Australian Law Could Criminalize the Teaching of Encryption 208
New submitter petherfile writes: According to Daniel Mathews, new laws passed in Australia (but not yet in effect) could criminalize the teaching of encryption. He explains how a ridiculously broad law could effectively make any encryption stronger than 512 bits criminal if your client is not Australian. He says, "In short, the DSGL casts an extremely wide net, potentially catching open source privacy software, information security research and education, and the entire computer security industry in its snare. Most ridiculous, though, are some badly flawed technicalities. As I have argued before, the specifications are so imprecise that they potentially include a little algorithm you learned at primary school called division. If so, then division has become a potential weapon, and your calculator (or smartphone, computer, or any electronic device) is a potential delivery system for it."
The argument goes like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Your government is the good guys. So, if you want to hide something from us, you must be with the bad guys. M'kay?
Re:The argument goes like this (Score:4, Insightful)
But the government guys will counter-argue that encryption allows anonymity, which in turn will enable ease of illegal transactions, like on silk road. Of course, weak encryption will discourage future silk roads, but also create a big brother society.
Re: (Score:2)
If you have nothing to hide, then you don't need to wear clothes (bill provision to be added by the sunscreen manufacturing coalition). So if you see someone walking around with clothes and they're not uniformed police, they're probably a criminal and should be reported.
Re: (Score:2)
They could just run a reality TV show where they combed through peoples emails to dig up dirt for the show.
A real live Peyton place from every corner of Australia.
Should make for fascinating TV!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
And of course, actual "good guys" don't have to continually describe themselves by that label because it's apparent by their actions.
Don't teach math in Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
To be on the safe side, you should never teach math in Australia, especially not combinatorics!
Re: (Score:2)
Anything that is in the public domain, and anything that is "basic research", is exempt.
Re: (Score:2)
To be on the safe side, you should never teach math in Australia, especially not combinatorics!
Nor division.
It's an accidentally-on-purpose. (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments worldwide that are marching to fascism want encryption banned. God forbid (and you bet they'll invoke God in what they're doing) you should be able to talk to someone in a manner they can't easily listen in on! This is not an unintended effect of sloppy legalese, it's a fully intentional consequence of obfuscated legalese.
Will they nail you for communicating with your bank? No. Will they nail you for communicating with someone they consider "undesirable"? You bet your arse they will.
Re:It's an accidentally-on-purpose. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just encryption. Governments adore overly-broad laws in general. This makes everyone guilty of something. Then governments can just prosecute anybody they don't like in a completely arbitrary fashion.
Re: (Score:2)
The key problem is that politicians rarely want to take the responsibility for abolishing a law, unless it is from 1900 and concerns lending vacuum cleaners to your neighbour in Colorado, whereas being a sharp 'law and order guy' often helps in getting more voters (mostly thanks to hysteric mass media). Hence, the laws accumulate and are getting broader and broader.
#define BITLEN 48 (Score:5, Interesting)
Aussies made a huge mistake at the last election. This mob have managed to politically unite Aussies (against them) in a way I haven't witnessed since the downfall of Gough Whitlam (IMO - due to GW's "sore loser" re-election campaign). Trust us, we have mandatory voting and will boot this embarrassing mob out the first chance we get. There isn't a sector of Aussie society they haven't upset in the past year alone, the only chance the conservatives have of winning is if they put Turnbull back in charge and allow him to purge the "tea party" types from the current cabinet, they have way to much power for the tiny slice of Aussie society that they represent.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't count on Abbot loosing an election, not as long as the sheeple in this country continue to believe the garbage spoon-fed to them by Mr Murdoch and his empire (an empire which basically declared all out war on the ALP at the last election and would probably do so again because of certain policies the ALP have that would be VERY bad for Mr Murdoch and his interest if they became law like the policy to make his empire pay the tax they are supposed to be paying)
Re: (Score:3)
Having lived in Australia a few years, I've been amazed at how good the voting system is (mandatory, with ranking)... and how bad the outcome has been (Howard at the time) despite the good system.
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Re: (Score:3)
If you're going to just go ahead and assume it works as intended, sure.
By the same token I'd say Benevolent Dictatorship is a better form of government, the tricky part is the benevolence.
Besides, democracy assumes people want a say in how the country is run, most of them don't and of those that do, have you spoken to any of them and thought they should?
Re: (Score:2)
Having lived in Australia a few years, I've been amazed at how good the voting system is (mandatory, with ranking)... and how bad the outcome has been (Howard at the time) despite the good system.
The first problem with the last election was primarily that Murdoch went on an unrelenting attack on Labor. Coverage was so skewed that it wasn't funny.
The second problem was that there were too many back room preference deals. More people voted for Labor than the Liberal party but because the Liberal party had a lot of preference deals with smaller parties they received enough to get them _just_ past the post.
Voter apathy is still a huge problem in Australia and our mandatory voting system is part of
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt FTTH is as costly in a country with a population density of 120, vs Australia's 3
Not that I don't think it's a worthwhile thing, but to suggest it's an economic equivalency is ludicrous.
I don't even believe Malcolm is against FTTH in Australia, he's just doing his job and hoping to be in a position to be elected leader after the inevitable decimation at the next election.
Re: (Score:2)
Governments worldwide that are marching to fascism want encryption banned.
These fucking retards don't even realise they can't buy shit on Amazon without encryption. They're that fucking stupid. Let's see Australia ban HTTPS and watch hilarity ensue ;)
Re: (Score:2)
can't buy shit on Amazon
Then they will set up an Amazon.au site. With no encryption and higher prices.
Re:It's an accidentally-on-purpose. (Score:4, Funny)
They'll just issue a national proxy cert... :-)
I once worked for a software company in Australia. All of the actual software development was outsourced to India, while the mail system was in-sourced. In the respective Sydney and Brisbane offices there was something known as "the inter-office filing tray" and any time someone would fly between the Brisbane or Sydney office, it was necessary to check the inter-office filing tray and deliver any documents.
I imagine that will be reimplemented on a national level, with bi-partisan support for a "National Filing Tray Network". All citizens when going about their daily business will be required to route items between trays. No doubt the conservative party will want to import cheap baskets, while the labor party will support a basket weaving industry of their own.
Re: (Score:3)
Will they nail you for communicating with someone they consider "undesirable"? You bet your arse they will.
The provisions for doing this were passed and exist in Section 187 of the 2015 Data Retention act. Provisions to collect your information without the use of an interception warrant (email, sms, voicemail) passed in the 2004 Anti terrorism act.
The defense trade control act will probably used to make sure they can keep reading them.
Encryption is but a tiny aspect of it (Score:4, Insightful)
Encryption is but a tiny side-show in the global march towards Collectivism — the coin, of which Fascism and Socialism are indistinguishable sides. As predicted long ago [monticello.org]:
It starts with concern for the poor, that inevitably causes the government to undertake support of the downtrodden with various "War on Poverty" initiatives.
A few decades and trillion-dollars into it [forbes.com], there are not only millions of recipients of the dole, there are also tens of thousands of government officials involved in distributing it. The combination makes it impossible to stop the foolish undertaking — it may be reformed and rearranged, but it can not be ended.
And then comes the idea, that, if we must support the unsuccessful among us, we should try to prevent them from doing (what we consider to be) stupid things: take drugs, drive too fast, eat fat [nydailynews.com] (no, not fat [time.com], sugar [huffingtonpost.com]!). Right here on Slashdot [slashdot.org], the idea that our self-imposed responsibility for others allows us to control their actions, is alive and well.
And then government types begin to deliberately rearrange things to be able to attach their own strings to various incentives you can not refuse. The first example of this was, probably, the imposition of federal speed-limit by mandating [forbes.com], that States receiving federal Federal highway funds [nationaljournal.com] implement them.
The most recent example here is the federal take-over of education loans, which allows the Administration to better control [thenewamerican.com], what the colleges teach and what students do. Because it raises the tuition costs [usnews.com] so much, fewer and fewer students will be able to forgo such federal aid and will be forced to accept it — with all of the strings attached to them and the colleges they attend.
Compared to these aspects of the Collective increasingly controlling the Individual's life, use of encryption is of little to no consequence. Maybe, a new Republic in Antarctica, on the Moon or Mars will take the lessons of our errors to heart — the way our Founding Fathers studied those of the Romans...
Re:Encryption is but a tiny aspect of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Collectivism! Socialism! Reds under the beds! Yes, folks, those problems and more besides can be solved by radical individualism and its close friend, laissez-faire capitalism!
Sure, some people will be free to starve, others will be free to die of preventable illnesses, but at least your freedom to amass wealth and keep it all to yourself will be safe.
*sigh*
Re: (Score:2)
Hey fucktard, what's the free-market solution to online harassment?
Re: (Score:2)
Paying a hitman with a cryptocurrency on SilkRoad 3.0 ? ;-)
Re:It's an accidentally-on-purpose. (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't need to break encryption to find out what you're doing with your bank, since the bank legally has no choice but to roll over and tell them.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, that raises a good point. It seems this only applies to communications to the outside of Australia, so there is probably a provision in the law for companies to hand over their encryption keys to the judicial authority if required, which means they wouldn't nail people in Australia communicating with their Australian bank. But tourists connecting to their bank abroad, well...
(This is hypothetical, but probably not too far off the truth)
Here in the UK, Cameron reportedly said that people shouldn't
Re: (Score:2)
Deposit $10,000 and the answer is yes.
Another casualty of the "war on drugs". Back when $10,000 used to be substantial amount of money it might(I would argue not) have been useful. Now it is just intrusive and overbearing. But try to repeal it and suddenly you are a "drug lord"
Re: (Score:2)
Deposit an amount "close to" 10000 and the answer is still yes, as you will be suspected of attempting to evade the monitoring of transactions of 10k+. And then your account is seized.
Re:It's an accidentally-on-purpose. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know. Consider the Swiss banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
It's common knowledge there is money on their accounts from several criminal practices, including avoiding taxes.
The Banking Law of 1934 made it a criminal act for a Swiss bank to reveal the name of an account holder.
That law has taken a lot of hits recently. Basically, Uncle Sam has threatened Swiss banks to revoke their license in the US (which would mean that they are not allowed to make any transactions in USD) if they don't cooperate with the IRS. It's blackmail, but it's also for a cause that most of the little people would see as good (tackling tax evasion). Now EU countries are negotiating the same kind of deals.
Dear money launderers and tax evaders, please cross the border to Liechtenstein, or take your money to SE Asia or the Carribeans. Your Swiss representative has already set up your bank account there for you.
Re:It's an accidentally-on-purpose. (Score:5, Informative)
"Avoiding" taxes is NOT a crime. "Evading" taxes IS a crime.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some people use these terms in the moral and ethical, rather than legal, context.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, brainfart, I meant to write evading.
Re: (Score:2)
Using USD puts you under US jurisdiction. So any bank with a branch in the US would then not be allowed to trade with you. Same thing...
One-time pads (Score:3)
What is the 'key length' of one time pad containing 1MB of data? Xoring against properly randomized one time pads is one of strongest encryptions possible, will teaching about XOR also forbidden under new ruling?
Re: (Score:2)
If you have a way to securely distribute the one time pad, then you can just as well hand the recipient the message and get it all over with.
Except, a one time pad allows you to send your message securely at any time, instead of only when meeting.
I wouldn't want to physically go to the bank every time I need to do a transaction. A one time pad allows me to get the one time pad from the bank, and do multiple transactions securely in the future using that one time pad.
Re: (Score:2)
A one time pad allows me to get the one time pad from the bank, and do multiple transactions securely in the future using that one time pad.
Are you seeing the problem here? Please don't talk about encryption if you have no clue what you're talking about. It's called a one time pad for reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Not if the one time pad is much longer than one transaction and you only use part of it for each one.
The real problem is that the bank has to (securely) keep a different one time pad for each customer.
Re: (Score:2)
That is information likely to be of use to a terrorist. Prepare for a long prison sentence - complete with spelling mistakes, and possibly unlimited, since the police are not very good with punctuation and grammar!
Re: (Score:2)
could be something as common as the Bible.
That'd be a pretty dumb idea, because IF you get to a meaningful message after XORing it with a meaningful (syntactically, anyway) message, then you can be sure that you indeed got the "real" key. The odds are, for practical purposes, exactly zero that that happened by accident.
You're right that the key doesn't need to be truly random, but it must at least be gibberish.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, AC. here is a base64 encoded file. [pr0.tips] It's the result of a XOR against gibberish. The original language was ASCII coded English.
The gibberish isn't even quality gibberish because i couldn't be bothered to type enough gibberish myself, so this challenge is considerably easier, even.
Since you claim with full-length gibberish it's "handing over the message on a silver platter.", this ought to be utterly trivial.
Demonstrate that besides tearing down straw-men, you actually know some of your shit, and decry
Re: (Score:2)
I already indicated in my last comment that you're tearing down a straw man; I didn't even mention the theoretical proof. My point is, that gibberish is sufficiently non-deterministic to still be practically secure to use as an OTP. Your reply couldn't have made that more clear, the fact that my example was't even a full-length OTP but rather regular repeated-key XOR notwithstanding.
And frankly, bitching about high user IDs, itself useless and ad-hominem, while posting anonymously? Grow a fucking pair.
PS:
Re: (Score:2)
To "update" your existing OTP by N bytes, you'd have to burn N bytes of your orginal OTP.
I weep for my country (Score:2)
We had a chance to be great, but we elected John Howard and it's been all down hill since then.
Thankfully I have multiple citizenships, but NZ or the UK aren't much better. At least the latter gives me an avenue into the EU and Switzerland, though.
Re: (Score:3)
I lived in Oz during the Howard era. Abbott's making him look pretty good.
Re: (Score:2)
That's hardly an achievement. Abbot is making Kevin Rudd look good.
Re: (Score:2)
Kevin Rudd might actually have made a good PM if he'd not got stabbed in the back before he'd had half a chance.
Re: (Score:2)
Kevin '07 was eager to open the immigration floodgates and let anyone in who wanted to buy property. He'd drunk deeply of the neoliberal koolaid.
Re: (Score:2)
Every non-aboriginal inhabitant of Australia is an immigrant.
Complete bullshit, as it seems you well understand:
I don't understand the racist hate.
No racist hate here, simply someone who thinks immigration should be controlled and targeted in the best interests of the country.
However, successive Australian Governments for a decade or more have been running record immigration rates - mostly under the guise of "skilled immigrat
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy: an endless cycle of elect and regret.
(Eric X. Li on Ted.com, a very interesting video [ted.com])
Re: (Score:2)
512 Words (Score:5, Funny)
How about outlawing the teaching of any religion with a major text longer than 512 words ?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know - you can do a lot of damage in 512 words. I think we should stick to the letter of the law - 512 bits, Even if they try some fancy representation that should keep them out of trouble - and no references to call out tables, you sneaky religious types!
Min
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thorougly convinced there is a way of interpreting these four words that doesn't lead to mass murder. Really.
DSGL criminalises research in Australia (Score:5, Informative)
http://cla.asn.au/News/defence... [cla.asn.au]
http://defencereport.com/austr... [defencereport.com]
http://bayesian-intelligence.c... [bayesian-i...igence.com]
http://web.archive.org/web/201... [archive.org]
Re: (Score:2)
For extra credit, please also ban independent thought.
I think we are really lucky (Score:2)
Beware Al-Khwarizmi... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is the most brilliant comment ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hehehe. Reminds me of the joke about Saddam's SPUD missiles being weapons of mash destruction.
Ah, excellent. As I always say, a good pun is it's own reword.
I see what you did there :-j
Arrest Donald Knuth? (Score:3)
Actually, a decent mathematician should figure out RSA if you just remind them that every prime number has a primitive root, and that primitive roots of about half of all primes can be used to solve x^3 = a (modulo p) for primes p, and to solve x^3 = a (modulo pq) for a product of two primes pq if p and q are known, but not if only the product pq is known.
For large primes (like 1024 or 2048 bit) the number of calculations needed are a bit lengthy, but even a naive implementation on a modern computer is fast enough to implement it. Maybe not fast enough for hard disk encryption, but fast enough to encrypt a few megabytes of documents.
Won't Someone Please Think of the Boolean Logic?! (Score:5, Funny)
If having XOR is criminal, then only criminals will have XOR.
AND? (Score:5, Funny)
AND?
Re: (Score:3)
If having XOR is criminal, then only criminals will have XOR.
AND?
That gate is still open.
Re: (Score:2)
Bouncy Castle? (Score:3)
This isn't a good omen for The Legion of The Bouncy Castle.. [bouncycastle.org]
ROT2^513+8 (Score:2)
I guess ROT2^513+8 encryption is too strong for the Aussies to crack?
Let me be blunt... (Score:2)
Let me be blunt:
Fuck 'em!
Just put a ban on computer science (Score:4, Insightful)
No, really. This is what it would come down to.
We need encryption for banking, day to day transactions at every store, as well as general communications in industry generally. Banning the study of encryption would guarantee that Australia becomes a second rate country in computer science.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that would be an improvement for a third-rate country. :P :P :P
Damn (Score:2)
Doh! I've just committed a crime in the eyes of the Australian government! So much for that Australian vacation.
can someone teach me ... (Score:2)
Yikes.... (Score:2)
These people are even more batshit insane than the government here in the good ole USA...Thats what you get with people writing laws on subjects they have ABSOLUTELY NO knowledge about... And to think I was close to emigrating to Australia back in the early 70s, after visiting there in my youth... May saner heads prevail....
How to prove? (Score:2)
Doesn't this mean that expert witnesses, in criminal prosecution trials, would become harder to procure? After all, you're making the *knowledge* illegal.
Idea from British Prime Minister? (Score:2)
The Australians must have got the idea from the nutcase British Prime Minister who wants to make all encryption illegal.... so ban all paper and pens "for your safety".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Umm... (Score:2)
Will they require CPUs without XOR instructions? (Score:2)
Avoid the Common Wealth (Score:2)
at all costs. Sure, USA is bad but the little cousins are determined to show up everyone else. The UK and AUS in particular are about as bad as it gets.
Computers are a passing fad (Score:2)
Isn't HTTPS an encryption mechanism? (Score:2)
What's up with Australia's Parliament these days? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Didn't the US government already try to do this, like 2 decades or so ago?
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't the US government already try to do this, like 2 decades or so ago?
Yep. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List. Until approx 1997, ITAR classified strong cryptography as arms and prohibited their export from the U.S. So welcome back to pre-97 Australia...
Re:Parent is, sadly, correct (Score:4, Insightful)
No. All other cultures have already been overtaken by American culture: Burgers, Hollywood, American music, games and software. You just don't realize how much Western culture has already dominated the world in the last decades. And you fear a church from another country? You have been fully brainwashed.
Anyway, congrats on finding a smooth way to introduce your racist/discrimination hatred into a thread about encryption (you and the parent post - if you aren't the same).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously I am living in Islamic country right now. You should try it ,hours and hours of ridiculous jiberish blasted through huge speakers straight into your home or where ever you go. Having to watch what you say because some random will just kill you. Seeing poor women being oppressed every where . Seeing huge mosques being built every where when there is a total lack good infrastructure. I couldnt understand how any sane person knowing the alternatives would want this.
Re: (Score:3)
"Seriously I am living in Islamic country right now. (snip) I couldnt understand how any sane person knowing the alternatives would want this."
You're saying you know the alternatives, you're saying someone who chooses to live there knowing the alternatives isn't sane, and you're saying you live there. So, you're saying you're not sane...right? And if so, why should I take your word on the rest of it?
Re: (Score:2)
"Seriously I am living in Islamic country right now. (snip) I couldnt understand how any sane person knowing the alternatives would want this."
You're saying you know the alternatives, you're saying someone who chooses to live there knowing the alternatives isn't sane, and you're saying you live there. So, you're saying you're not sane...right? And if so, why should I take your word on the rest of it?
I've actually lived in a Muslim country, in fact the largest Muslim country in the world.
I lived and worked in Yogyakarta, Indonesia for 6 months. There were bars I could get beer in (in fact they were open longer than bars in Australia were permitted to), bacon was never hard to find. I was never forced to convert, people were friendly, I'd have no hesitation about going back to Yogya despite it being predominantly Muslim.
What the anti-Muslims dont want you to realise is that 99.9% of Muslims just wa
Re: (Score:3)
It wasn't like this in Malaysia. Sure you could hear the sound of prayers coming from the Mosque, but I found that soothing. Otherwise it was chilled out. And I mean really chilled out - anything goes. I think its the same for other SE Asian countries.
The kind of ultra-conservative fundamentalism (Wahhabism) that is spreading through started is a political tactic started by the elite to preserve power and promote nationalism.
Re:We have burgers & Hollywood, sure (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they use drones instead of losing any of their own lives.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they use drones instead of losing any of their own lives.
Drones play are part in modern covert war, but in the past fundamentalist 'rebels' such as those used in Operation Cyclone [wikipedia.org] have been employed. Usually these are Muslims, but there's active programs to home-grow their own Christian Fundamentalist Freedom Fighters, that can be used as fodder as well. If Afghanistan their role was to unseat the pro-Soviet government that was in place.
What the government says is a front while real policy decisions are made and executed in secret. It only comes to light years
Re: (Score:2)
The yanks smart bomb people instead. Innocent people too if you're paying attention. Seriously, "the muslims" are not bombing people any more than "the christians" or the "the yanks" or "the russkies". If you think an Islamic extremist suicide bomber is the same as all muslims, then why aren't all white Americans the same as Timothy McVeigh?
The difference is that when some nut case looks like you then the gut instinct is to call them an anomaly, but if the nut case looks different from you then the gut ins
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If teaching of encryption is a crime, how would someone learn what a one-time pad is?
Re: (Score:2)
OTP is 1 bit encryption just a very strong 1 bit.