The Australian government has emerged from two days of talks with its Five Eyes intelligence partners confident in its plans to have technology firms decrypt communications for law enforcement purposes.
[It was] also decided to try and engage with internet service providers and technology companies to secure co-operation through an agreed set of protocols, rather than law changes, he said.He said these protocols would not amount to a specific request for implanted backdoors.
Forget for a moment that the Australian representative in all this is an incompetent dinosaur called George Brandis and see if you can come up with an solution to this problem.
On one side what Australian and the Five Eyes group are doing is a massive invasion of privacy and because of the few the many are adversely affected.
On the other essentially unbreakable encryption renders real-time monitoring of potential threats impossible.
The ability to access and view information is all too enticing. Just look at the latest in a long list of scandals involving a QLD police officer accessing private information on civilians when they shouldn’t.
One of the richest gems in the report is where Brandis tries to not call what’s being proposed a “backdoor”. What else would you call it mate?
He then tops it off with a comment that they’re looking for companies like WhatsApp and Signal to “volunteer” and cooperate with their ideas, but if they don’t it can easily be forced upon them by introducing “coercive powers” legislation similar to what already exists in the UK & NZ.
In other words, we want our fisheries department to be able to have access to your metadata AND decryption of your private messaging and we’ll force you to do it sooner or later.
Source: Australia pushes ahead with plans to pressure tech firms on encryption – Security – iTnews