Australia next to ban PGP

[Andrew.Spring@ping.be (Andrew Spring)]

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> From: rja14@cl.cam.ac.uk (Ross Anderson)
> Newsgroups:
alt.security.pgp,alt,politics.datahighway,aus.legal,aus.net.news,sci.crypt
> Subject: Australia next to ban PGP
> Date: 1 Aug 1995 17:53:50 GMT
> Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
> Lines: 57
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> 
> Australia's proposed crypto policy:
> 
> (1)     Banks will get key escrow
> 
> (2)     Other Australian residents will be forced to use weak crypto
> 
> Source: talk by Steve Orlowski, Assistant Director, Australian attorney 
> general's department, given at the Cryptography Policy and Algorithms 
> Conference, Queensland University of Technology, last month.
> 
> p 34: `the needs of the majority of users of the infrastructure for
>       privacy and smaller financial transactions can be met by lower 
>       level encryption which could withstand a normal but not 
>       sophisticated attack against it. Law enforcement agencies could 
>       develop the capability to mount such sophisticated attacks. 
>       Criminals who purchased the higher level encryption products 
>       would immediately attract attention to themselves.'
> 
> He mentioned that his department considered itself a suitable repository
> for the government central decrypting unit, which would decrypt traffic 
> for local police forces. He also wants to escrowed keys for banks and 
> other organisations allowed to use strong crypto. 
> 
> Centralising the wiretap capability with the AG is represented as a useful
> safeguard against abuse of power by local police forces. It would be
> presented as a `data recovery' facility in order to reassure the voters.
> 
> Centralisation will enable the AG to acquire the capability to use ``more 
> sophisticated techniques in circumstances where the key cannot, for 
> whatever reason, be recovered from escrow''.
> 
> So the technical parameters would appear to be: 40 bit keys for the 
> masses, 56-bit escrowed keys for the banks, and a Wiener machine sitting
> in Orlowski's office. Belt, braces and string.
> 
> Curiously enough, he quotes a `Review of long Term Cost Effectiveness
> of Telecommunications Interception' as saying that ``Encryption by 
> targets of their communications (both voice and data) is not considered
> as a problem for TI at present in Australia'' and goes on to say that
> ``there has been comparatively little market for voice encryption 
> products, although they have been readily available''. 
> 
> He even produces some good arguments for the EFF, such as that much of
> the intelligence comes from the call log data and from calls to third 
> parties such as airlines and hotels which are not encrypted.
> 
> He also says that the OECD countries will hold a meeting on National 
> Cryptography Policies later this year. While at the conference, I found
> out that a classified meeting took place this March in Germany between 
> the signals intelligence agencies of the developed countries, plus
> Australia and South Africa, at which the assembled spooks agreed to
> press their governments to bring in escrow and/or weak crypto.
> 
> Australia seems rather eager to lick Uncle Sam's boots on this issue. 
> I wonder what the payoff was?
> 
> Ross

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