There’s a group of five nations that collaborate on collecting and sharing intelligence. Known as the “Five Eyes” they are the U.S., the U.K, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Australia at a meeting this week of the “Five Eyes” will push for greater international powers to thwart the use of encrypted messaging services by terrorists and criminals. Here’s what Reuters had to say on this:
Australia has made it clear it wants tech companies to do much more to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications.
“I will raise the need to address ongoing challenges posed by terrorists and criminals using encryption,” Australian Attorney General Senator Brandis said in a joint statement.
“These discussions will focus on the need to cooperate with service providers to ensure reasonable assistance is provided to law enforcement and security agencies.”
While I fully support any and all reasonable methods for law enforcement to stop “evil doers” from doing “evil things,” this isn’t going to accomplish that goal. Simply put, those who want to inflict chaos and destruction on the world will move to unregulated open source solutions with end to end encryption which will put them out of the reach of law enforcement. Thus the only thing that will be accomplished is the weakening of security consumer devices and software that “evil doers” will move away from to stay out of the reach of the good guys. Do I have a better idea? Short of putting some sort of “backdoor” into every device and software that has encryption, no. But I do know a bad idea when I see it. And this qualifies as a bad idea.
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This entry was posted on June 26, 2017 at 9:20 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Australia to Push for Greater Powers on Encrypted Messaging at “Five Eyes” Meeting
There’s a group of five nations that collaborate on collecting and sharing intelligence. Known as the “Five Eyes” they are the U.S., the U.K, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Australia at a meeting this week of the “Five Eyes” will push for greater international powers to thwart the use of encrypted messaging services by terrorists and criminals. Here’s what Reuters had to say on this:
Australia has made it clear it wants tech companies to do much more to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications.
“I will raise the need to address ongoing challenges posed by terrorists and criminals using encryption,” Australian Attorney General Senator Brandis said in a joint statement.
“These discussions will focus on the need to cooperate with service providers to ensure reasonable assistance is provided to law enforcement and security agencies.”
While I fully support any and all reasonable methods for law enforcement to stop “evil doers” from doing “evil things,” this isn’t going to accomplish that goal. Simply put, those who want to inflict chaos and destruction on the world will move to unregulated open source solutions with end to end encryption which will put them out of the reach of law enforcement. Thus the only thing that will be accomplished is the weakening of security consumer devices and software that “evil doers” will move away from to stay out of the reach of the good guys. Do I have a better idea? Short of putting some sort of “backdoor” into every device and software that has encryption, no. But I do know a bad idea when I see it. And this qualifies as a bad idea.
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This entry was posted on June 26, 2017 at 9:20 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.