Five Eyes governments get even tougher on encryption

[Matrix]

Official statements from the Five Country Ministerial meeting make it clear: Voluntarily build lawful access into encrypted messaging systems, or else. It's not a good look.

 

"The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are committed to personal rights and privacy, and support the role of encryption in protecting those rights," began a document agreed to last week. Sounds good. But wait.

 

The government ministers who met on Australia's Gold Coast last week went on to explain that the information and communications technology vendors and service providers have a "mutual responsibility" to offer "further assistance" to law enforcement agencies.

"Governments should recognize that the nature of encryption is such that there will be situations where access to information is not possible, although such situations should be rare," it said. That's clearly setting an expectation for industry to meet.

The good news is that service providers who "voluntarily establish lawful access solutions" will have "freedom of choice" in how they do it. "Such solutions can be a constructive approach to current challenges," the document said, cheerily, before ending with a warning.

"Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative, or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions."

The document is the Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption. It's one of three statements to come out of the Five Country Ministerial (FCM) meeting of the homeland security, public safety, and immigration ministers of the five Anglosphere nations. They were joined by the attorneys-general of these nations, who have met annually as the so-called Quintet of Attorneys-General for a decade now.

These are, of course, the same nations that participate in the so-called "Five Eyes" signals intelligence (SIGINT) sharing arrangements under the UKUSA Agreement, although these close allies cooperate both diplomatically and operationally at a number of levels.

 

The FCM meeting also issued an Official Communiqué, and a Statement on Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces.

Taken together, the three documents represent a toughening-up of the governments' attitudes to the regulation of online communications. For diplomatic language, some of the communiqué's wording is blunt.

"While senior digital industry representatives did not accept our invitation to participate in discussions on pressing issues regarding the illicit use of online spaces, we reiterated the need for digital industry to take more responsibility for content promulgated and communicated through their platforms and applications," it said.

"We called for the further development and expansion of capabilities to prevent upload of illicit content, and to execute urgent and immediate takedowns."

The communiqué also "reiterated the importance of industry investment in human and automated detection capabilities, underscoring the need for major companies to set industry standards and to help smaller companies deploy these capabilities [and] for increased efforts to counter foreign interference and disinformation conducted via online platforms".

Plenty of the language is familiar, however, as the nations agree to wording that they've already been using domestically. This is particularly the case for Australia, which has been leading these five-nation discussions on addressing the apparent threats of end-to-end encryption.

One thing continues to be missing from these statements, though, and that's any recognition whatsoever that emerging technologies give law enforcement agencies new abilities. You know, artificial intelligence (AI), face recognition, gait recognition, and traffic analysis of all kinds.

The statement on encryption, for example, took the usual formula about law enforcement agencies losing visibility and turned it up to 11.

"The increasing gap between the ability of law enforcement to lawfully access data and their ability to acquire and use the content of that data is a pressing international concern that requires urgent, sustained attention and informed discussion on the complexity of the issues and interests at stake. Otherwise, court decisions about legitimate access to data are increasingly rendered meaningless, threatening to undermine the systems of justice established in our democratic nations," it said.

Threatening to undermine the systems of justice established in our democratic nations? Really?

"All governments should ensure that assistance requested from providers is underpinned by the rule of law and due process protections," it reassured. But where is the discussion about the need for those protections to be reviewed and enhanced, given the phenomenal growth in the amount of data available about each and every one of us?

Without a doubt, law enforcement agencies will have to find ways of dealing with the changes being wrought by the fourth industrial revolution. We all will. But politicians need to consider all of the implications, and all of our needs, not just those of the cops.

Our governments have agreed to "encourage" service providers to "voluntarily" establish lawful access solutions, with an implied threat of coercion if they don't. Yet the suspicion of such capabilities in, say, Chinese-made 5G equipment, or Russian-made anti-virus software, gets them banned.

It strikes me as a bit rich to accuse other nations of dodgy surveillance practices, while at the same time building the legislative and technical infrastructure to do much the same thing to your own citizens.

If the governments want to bring the citizens along with them on this journey, then their statements need to do more than just start with the same "we value your privacy" bulldust as all the commercial operators we're beginning to despise.

 

Source

[pc71520]

2 hours ago, DonyMach1 said:

The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Such a Democratic foundations...

[Soze]

The Arab and Communist governments have outlawed it and tor completely.  It's being tested in the East and will come West. Good to post about it on and open site the logs IP address. Good thinking.  It's a gangster world out there!

[Matrix]

Governments are just forcing people to hide their activity and by doing so giving us all a heads up GAME ON COME FIND ME GOODLUCK …….. ?

[Soze]

If no one cared about Panama Papers no one will care about this ....until freedom is gone.

[steven36]

9 hours ago, Soze said:

The Arab and Communist governments have outlawed it and tor completely.  It's being tested in the East and will come West. Good to post about it on and open site the logs IP address. Good thinking.  It's a gangster world out there!

Tor  was invented by the  USA  Government  they don't block it  in the USA they just use social engineering to trick you into downloading a malware that can backdoor Tor. That's there objective is to put backdoors in all encryption not to stop it even most of the www uses SSL encryption. Does it matter to the Government if yours is backdoored?  no they will have better than everyone else does  and theirs want be subject to backdoors  and even if it was it would not matter because the backdoors would belong to them anyway. I  dont even be posting with my real ip when i post on any site since 2011 so i really  dont care if they have a record of my ips they not mine no ways i just using them. so is most likely a 100 or more other people.

 

8 hours ago, Soze said:

If no one cared about Panama Papers no one will care about this ....until freedom is gone.

That's the point  i been on the internet since 2001 and before  2011 i never used a vpn and they never cared what i said or done  in 10 years so i doubt they would care if they backdoored them and i stop using it no one wants to buy software  with a hole in .  but i doubt id  even bother to post on websites as much as do now , if they do  ill most likely go back to the chat rooms were i know im being  watched like it was 2001 again before many used encryption,  nothing to hide from at all  because they know who i am .They put my butt in jail before and it was not even related to freedom of speech or the internet . They know were I'm at and know everything about me without the internet and if they want you they going get you regardless if you come online or not.

 

They don't drive a car from your PC to your driveway they drive down the road to your house ..If the FBI gets involved you must of committed some crime in the real world if it's just receiving illegal money off the internet ... You have too  commit a crime or what they claim to be crime  that will hold up in court for the local police  to even come get you. Jails were full long before they were a internet .Back before i used computers i was more likely to run into the law because i was always out in public messing around were the law would drive by and see me. People get confused  about rights you have in the privacy of your own home and rights you have in public . The internet is public domain when you log on you should not say nothing you would not say in public .

 

In the UK they have wall to wall CCTV with this if they just expect you of a crime they going watch you tell they figure  you out and it dont matter if they have to break in your house and plant bugs while  you are gone there not  going to stop  tell they have enough evidence to hold up in court. In some parts of the USA we don't have CCTV yet but still if they expect  you of a crime they going watch everyone who visit you  and if you leave your house they will follow you around, tap your phones .they even have stuff that can see through walls. 

 

In the UK they cached some the biggest criminals in the world like this,  it was nothing  these criminals could do too escape them,  they was not even using internet at home and when   as soon as they stepped in and internet cafe to use it,  the Police were there too, writing down everything done online and send there internet logs back to headquarters as soon as they left . If they want you there is no escape .  You would have to stay inside forever and most likely something from your past will haunt you and they will at least question you anyways     lol

 

 

[Matrix]

Latest Update

 

“The increasing use and sophistication of certain encryption designs present challenges for nations in combatting serious crimes and threats to national and global security. Many of the same means of encryption that are being used to protect personal, commercial and government information are also being used by criminals, including child sex offenders, terrorists and organized crime groups to frustrate investigations and avoid detection and prosecution.”

The Five Eyes basically argue that “providers of information and communications technology and services” have a responsibility to provide access to lawfully obtained data and that cooperation with the government constitutes a mutual benefit. The statement goes on to say that despite the promulgation of encrypted services by tech companies, those companies are still subject to the rule of law and must comply with laws that grant access to data in order for the governments to fulfill their duty to protect their citizens from harm.

The statement tries to be conciliatory in by promising that tech companies should do this voluntarily and that the technological means that one company uses to comply with government requests doesn’t have to be the same means that another company uses and neither will the governments prefer one method over another. However, the governments warn that any further “impediments” to access data may result in other “technological, enforcement, legislative, or other measures” in order to ensure compliance.

In a further effort to assuage the fears of civil liberties advocates, the Five Eyes also released a joint memo that details their commitment to the importance of a free and open internet, countering terrorism, cyber security, border control, countering foreign interference, and encryption.

The issue of getting tech companies to allow access to private customer data has been ongoing for quite a while. Apple infamously dealt with this in the aftermath of the San Bernadino terrorist attack while Facebook has been in recent litigation with the U.S. Department of Justice for access to encrypted Messenger data.

Given how driven many large tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple are to reinforce encryption on the web and proprietary messaging applications, governments around the world will likely step up attempts to force those companies to comply with data requests.

 

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[Rainmaker]

All 'back doors' are eventually exploited by hackers, just a matter of time.

 

\\ R