Australia passes cyber snooping laws with global implications
Australia passes cyber snooping laws with global
implications
Under the legislation, Canberra can compel local and
international providers to remove electronic protections, conceal covert
operations by government agencies, and help with access to devices or services
By Glenda KWEK December 6, 2018
Australia Thursday passed controversial laws allowing
spies and police to snoop on the encrypted communications of suspected
terrorists and criminals, as experts warned the "unprecedented
powers" had far-reaching implications for global cybersecurity.
There has been extensive debate about the laws and their
reach beyond Australia's shores in what is seen as the latest salvo between
global governments and tech firms over national security and privacy.
Under the legislation, Canberra can compel local and
international providers -- including overseas communication giants such as
Facebook and WhatsApp -- to remove electronic protections, conceal covert
operations by government agencies, and help with access to devices or services.
Australian authorities can also require that those
demands be kept secret.
The conservative government had pushed for the bill to be
passed before parliament rises for the year this week, saying the new powers
were needed to thwart terror attacks during the festive period.
A last-minute deal was struck with the opposition Labor Party
over its demands for more oversight and safeguards when the laws are used, with
a review of the legislation to take place in 18 months.
The government also agreed to consider further amendments
to the bill early next year.
National cyber security adviser Alastair MacGibbon said
police have been "going blind or going deaf because of encryption"
used by suspects.
Brushing off warnings from tech giants that the laws
would undermine internet security, MacGibbon said they would be similar to
traditional telecommunications intercepts, just updated to take in modern
technologies.
- 'Serious problems' -
Global communications firms, including Google and
Twitter, have repeatedly said the legislation would force them to create
vulnerabilities in their products, such as by decrypting messages on apps,
which could then by exploited by bad actors.
A central protection in the laws to block authorities
from forcing companies to build a "systemic weakness" into their
product remains poorly defined, critics say.
The Law Council of Australia, the peak body for the legal
profession, said it had "serious concerns" about the changes.
"We now have a situation where unprecedented powers
to access encrypted communications are now law, even though parliament knows
serious problems exist," it said in a statement.
Experts such as the UN special rapporteur on the right to
privacy Joseph Cannataci have described the bill as "poorly
conceived" and "equally as likely to endanger security as not".
"Encryption underpins the foundations of a secure
internet and the internet pervades everything that we do in a modern
society," Tim de Sousa, a principal at privacy and cybersecurity
consultancy elevenM, told AFP.
"If you require encryption to be undermined to help
law enforcement investigations, then you are ultimately undermining that
encryption in all circumstances. Those backdoors will be found and exploited by
others, making everyone less secure," he said.
The new laws also include secrecy provisions, which could
raise doubts over whether Australian and foreign vendors have already been
compelled to act -- undermining their business models where privacy is a key
selling point.
The most high-profile clash over security and privacy was
between Apple and the US' FBI, when agents sought access to the data of the San
Bernardino attackers in California in 2015.
Meanwhile, the Australian legislation could allow for
policy laundering by its "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing partners --
Canada, Britain, New Zealand, and the United States -- who cannot enact similar
powers because of constitutional or human rights protections.
"There is an extraterritorial dimension to it, where
for example the US would be able to make... a request directly to Australia to
get information from Facebook or a tech company," said Queensland
University of Technology's technology regulation researcher Monique Mann.
Comments
Post a Comment