Australia Passes Anti-Encryption Bill—Here’s Everything You Need To Know

Australia’s House of Representatives has finally passed the
“Telecommunications Assistance and Access Bill 2018,” also known as
the Anti-Encryption Bill, on Thursday that would now allow
law enforcement to force Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and
other tech giants to help them access encrypted communications.

The Australian government argues the new
legislation^[1] is important for
national security and an essential tool to help law enforcement and
security agencies fight serious offenses such as crime, terrorist
attacks, drug trafficking, smuggling, and sexual exploitation of
children.

Since the bill had support from both major parties (the
Coalition and Labor), the upper house could vote in support of the
Assistance and Access Bill to make it law, which is expected to
come into effect immediately during the next session of parliament
in early 2019.

Although the new legislation does not properly clarify specifics
around the potential power that the Assistance and Access Bill
could give Australian government and law enforcement agencies over
citizen’s digital privacy, it contains new provisions for companies
to provide three levels of “assistance” in accessing encrypted
data, as explained below:

• Technical Assistance Request (TAR): A notice to request
  tech companies for providing “voluntary assistance” to law
  enforcement, which includes “removing electronic protection,
  providing technical information, installing software, putting
  information in a particular format and facilitating access to
  devices or services.”
• Technical Assistance Notice (TAN): This notice requires,
  rather than request, tech companies to give assistance they are
  already capable of providing that is reasonable, proportionate,
  practical and technically feasible, giving Australian agencies the
  flexibility to seek decryption of encrypted communications in
  circumstances where companies have existing means to do it (like at
  points where messages are not end-to-end encrypted).
• Technical Capability Notice (TCN): This notice is issued
  by the Attorney-General requiring companies to “build a new
  capability” to decrypt communications for Australian law
  enforcement.

These notices would compel tech companies to modify their software
and service infrastructure to backdoor encrypted communications and
data that could otherwise not be obtained.
It is worth noting that companies could face massive financial
penalties for not complying with the new law.

Bill Says—Don’t Crack OR Backdoor the Encryption, Just Let Govt
Sneak Into Devices

The Bill clearly says that the tech companies can’t be compelled to
introduce a “systemic weakness” or “systemic backdoor” into their
legit software or hardware, or “remove electronic protection,” like
encryption to satisfy government demands.

Instead, the new legislation contains measures aimed at
facilitating lawful access to information through two
avenues—”decryption of encrypted technologies and access to
communications and data at points where they are not
encrypted.”

So without forcing companies to break encryption in their software,
Australian law enforcement is looking for ways to snoop on your
messages before they are encrypted, or read them once they’re
decrypted on the users’ end.

Of course, this would require assistance from providers of the
software and services, including Apple, Samsung, Google, WhatsApp,
Signal, iMessage, and Telegram, though it remains to be seen
whether and how tech companies cooperate with the new Australian
laws.

You need to read the below statement included in the Assistance and
Access Bill [PDF^[2]] word-by-word:

It should be noted that the Australian law enforcement authorities
still require a judicial warrant to sneak into your devices and
intercept your encrypted messages.

Five Eyes Nations: Responses to “Going Dark”

Since Australia is a member of the Five Eyes alliance along with
the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, which
last month declared that “privacy is not an absolute” and the use
of end-to-end encryption “should be rare,” the new bill could be a
stepping stone towards new encryption laws in other nations as
well.

The Bill also claims that without the new legislation, law
enforcement agencies face the problem of “going dark”—a term used
by the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) to describe the
situation when they failed to intercept encrypted data and
communications.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has previously made his
position on encryption clear last year, saying “The laws of
mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in
Australia is the law of Australia.”

Apple—Encryption is Simply Math

Apple responded to the new bill by making a submission^[3]
to the Australian government month ago, saying “Encryption is
simply math. Any process that weakens the mathematical models that
protect user data for anyone will by extension weaken the
protections for everyone.”

Even though the new Assistance and Access Bill does not propose
weakening encryption or removing electronic protection, tech
companies and privacy advocates argue that any efforts to thwart
encryption even for one device could potentially affect privacy and
security of everyone.

Moreover, the new way to intercept into devices could possibly
open a backdoor for hackers, making it easier for them to spy on
encrypted communications or steal sensitive encrypted
information.