10 years in clink for you. You'll be in there with rapists, robbers, pedophiles... who are very likely to have received a lighter sentence than you.

        • ... just take a shit and give it to them.

        • Nah, they only put people who care about privacy in prison in her majesties colonies. The rapists get given jobs in the schools and hospitals.

        • Re: Great ... (Score:4)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @11:58PM (#57152526) Homepage

          Very unlikely, once subject to constitutional challenge the law will be scrubbed because you can not by law force any one to remember anything, to do so, would be the direct equivalent of torturing to force a confessions. You can not make legal demands of memory, not constitutional, sure write in a crap law temporarily until it is challenged constitutional, then it fails. Very tricky to try to prove someone remembered something, without them proving they remember it by remembering it in court, so you would be only guilty of the crime if you denied remembering it and then changed your mind but wait sometimes memory works like that, stress does weird things with memory.

          So charging someone with a crime for having a bad memory or an accident or suffering from stress it would be interesting in the Australia High Court, trying to prove someone remembers something, hmm, brain surgery and inserted torture probes I guess perhaps.

          • Very unlikely, once subject to constitutional challenge the law will be scrubbed because you can not by law force any one to remember anything, to do so, would be the direct equivalent of torturing to force a confessions.

            I don't know how much you know about the Australian constitution, but good luck on that one. We already have secret quasi-courts with Star Chamber powers, such as the power to compel testimony and imprison silent witnesses, in the form of the various state anti-corruption commissions.

            • Re: Great ... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Sunday August 19, 2018 @06:55AM (#57153542)

              [blockquote]I don't know how much you know about the Australian constitution, but good luck on that one. We already have secret quasi-courts with Star Chamber powers, such as the power to compel testimony and imprison silent witnesses, in the form of the various state anti-corruption commissions.[/blockquote]
              Its worse than that. The Libs (for our american friends, our Liberal party is equivilent to your Republican party, I know, confusing right?) gave the industrial relations courts have those powers too, as a way to get unions to hand over membership lists and the like. Doesn't work though, getting done for contempt of court for refusing to snitch on your unions considered a badge of honor for many in the movement,

              The worst part is , its tradition now that whenever a state or federal Liberal party gets power, the first thing they try to do is drag the labor party through the same court process to try and find out what sort of sneaky politicians have been nice to unions, or whatever the thoughtcrime allegation of the week is. Those and the Royal commissions that the libs like to do to intimidate labor never really find much except a few politicians that have fucked some reciepts for taxi fares or whatever, but its not about finding guilt, its about intimidation.

              We have a *very* anti-democratic conservative movement here.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Rapists and pedophiles in most countries end up in solitary for most of their lives. The general population has a tendency of killing them, because even a murderer has lines they won't cross.

      • Silk and Cyanide (Score:5, Informative)

        by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @07:59PM (#57151836)

        This was actually an issue for agents during WW2. Marks got agents to stop using memorized encryption keys and instead use one time codes written on silk, with instructions to burn each piece after use.

        That way the Nazis could not torture there code out of them and then read their back traffic, which could be very serious.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          The other method learned was not to have the code and resulting plain text kept in a book when caught.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
          ".. her notebooks. Contrary to security regulations, she had copied out all the messages she had sent as an SOE operative"
          ".. her misunderstanding what a reference to filing"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        I keep my password on a written piece of paper in my wallet. It's 25 digits long, numbers letters symbols. Upon being arrested, I ate said paper.

        My password is stored as the last 4 digits from the serial numbers contained on a stack of bills sorted by denomination in an envelope on my desk. Hey, where are the 100s and 50s?

    • They might just as well lock everyone up in advance, just in case.

      This is them installing the locks right now.

    • Re:Great ... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @07:34PM (#57151740) Homepage

      Ten years for forgetting my pin number. I have done that. They might just as well lock everyone up in advance, just in case./quote

      Uh, you're in Australia. You just haven't noticed. /s

    • Re:Great ... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Vinegar Joe ( 998110 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @08:33PM (#57151922)

      Maybe instead they'll just transport them to the UK. That'd be a fate worse than death.

    • New means to supress dissent (Score:5, Interesting)

      by currently_awake ( 1248758 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @08:43PM (#57151950)
      Arrest someone your government dislikes, take phone, demand pin, change pin, tell detainee their pin doesn't work so you must have lied, put in jail for 10 years.

      • Arrest someone your government dislikes, take phone, demand pin, change pin, tell detainee their pin doesn't work so you must have lied, put in jail for 10 years.

        a country that far gone through the rabbit hole of fascism, does not need that. Just go to the culprit home and drop a bundle of child porn in mag form, photo of what "could" look like the suspect having sex with a child, et voila, and contrary to a phone that does not leave potential electronic evidence like changing the pin (which may have been

    • You are missing a bigger picture. Someone you pissed off manages to grab your pin (video tape you entering it, or just peek over your shoulder), then changes it, calls in an anonymous tip to the police, you can't unlock it, bye-bye for the next decade. Easier than framing someone for a crime.

    • Ten years for forgetting my pin number. I have done that.

      Firstly it's a PIN, not a PIN number.
      Secondly I don't buy for a moment that you've forgotten the PIN to your smartphone, a device that constantly asks you for it, frequently needs to be rebooted, and will die if it doesn't see a power outlet for a day.

      I mean it should be a legitimate legal excuse, but we know you're lying in this case.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zarhan ( 415465 )

        Actually, I have forgotten my PIN.

        11 hour redeye flight from Helsinki to Osaka, Japan after a badly slept previous night.

        Turn on cellphone, drowsy as hell, after customs. Enter PIN. Reject. WTF. Try again, still reject. Try again, once more reject. SIM now locked, please enter PUK code. Crap.

        I was able to call my telco from the hotel and get the SIM unlocked. Then it hit me - after the flight, I had kept typing in the PIN for my credit card. No wonder it didn't work since it was the completely wrong PIN.

        Poi

        • SIM now locked

          Cool story but the SIM PIN is not the one that locks the data on your phone and also is not the one I was talking about.

          Then it hit me - after the flight, I had kept typing in the PIN for my credit card. No wonder it didn't work since it was the completely wrong PIN.

          So you did know the PIN. I'm sure after a good night's rest you would have been fine, no need to spend 10 years in jail trying to remember then, which is kind of my point. The "I forgot it" isn't really a legit excuse for something we use so often.

      • So you only have one device and you use it every day and you don't frequently rotate your PIN numbers?

        These aren't ATM machines - you are in control of security (but not adopted adjectives).

        • and you don't frequently rotate your PIN numbers

          I'll do you one better: My PIN is 0000. Steal my phone. You may be able to do something as nasty as read an email before it gets remote wiped.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by gwjgwj ( 727408 )

        Firstly it's a PIN, not a PIN number.

        Wrong. It's a Personal PIN Number.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ras ( 84108 )

      Ten years for forgetting my pin number.

      That's not what they are proposing. The article got it completely wrong - the bill isn't targeting end users at all. I guess that's not entirely surprising given the articles rush to have the First Post on the department of Home Affairs explanatory document for the Assistance and Access Bill 2018 [homeaffairs.gov.au]. The ironic thing is, in their rush to get the most click baity article the could think out out, the managed to understate what the government is planning. By a lot. Thi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Ten years for forgetting my pin number. I have done that.
      They might just as well lock everyone up in advance, just in case.

      Well, it *is* an island initially populated by criminals.

    • Re:In AU it's worse than that (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday August 19, 2018 @06:41AM (#57153480)

      It's worse than that in most countries. Don't normalise America's constitution on the internet, you only represent 5% of the world.

    • It's currently an open question as to whether or not you can plead the 5th in the US. Some courts have dishonestly tried to claim a passphrase/PIN is more like a key than a combination to a safe, and therefore can be ordered to be used. If you say no or say you forget, you can be held indefinitely under a contempt of court charge. The case that's gone the furthest has seen the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals affirm this nonsense, ruling it's basically just fine to hold anyone for an effective life sentence bec

  • Fruit of the poisonous tree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:42PM (#57151582)

    "[T]he proposed legislation also creates a new class of access warrant that lets police officers get evidence from devices in secret before the device encrypts it, including intercepting communications and using other computers to access the data. It also amends existing search and seizure warrants, allowing the cops to access data remotely, including online accounts."

    With such capabilities, how could the courts prove the evidence was not tampered with, invented whole-cloth, planted by the police, or merely stored on the target device by a third party for purposes of framing or obfuscation?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Simple: They cannot. But they think that whatever the government wants trumps whatever residual rights citizens may have. This is simply a step in the process of making any rights citizens have optional and to be done away with when any government official says so. Sure, they are not there yet, but the direction is amply clear.

    • With such capabilities, how could the courts prove the evidence was not tampered with, invented whole-cloth, planted by the police, or merely stored on the target device by a third party for purposes of framing or obfuscation?

      How can courts prove it currently for things not currently done "on a phone"?

    • What you just said is in fact goddamned insightful; why are you just an AC?
      I've been one to talk about how our allegedly 1st-world-country governments are wanting to treat us like we're in a 3rd-world-country, and also destroy any value encryption has in their mad rush to get ALL THE DATA!, but that's an even more important point: the abuse potential such power would give LEOs and governments, to frame whoever they want to take the fall for something. If legislation like this is allowed to happen in ANY co

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I hate to break it to you, but the government and courts are already a sham. I've been involved in police accountability work for a few years. I've also been arrested for crossing the street legally and charged with disorderly conduct for *FILMING* the police. The reality is the courts and the police and the prosecutors are corrupt. You half a 50% chance of winning when your genuinely innocent and no crime has been committed and there is video of evidence of the supposed crime. I didn't take a plea deal, bu

        • Well, I'm sorry if your country (Australia) is such a total shit-hole of corruption. I've had the displeasure of having to work for Australians who bought out a small company I worked for, and they're about as unscupulous, unethical, and amoral as anyone could be, and it was a medical device company so I fear for the patients that might end up affected by their inevitable corner-cutting. Makes me wonder when your citizenry is going to wake up and do something definitive to take back their country from this

  • This is an act of establishing fascism, where ultimately the citizens have no rights and the government can do whatever it likes to them. The time to for a decisive "no" to the authoritarian scum making laws like this would be now, but the citizens are deeply asleep.

  • Steganography now mandatory in Australia (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:47PM (#57151608)
    So everyone with an interest in privacy will use steganographic tools, while everyone else has no privacy. Well done, Australia!

  • As an australian (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rainwulf ( 865585 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:49PM (#57151616)

    This is fucking awful.

    I bet they wouldn't like it the public got access to THEIR phones, but its ok for them to get access to ours?

    Fuckers.

  • Isn't that just a big penal colony?

    If the guards want to toss your cell, what's to stop them?

    • How ironic, someone from a country with the highest imprisonment rate in the western world calling Australia penal colony. That has not been the case for over 200 years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Cough, cough, for Adelaide and South Australia, it never was the case, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], only the eastern states criminal bunch that they are, trouble makers from north to south and even cross the Bass ;D.

      • How ironic, someone from a country with the highest imprisonment rate in the western world calling Australia penal colony.

        How dare you sir. I will not stand here while you insult the great land of freedom that is the United States. We have the highest number of prisoners, in both raw number and per capita, in the entire world [prisonstudies.org], not just the Western world. Rest of the world always trying to minimize our accomplishments... We're Number 1! And not even the most oppressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the world can touch our incarceration rate. Wait a second... if... Nevermind! Credit where credit is due, we take great

  • One thing that might help (Score:3)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @07:23PM (#57151704)

    Imagine a function built in to Android or IOS which re-encrypts the storage with a transient key which it then throws away.

    It could be triggered by entering a special pin code or something similar.

  • Two keys (Score:3)

    by JaneTheIgnorantSlut ( 1265300 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @07:40PM (#57151766)
    The phone needs two keys - one unlocks it and the other wipes it and then unlocks it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Or more subtly than that... the second key just wipes any data marked "sensitive". That way, the authorities won't have an obvious cause to go after you for destroying evidence. They won't know what was there before you unlocked it with the second key, yet they'll still see a normal, functioning device.

    • A problem with this is that you erase all your valuable data for perhaps just a random check in some customs. If the check is not random, the fully erased data is easy to recognize and marks you as an enemy of the state too. Even if you only delete data from some contacts previously marked as "sensible", the oppressor state (I'm assuming of course that you are a brave reporter fighting for the freedom of Whateverstan, not a child trafficker) can probably check your calls and internet use and see if they mat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by argee ( 1327877 )

      I like it. And you designate which part holds your files. Family pictures, keep after the "wipe". The Kiddie Porn and the Nuclear Secrets, "real wipe."
      They would not suspect a thing.

  • That sound (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That sound you hear is a collective middle finger from every tech company on the planet towards Mr Malcom Turnbull and buddies. In reality, Australia is too small a market for them to give two shits about and any company could withdraw from the Australian market and it wouldn't change a pixel of their bottom line. Sure, it would piss the Australian people off if they couldn't get an iPhone or decent Android, but there are only 25 million of us.

    Hellstra and Optarse would release their own branded devices

  • Although we might not yet have the tech to do this, I can easily imagine a password system in the not too distant future that is tied with a wetware mechanism that analyzes the state of mind of the person entering the password to determine who is entering the password and their emotional state while they are entering it. If the person is under any duress while they are entering the password, then it will not unlock.

    Thus, it would be provable that you have no ability to unlock it for them.... what would

    • 10 years in prison. Jupiter years.

  • Australia has jumped the Marxist shark.

    They cannot keep any personal information secret because the gov equates accusation with guilt and you have to prove yourself innocent.
    They cannot express a dissenting political or social opinion without violating "hate speech" laws.
    They are disarmed and they cannot rollback to democracy, let alone defend themselves from thugs and terrorists who ignore weapons laws. When seconds count the police are only minutes away. In the outback HOURS away, if they come at all..
    W

    • Delusional drivel. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Falconhell ( 1289630 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @10:55PM (#57152346) Journal

      Oh the irony, the current Australian government responsible for this is the conservative right wing LNP, verging on far right. If you were even reasonably informed you would know this, but your paranoia about duh Marxist does not allow you to conceive that this is the work of the right wing, as was the removal of a lot of guns by the same parties as currently in government.
      Virtually nobody here cares about owning guns, and those who live in the country on farms frequently do have weapons on hand.
      You are pretty much wrong in every single point, your lack of any knowledge is disturbing, tell me which part of the US are you from?

      • Oh the irony, the current Australian government responsible for this is the conservative right wing LNP, verging on far right.

        Behold, Jerry, the ultimate tool of the lunatic crypto-conservative movement.

        Anything that offends their delicate sensibilities is immediately labeled as marxist, or socialist.

        So you can get a far right government doing some of the heinous things a government can do, and somehow magickly, it becomes the fault of Leeeburl's socialists, or Marxists.

        Tools for tools, as it were.

    • Re:No doubt about it .. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Sunday August 19, 2018 @12:31AM (#57152610)

      Australia has jumped the Marxist shark.

      This is much closer to fascist than anything else. Marxist is an economic ideology. Fascism is political/legal.

  • so apple will pull out but will cave in china!

  • Just get an app that has 2 codes, one that unlocks the phone, and another that wipes the phone. If they are requiring the phone un locked to look for evidence how can they prove that it was there in the first place ? The only thing I keep on my phone is the contact list, I delete call history, received, and outgoing, as well as all my text history on a daily basis already.

  • People Don't Need That Level of Security (Score:3)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Sunday August 19, 2018 @12:17AM (#57152570)

    In other news, Australian authorities now requiring safe manufacturers to provide backdoor access, says they are 'too secure'.

  • tell them to join the far queue

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Then the data must be hidden (Score:3)

    by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Sunday August 19, 2018 @06:43AM (#57153498)

    If I can't protect my data with encryption then I have to go to other means. Data that cannot be found cannot be demanded.

    Here people will say "but that isn't how I do things right now"... always the way with everything since always. We don't do things a certain way until we do.

    Easy enough to do... does require pushing the data to secured remote servers or obscuring the data on the phone such that it doesn't appear to be data... at least enough so that the investigators and courts don't notice it.

  • With all the uproar over access to private / personal data that is stored on a smartphone, I am shocked they don't simply secretly upload said data periodically to a cloud server instead and call it a backup.

    Then they just have to bribe . . . . er. . . promise lucrative contracts to the Telco for access.

    Then again, they may already do so and the rest of this is just misdirection.

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