Australian government to ask for voluntary access to encrypted Apple data
Australia's attorney general will reportedly meet with officials from Apple later this week in a bid to gain voluntary sharing of encrypted data with the country's spy and law enforcement agencies.
While voluntary assistance is preferable, the Australian government is still working on legislation that will give it "coercive power," Attorney-General George Brandis told Sky News.
"It's not good enough frankly for anyone to hide behind the fact that there is a new technology that enables these communication to be encrypted, to say I'm sorry we're not prepared to cooperate with you," he argued.
Apple is unlikely to provide any voluntary data beyond what it already shares with government agencies when served with a legal request, such as email and photos stored on iCloud accounts. Services such as iMessage use end-to-end encryption, meaning that by definition, only the sender and the recipient have keys -- Apple would have to rewrite its software to provide useful content.
Likewise, the company has famously resisted building any deliberate backdoors into the full-disk encryption on iOS devices, claiming that doing so would just weaken product security and expose its customers to attacks and unwarranted surveillance.
By November Australia's ruling party will propose legislation requiring companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google to hand over communications data when presented with a court order, in the same way as telecoms firms. Brandis has suggested that the law can be enforced without backdoors, but that may difficult or impossible given the growing prevalance of end-to-end encryption.
While voluntary assistance is preferable, the Australian government is still working on legislation that will give it "coercive power," Attorney-General George Brandis told Sky News.
"It's not good enough frankly for anyone to hide behind the fact that there is a new technology that enables these communication to be encrypted, to say I'm sorry we're not prepared to cooperate with you," he argued.
Apple is unlikely to provide any voluntary data beyond what it already shares with government agencies when served with a legal request, such as email and photos stored on iCloud accounts. Services such as iMessage use end-to-end encryption, meaning that by definition, only the sender and the recipient have keys -- Apple would have to rewrite its software to provide useful content.
Likewise, the company has famously resisted building any deliberate backdoors into the full-disk encryption on iOS devices, claiming that doing so would just weaken product security and expose its customers to attacks and unwarranted surveillance.
By November Australia's ruling party will propose legislation requiring companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google to hand over communications data when presented with a court order, in the same way as telecoms firms. Brandis has suggested that the law can be enforced without backdoors, but that may difficult or impossible given the growing prevalance of end-to-end encryption.
Comments
So, they want some universal key and I'll be quite OK if any regime democratic or not, can just pear in on whatever and not just that, be sure that this key will not be lost or "lost" (called resold) the very first day to the highest bidder?
If they want the encrypted data only, well, hey I'm all for that, give them everything they want.
Broadly, this will be a fascinating long-term story as governments eventually start passing laws or imposing sanctions/import restrictions for technologies that don't let them gain access to data. Yet tech companies and their customers have the right to protection of their personal data (if a government forces back-doors to be installed, and a platform is hacked with the personal data/financial information of millions of people exposed, who is responsible?)
Perhaps tech can come up with a solution that meets the legitimate needs of law enforcement and anti-terrorism without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In the wake of the NSA breach that released those exploits to the public, any argument that a backdoor can be safely kept away from criminals and despotic governments should by be laughed out of the room every time somebody raises such.
And honestly, I'm a little surprised the NRA hasn't weighed in on this in the United States.
"Terror attacks are “part and parcel of life in a big city,” Khan later told the Evening Standard just hours after police foiled multiple terror attacks in New Jersey and New York. "
Also, terrorist attacks do not happen because of the encryption. There is another reason for those... Blaming the inability in preventing attacks on encryption, is like blaming attacks on the availability of trucks and knives.
— You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
— You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
— You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane
— You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack
— You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack
— You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack
–You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack
—You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist
–You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack
— You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-stupid.html
That's just it. There is no such solution. A cryptographic key is a number. Numbers don't care who has them. You can't make a mathematical tool which can only be used by the good guys. This is particularly true now that the government is often the "bad guy" against whom we need protection. The NSA has such a problem with their analysts misusing access for stalking people they coined an intelligence category for it. The TSA steals from travelers and does not catch the overwhelming majority of contraband in tests. For that matter, an idiot at the TSA held up their master keys for a press photo, allowing people to reproduce them! These are the people saying they want more access to sensitive information about all of us.
Oh wait...
More people die of Jaywalking in Australia (172) last year than through Terrorisim (0) in the same Timeframe. If the Same amount of effort an Money would be put into educating Drivers and Pedestrians, im sure they can bring the numbers below (164) of Last year. And maybe Apple can help with a new Augmented Reality Mode for Texting so that People are more aware of the Great thing happening around them, like the speeding car from the right.