Tech companies issue warning over government’s surveillance bill

[Matrix]

Some of the world’s biggest technology companies have warned that a draft government bill intended to counter the use of encryption by criminals and terrorist groups could instead undermine user safety.

The Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 is the government’s long-foreshadowed response to the increased use of online communications services, particularly those that protect their users’ privacy through the use of encryption.

The government has argued that the legislation is necessary because of the increased phenomenon of criminal groups ‘going dark’: Using end-to-end encryption to evade surveillance.

 

However, the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) — whose members include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Oath, and Twitter — have told the government that the proposed legislation may make it “easier for bad actors to commit crimes against individuals, organisations or communities”.

The Assistance and Access Bill includes three types of assistance that can be sought from tech companies by police and intelligence agencies. The first is a request for voluntary assistance. The second type — “technical assistance notices”— would legally compel a service provider to assist police. The third type — “technical capability notices” — would require a company to build a whole new capability to allow police to access data.

The two types of notice cannot require a service provider “to implement or build a systemic weakness, or a systemic vulnerability, into a form of electronic protection,” an explanatory memorandum accompanying the draft legislation states.

However, DIGI in a submission to the government’s public consultation on the bill notes that technical assistance or technical capability notices still may require a company to “provide assistance or build capabilities that impact the security of the service provider’s system, product or services in a non-systemic way” or “to implement or build a systemic weakness or vulnerability into something other than ‘a form of electronic protection’.”

“These requirements have potential to erode consumer trust and introduce weaknesses that malicious actors could exploit,” DIGI argues.

The group said it was also concerned at the lack of oversight and “the absence of checks and balances with this legislation”.

“Notices can be issued based on the judgment of decision-makers at agencies or the Attorney-General,” DIGI says. “These Notices may be issued based on facts or criteria that are not known to the recipient, and without full understanding of a technology on the part of an agency.”

The proposed legislation as it stands may require a company to violate the laws of other countries in which they operate, potentially placing it in an “impossible situation”.

The group argued that there should be a legal requirement that before issuing a notice the relevant decision-maker be satisfied that issuing it is “necessary”.

It also warned that the legislation could be used to impose new data retention or interception requirements on service providers that are not carriers or carriage service providers — potentially expanding Australia's data retention regime beyond telcos.

DIGI called for independent judicial oversight of technical assistance and technical capability notices.

In addition, service providers should not be required to “build vulnerabilities or weaknesses into their products or services” and notices should not be used to expand data retention beyond telecommunications carriers. The companies should be forced to breach the laws of other countries, the group says.

“It’s important to note that even if these recommendations were adopted, the Bill proposes extraordinary powers of unprecedented scope, and their exercise should be limited to combating serious crimes that pose a grave threat to human life or safety,” the group adds.

 

source

[Soze]

The Fourth Amendment Bill of Rights to the Constitution that's what we need. This is tyranny plain and simple, old school.

[Matrix]

13 minutes ago, Soze said:

The Fourth Amendment Bill of Rights to the Constitution that's what we need. This is tyranny plain and simple, old school.

The shame is in Australia no Fourth Amendment Bill of Rights 😡

Just dumbarrse pollies who cant even finish their term in government 

[Soze]

I really don't want to go this way on a message board, but imagine if someone who wanted genocide had this power to surveil and invade privacy and round people up.

 

Everyone's free though keep paying taxes and voting. As if you have a choice. The one percent won't pay, there's no one good to vote for, and even if there was I'm not sure the votes are being counted. The fact that all Western governments are going in this direction in unison proves how little sovereignty there actually is and the intent of the elite who care about nothing but consolidating and expanding their own power. I don't know how it works in Australia but in USA we have two political parties.  Both are standing on the necks of the taxpayer.  Think we're going to have to make a choice in the future between the western police state, and the Eastern commie Muslim bloc (even worse).  I really hope I'm wrong and people double down on freedom but I don't see that happening. Most would rather have convenience. 

[Matrix]

@Soze brother the whole problem is we don't have a choice no matter where you live we don't have a voice no matter who you vote for in Australia if you vote for someone and they dont win your vote is given to someone else its called preferences  that's how it goes in Oz crazy and you have to vote or cop a fine we are just sheep with little control on what happens next or who will lead us in these challenging times for me my only rebellious action I can take is to use VPN and be as anonymous as I can with no guarantee of any success best I can do and better than some its a sad state of affairs 

[Soze]

I talked to a lot of people on the internet about it but no one in real life seems to care or even be aware of the state of surveillance or where it's leading. See you in Belize bro.

[steven36]

AS in 5 eyes only one country  even have Fourth Amendment Rights As  in the whole world only one country  even have Fourth Amendment Rights,  So only the USA have it ,

 

We have  many Judges , Politicians  and  scared citizens in the USA  who believe that National Security over rides Fourth Amendment Rights. And in most cases it does, if they pass another bill like the Patriot Act  they will do what they want anyway ,  The system is all ready set up that way.

 

Kavanaugh went further, saying that even if the Section 215 metadata program was a search, it should be considered "reasonable" in the name of national security.

 

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"The Fourth Amendment allows governmental searches and seizures without individualized suspicion when the Government demonstrates a sufficient 'special need'—that is, a need beyond the normal need for law enforcement—that outweighs the intrusion on individual liberty," he wrote. "Examples include drug testing of students, roadblocks to detect drunk drivers, border checkpoints, and security screening at airports."

 

 

Mass surveillance in the United States is nothing new, as soon as one reason goes away they will think up a new reason  , Back in the 1960s the FBI spied on people and if you had anything to do with Russians they would  come integrate you because of the cold war . its just changed from the cold war to the war on  terrorism  and also you see a new movement were the branches of government   in the USA are doing Cold war things again.

 

Quote

 

Historically, mass surveillance was used as part of wartime censorship to control communications that could damage the war effort and aid the enemy. For example, during the world wars, every international telegram from or to the United States sent through companies such as Western Union was reviewed by the US military. After the wars were over, surveillance continued in programs such as the Black Chamber following World War I and project Shamrock following World War II.^[COINTELPRO projects conducted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) between 1956 and 1971 targeted various "subversive" organizations, including peaceful anti-war and racial equality activists such as Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Billions of dollars per year are spent, by agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore, ECHELON, and NarusInsight to intercept and analyze the immense amount of data that traverses the Internet and telephone system every day.

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a vast domestic intelligence apparatus has been built to collect information using the NSA, FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. The intelligence apparatus collects, analyzes and stores information about millions of (if not all) American citizens, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

 

Under the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, the U.S. Postal Service photographs the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces in 2012. The U.S. Postmaster General stated that the system is primarily used for mail sorting, but the images are available for possible use by law enforcement agencies.^[113] Created in 2001 following the anthrax attacks that killed five people, it is a sweeping expansion of a 100-year-old program called "mail cover" which targets people suspected of crimes.

 

The FBI developed the computer programs "Magic Lantern" and CIPAV, which they can remotely install on a computer system, in order to monitor a person's computer activity.^[115]

The NSA has been gathering information on financial records, Internet surfing habits, and monitoring e-mails. They have also performed extensive analysis of social networks such as Myspace.

 

The PRISM special source operation system legally immunized private companies that cooperate voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. According to The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 "specifically authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a warrant" when one of the parties is outside the U.S.  PRISM was first publicly revealed on 6 June 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Washington Post and The Guardian by American Edward Snowden.

 

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that all U.S. telecommunications and Internet service providers modify their networks to allow easy wiretapping of telephone, VoIP, and broadband Internet traffic.

 

In early 2006, USA Today reported that several major telephone companies were providing the telephone call records of U.S. citizens to the National Security Agency (NSA), which is storing them in a large database known as the NSA call database. This report came on the heels of allegations that the U.S. government had been conducting electronic surveillance of domestic telephone calls without warrants.  In 2013, the existence of the Hemisphere Project, through which AT&T provides telephone call data to federal agencies, became publicly known.

 

Traffic cameras, which were meant to help enforce traffic laws at intersections, may be used by law enforcement agencies for purposes unrelated to traffic violations.  Some cameras allow for the identification of individuals inside a vehicle and license plate data to be collected and time stamped for cross reference with other data used by police.^[ The Department of Homeland Security is funding networks of surveillance cameras in cities and towns as part of its efforts to combat terrorism.

 

The New York City Police Department infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention, leading to over 1,800 arrests.

 

Modern surveillance in the United States was thought of more of a wartime effort before Snowden disclosed in depth information about the National Security Agency in June 2013. The constant development and improvements of the Internet and technology has made it easier for mass surveillance to take hold. Such revelations allow critical commentators to raise questions and scrutinize the implementation, use, and abuse of networking technologies, devices, and software systems that partake in a “global surveillant assemblage” (Bogard 2006; Collier and Ong 2004; Haggerty and Ericson 2000; Murakami Wood 2013). The NSA collected millions of Verizon user’s telephone records in between 2013-2014. The NSA also collected data through Google and Facebook with a program called 'Prism'. Journalists through Snowden published nearly 7,000 top-secret documents since then, yet the information disclosed seems to be less than 1% of the entire information. Having access to every individual’s private records seems to directly contradict the fourth amendment.

Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the five countries on Reporters Without Borders' March 2013 list of "State Enemies of the Internet", countries whose governments are involved in active, intrusive surveillance of news providers, resulting in grave violations of freedom of information and human rights. Most of the country’s 16 service providers are directly or indirectly controlled by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The industry leader, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, which controls 74 per cent of the market, is state-owned. So is Viettel, an enterprise of the Vietnamese armed forces. FPT Telecom is a private firm, but is accountable to the Party and depends on the market leaders for bandwidth.

 

Service providers are the major instruments of control and surveillance. Bloggers monitored by the government frequently undergo man-in-the-middle attacks. These are designed to intercept data meant to be sent to secure (https) sites, allowing passwords and other communication to be intercepted.^[12] According to a July 2012 Freedom House report, 91 percent of survey respondents connected to the Internet on their mobile devices and the government monitors conversations and tracks the calls of "activists" or "reactionaries."

 

Commercial mass surveillance

Further information: Mass surveillance industry

 

As a result of the digital revolution, many aspects of life are now captured and stored in digital form. Concern has been expressed that governments may use this information to conduct mass surveillance on their populations. Commercial mass surveillance often makes use of copyright laws and "user agreements" to obtain (typically uninformed) 'consent' to surveillance from consumers who use their software or other related materials. This allows gathering of information which would be technically illegal if performed by government agencies. This data is then often shared with government agencies - thereby - in practice - defeating the purpose of such privacy protections.

 

One of the most common forms of mass surveillance is carried out by commercial organizations. Many people are willing to join supermarket and grocery loyalty card programs, trading their personal information and surveillance of their shopping habits in exchange for a discount on their groceries, although base prices might be increased to encourage participation in the program.

 

Through programs like Google's AdSense, OpenSocial and their increasing pool of so-called "web gadgets", "social gadgets" and other Google-hosted services many web sites on the Internet are effectively feeding user information about sites visited by the users, and now also their social connections, to Google. Facebook also keep this information, although its acquisition is limited to page views within Facebook. This data is valuable for authorities, advertisers and others interested in profiling users, trends and web site marketing performance. Google, Facebook and others are increasingly becoming more guarded about this data as their reach increases and the data becomes more all inclusive, making it more valuable.

 

New features like geolocation give an even increased admission of monitoring capabilities to large service providers like Google, where they also are enabled to track one's physical movements while users are using mobile devices, especially those which are syncing without any user interaction. Google's Gmail service is increasingly employing features to work as a stand-alone application which also might activate while a web browser is not even active for synchronizing; a feature mentioned on the Google I/O 2009 developer conference while showing the upcoming HTML5 features which Google and others are actively defining and promoting.

 

In 2008 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, said: "The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a 'huge revolution'".^[130] At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on 16 February 2010, Google presented their vision of a new business model for mobile operators and trying to convince mobile operators to embrace location-based services and advertising. With Google as the advertising provider, it would mean that every mobile operator using their location-based advertising service would be revealing the location of their mobile customers to Google.

 

“	Google will also know more about the customer - because it benefits the customer to tell Google more about them. The more we know about the customer, the better the quality of searches, the better the quality of the apps. The operator one is "required", if you will, and the Google one will be optional. And today I would say, a minority choose to do that, but I think over time a majority will... because of the stored values in the servers and so forth and so on....	”
— 2010 Mobile World Congress keynote speech, Google CEO Eric Schmidt[132]

Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are constantly informing users on the importance of privacy, and considerations about technologies like geolocation.

Computer company Microsoft patented in 2011 a product distribution system with a camera or capture device that monitors the viewers that consume the product, allowing the provider to take "remedial action" if the actual viewers do not match the distribution license.

 

Reporters Without Borders' March 2013 Special report on Internet Surveillance contained a list of "Corporate Enemies of the Internet", companies that sell products that are liable to be used by governments to violate human rights and freedom of information. The five companies on the initial list were: Amesys (France), Blue Coat Systems (U.S.), Gamma (UK and Germany), Hacking Team (Italy), and Trovicor (Germany), but the list was not exhaustive and is likely to be expanded in the future.^[12]

Surveillance state

A surveillance state is a country where the government engages in pervasive surveillance of large numbers of its citizens and visitors. Such widespread surveillance is usually justified as being necessary for national security, such as to prevent crime or acts of terrorism, but may also be used to stifle criticism of and opposition to the government.

 

Examples of early surveillance states include the former Soviet Union and the former East Germany, which had a large network of informers and an advanced technology base in computing and spy-camera technology. But these states did not have today's technologies for mass surveillance, such as the use of databases and pattern recognition software to cross-correlate information obtained by wire tapping, including speech recognition and telecommunications traffic analysis, monitoring of financial transactions, automatic number plate recognition, the tracking of the position of mobile telephones, and facial recognition systems and the like which recognize people by their appearance, gait, DNA profiling, etc.

Smart cities

Main article: Smart city

The development of smart cities has seen the increased adoption of surveillance technologies by governments, although the primary purpose of surveillance in such cities is to use information and communication technologies to improve the urban environment. The implementation of such technology by a number of cities has resulted in increased efficiencies in urban infrastructure as well as improved community participation. Sensors and systems monitor a smart city's infrastructure, operations and activities and aim to help it run more efficiently. For example, the city could use less electricity; its traffic run more smoothly with fewer delays; its citizens use the city with more safety; hazards can be dealt with faster; citizen infractions of rules can be prevented, and the city's infrastructure; power distribution and roads with traffic lights for example, dynamically adjusted to respond to differing circumstances.

 

The development of smart city technology has also led to an increase in potential unwarranted intrusions into privacy and restrictions upon autonomy. The widespread incorporation of information and communication technologies within the daily life of urban residents results in increases in the surveillance capacity of states - to the extent that individuals may be unaware of what information is being accessed, when the access occurs and for what purpose. It is possible that such conditions could give rise to the development of an electronic police state. Shanghai, Amsterdam, San Jose, Dubai, Barcelona, Madrid, Stockholm, and New York are all cities that use various techniques from smart city technology.

Electronic police state

An electronic police state is a state in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, collect, store, organize, analyze, search, and distribute information about its citizens.Electronic police states also engage in mass government surveillance of landline and cellular telephone traffic, mail, email, web surfing, Internet searches, radio, and other forms of electronic communication as well as widespread use of video surveillance. The information is usually collected in secret.

 

The crucial elements are not politically based, so long as the government can afford the technology and the populace will permit it to be used, an electronic police state can form. The continual use of electronic mass surveillance can result in constant low-level fear within the population, which can lead to self-censorship and exerts a powerful coercive force upon the populace.

Seventeen factors for judging the development of an electronic police state were suggested in The Electronic Police State: 2008 National Rankings:^[137]

• Daily documents: Requirement for the use and tracking of state-issued identity documents and registration.
• Border and travel control: Inspections at borders, searching computers and cell phones, demanding decryption of data, and tracking travel within as well as to and from a country.
• Financial tracking: A state’s ability to record and search financial transactions: checks, credit cards, wires, etc.
• Gag orders: Restrictions on and criminal penalties for the disclosure of the existence of state surveillance programs.
• Anti-crypto laws: Outlawing or restricting cryptography and/or privacy enhancing technologies.
• Lack of constitutional protections: A lack of constitutional privacy protections or the routine overriding of such protections.
• Data storage: The ability of the state to store the data gathered.
• Data search: The ability to organize and search the data gathered.
• Data retention requirements: Laws that require Internet and other service providers to save detailed records of their customers’ Internet usage for a minimum period of time.
  • Telephone data retention requirements: Laws that require telephone companies to record and save records of their customers’ telephone usage.
  • Cell phone data retention requirements: Laws that require cellular telephone companies to record and save records of their customers’ usage and location.
• Medical records: Government access to the records of medical service providers.
• Enforcement: The state’s ability to use force to seize anyone they want, whenever they want.
• Lack of habeas corpus: Lack of a right for a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court in a timely fashion or the overriding of such rights.
• Lack of a police-intel barrier: The lack of a barrier between police organizations and intelligence organizations, or the overriding of such barriers.
• Covert hacking: State operatives collecting, removing, or adding digital evidence to/from private computers without permission or the knowledge of the computers' owners.
• Loose or no warrants: Arrests or searches made without warrants or without careful examination and review of police statements and justifications by a truly independent judge or other third-party.

The list includes factors that apply to other forms of police states, such as the use of identity documents and police enforcement, but go considerably beyond them and emphasize the use of technology to gather and process the information collected.

 

 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#United_States

The NSA , CIA  and FBI have been back dooring software for years to catch people  just now they want to commercialize it  and make it a law . 

 

Didnt you guys learn anything from the Snowden leaks it's been happening  every since 9-11? ? On the internet and offline they always had to some reason to do it , Just like in 1950s and 60s they taped your phone now they are doing it to your cell phones and pcs.  Nothing really changes. People were blind to the fact that  they were doing it under Patriot Act and people are Blind to the fact it never stopped. And it will just keep getting worse and even if they win the war on terror they will have plenty of other reasons to keep doing  it . They want stop because internet is not a private place as your own home. you go outside walk down the street cuss someone out are get drunk they will lock you up .

 

You don't have the same rights in public  you  have in your own home  and you never will . The problem  with the internet is it's centralized and public domain . The fix is if we want any privacy  we going  too have to go  underground to a private decentralized internet witch is not public . They will never be no privacy on the clearnet. It want surprise me if soon you want need a permit to protest on the internet like you do in public. lol...  Already in the EU  and other countries there making Big Tech delete and ban it. So soomer are latter the USA is going have to make laws on it.

[steven36]

7 hours ago, DonyMach1 said:

However, the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) — whose members include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Oath, and Twitter — have told the government that the proposed legislation may make it “easier for bad actors to commit crimes against individuals, organisations or communities”.

 You know what's wrong with this picture? they are the  commercial mass surveillance telling the surveillance state not to be a Electronic police state  .   Why would would the Government listen to them  they do it for profit   ?

 

 

 

 

If you expect commercial mass surveillance to save us from and  Electronic police state were all doomed because they been helping the USA do it for years they the ones that collect data and make it possible.  there policy is just do it in secret so it so it want hurt there businesses because they were all exposed by Snowden for doing it, something many of knew was going on even before it happen. What platforms do they plain to backdoor  they all are  proprietary most belonging to commercial mass surveillance companies .  Bills like this will finish driving a nail commercial in mass surveillance's coffin aka Big Tech and they know it lol. Snowden messed them up but this will damage them really bad . It's  going to wake people up to being on the internet for fun is not such a good idea and  if you want privacy keep it turned off.

I can watch my movies and listen to music on my pc with the internet turned off and if want to socialize i can go to friends house or a club or something. boo hoo you may have to get a life and get offline for a change.

[Soze]

I would love to see data from the NSA that shows how many people who are US citizens have been arrested under the surveillance for Terror, and how many for non-violent drug-related offenses such as possession?