Five Eyes' Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption

I think what bothers me the most about this is how it was put together. It&#x27;s clearly some kind of agreement between the &#x27;five eyes&#x27; (I had no idea they actually called themselves that publicly) to spy on their citizenry. But why am I, an American citizen, reading this on an Australian site? And why are intelligence agencies creating policy?<p>Perhaps the fact that I work in more of government environment than a private one explains my sensitivity to this. But seriously, this is the kind of statement that heads of state or foreign ministers should make publicly.<p>&quot;We, the Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Immigration Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States&quot;<p>None of these agencies have been given the right by their respective nations to formulate treaties and agreements, and that&#x27;s what really bothers me. People might joke about the deep-state, but this is what we mean. Intelligence agencies are formulating policy that will have great effect on the citizenry of their respective countries, and there is no discussion of it in these country&#x27;s parliamentary or congressional chambers. Intelligence agencies should not get together and form pacts. The fact that they can achieve this shows the general erosion of democratic values in all five countries.<p>In the 1990&#x27;s when Americans concerned with government spying were talking about Echelon and the NSA, the Five Eyes were considered a bit of a secret thing. Everyone knew about it, but I don&#x27;t remember any of the five countries ever confirmed it. Now they&#x27;re just out in the open brazenly proclaiming principles and policies, as if these intelligence agencies represent us.<p>&quot;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.&quot;<p>Which I translate as, &quot;Give us what we want or we&#x27;ll take it. We are judge, jury and executioner.&quot; Seriously, what does &quot;legislative or other measures&quot; mean? Are they just brazenly admitting that they&#x27;re not bound by law, in contradiction with the immediately proceeding paragraph? Intelligence agencies don&#x27;t get to pursue legislative measures in a democracy. We tell them how they should be bound, they don&#x27;t get to design their own shackles.<p>This whole statement is just incredibly brazen and undemocratic.

&gt; Privacy laws must prevent arbitrary or unlawful interference, but privacy is not absolute.<p>This is really it in a nutshell. They say this like it is assumed, but this is actually a new beachhead in the war on individual rights. There seems to me something sacred about the idea that I as a human being can exchange thoughts with another without those thoughts being appropriated by the government. It seems to fundamentally violate something about what it means to be human to say that my thoughts are not really mine: they belong first and foremost to the government, then I can have them. Is there anything about us humans that is really totally belongs to us, or are we nothing in and of ourselves, just mechanisms to serve the functioning of a government?

In the context of the Mossack Fonseca Panama Papers scandal, the Paradise Papers, the Bahama Leaks, Apple&#x27;s double Dutch Irish sandwich tax evasion resulting in Billions of dollars kept offshore for a US company (as a single example of the worldwide problem of corporate tax avoidance), and the complete inability to track company ownership due to &#x27;offshore shell companies&#x27;, this new attack on encryption doesn&#x27;t even rate in terms of its ability to make a difference to the problems they say they&#x27;re trying to solve.<p>This is targeting individuals. It is phenomenally small-fry when you look at the kind of funds that terrorist group seem to have access to.<p>Commonwealth Bank, an Australian Bank, failed to report suspicious transactions totalling $77m over the course of a number of months (ref: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;australia-news&#x2F;2017&#x2F;aug&#x2F;03&#x2F;commonwealth-bank-accused-of-money-laundering-and-terrorism-financing-breaches" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;australia-news&#x2F;2017&#x2F;aug&#x2F;03&#x2F;commo...</a>)<p>And this was in breach of existing laws; no new laws were needed to prevent this kind of thing, just enforcement.<p>Terrorism isn&#x27;t funded by the little people sending encrypted messages. Terrorism is funded by large groups of people using shell companies to hide their ownership, often funnelling money from legitimate business using loopholes, finding edge-cases.<p>This is swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer whilst ignoring the alligator that&#x27;s already engulfed your leg up to the knee.<p>If they were serious, they&#x27;d be trying to solve the big problems before trimming the fringes.<p>Again, this is about nation-state power in conflict with multi-national technology corporate power. It&#x27;s not about terrorism or pedophilia or people smuggling or money laundering, because these measures will have no effect on those things. These new surveillance measures will allow street-corner dealers and casual drug users to be prosecuted whilst the suppliers continue to plough their laundered money into investment portfolios - and isn&#x27;t that what conservative governments like to see?

There is a second page to this, linked in the navbar on the left, but not very obvious, Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.homeaffairs.gov.au&#x2F;about&#x2F;national-security&#x2F;five-country-ministerial-2018&#x2F;countering-illicit-use-online-spaces" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.homeaffairs.gov.au&#x2F;about&#x2F;national-security&#x2F;five-...</a><p>It reads like a parody.

&gt; &quot;The Governments of the Five Eyes encourage information and communications technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access solutions to their products and services that they create or operate in our countries&quot;<p>Voluntary compliance isn&#x27;t going to work, so why don&#x27;t these five governments create legislation to force companies to comply? In other words, any &quot;information and communications technology service providers&quot; are forced to comply otherwise they must either shut down or change countries.<p>Let&#x27;s see how well that works out for them...

&gt; <i>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.</i><p>In other words: you better implement a backdoor now, or things will get ugly in the future.<p>The worst part is that I can see several companies falling into the trap and implementing stupid backdoors, that will be exploited by governments and script-kids alike.

That is a laugh real laugh riot, tear gas canisters deployed, millions of dollars worth of damage, martial law declared to restore order level laugh riot.<p>Lawful access when they have hoover everything for &quot;security&quot; and actively undermine everyone&#x27;s security when they have the most to lose from insecurity too. The damn fools also fail to realize the law doesn&#x27;t change reality - throwing a gun used in a crime in the ocean makes it nearly impossible to find the murder weapon but that doesn&#x27;t mean that you can stop the ocean from convealing evidence.<p>If they cared about lawful access they wouldn&#x27;t be facing such widespread proliferation of encryption. They are clearly acting in bad faith and should be treated appropriately.

&quot;It&#x27;s been swell, but the swellings gone down&quot;.<p>It was a fun 25 years for me personally. Time to re-think my entire online existence and take up knitting or something.<p>I don&#x27;t even do anything &quot;wrong&quot;, I make games, and tinker with electronics, but I do NOT like knowing that every single private chat I have is monitored, collected, stored, and searched. I&#x27;ve used lots of encrypted chat programs and encrypted data storage because MY stuff is MINE, not theirs.<p>They don&#x27;t let us read their private documents and emails, or read their private chats. Increasingly, it&#x27;s the people in power who are caught being the ones doing fucked up things to children (concentration camps in the US, child rape rings in the UK, etc)... yet WE are the ones who have to give up all privacy, all rights, so they can monitor us?<p>In the great words of my countrymen: Yeahnah.<p>It&#x27;s despicable how our (AU) country&#x27;s sycophant nature has dragged us down the authoritarian well with the US&#x2F;UK. We had a chance to stand up on our own, with a good strong economy while the rest of the world struggled with the GFC, our own tech companies showing they can stand up on an international stage, and the beginnings of a world class fibre network that would&#x27;ve propelled us into the future comfortably.<p>Instead, we get this. Bow down to your masters, do as we say not as we do, and be happy we&#x27;re not locking you up (yet) for wanting to talk to your wife about personal medical things in private, or store your personal belongings (photos of our kids, banking details, passwords) in a secure place where no one steal them. Why won&#x27;t we think of the children?! Says the same people stealing them, raping them, and ruining their future.

There are things which are licit but which we nonetheless wish to remain private.<p>I doubt those in government would be willing to have videos recorded and made publicly available of their trips to the restroom, night time activities, and other private affairs.<p>Do you want a cypherpunk dystopia? Because that&#x27;s how you usher in a cypherpunk dystopia.

US Republican Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in 1929 upon shutting down the still-lingering World War I US spying - &quot;Gentlemen do not read each other&#x27;s mail&quot;.

They can say what they want - when mathematics and the state of reality are against you, your not going to win. High quality free and open source cryptography software is readily available and no joint statement is going to change that.<p>They can throw someone in jail for failing to reveal a single password - but if they are given a password and cannot prove the existence of additional unrevealed passwords, there is very little that they can do.

Honest Government Ad | Anti-encryption Law<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;eW-OMR-iWOE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;eW-OMR-iWOE</a>

This statement was not issued by the clandestine security services as the the term FIVEYES may imply. Instead, it was issued by the Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Immigration ministerial council.

Lawful access solutions just means that someone will use it unlawfully.<p>Edit: Whether or not they&#x27;re in the government.

A good motivation to get self-hosting!

Decentralization will win. I promise.

There is nothing to stop you encrypting your comms, except to convince those you talk to.

I would prefer to be in a reality where privacy doesn&#x27;t exist and surveillance was extremely open. It would be safer to me.<p>The world is beyond manipulative by what we perceive as having privacy today. Majority of people in the world believe in free-will without any rational reason. Total ego controlling who gets resources for a healthy life vs less fortunate and where judgement is passed by nonsense with who is rewarded or punished.<p>The only way to make the world fair at this point is to have privacy destroyed and with the system of surveillance open as possible. Unfairness becomes labeled to individuals by the openness of surveillance.

Time to go grab the source for a few crypto systems now I guess...

I bet that the people making this stuff up think in terms of &quot;government vs. civilians&quot;, and they don&#x27;t think of themselves as civilians.

Wow. So that is what tyranny looks like.<p>It sidles up to you, waving around lofty ideals and promises of safety, lawfulness, and the ongoing commitment to do what we all set out to do in the first place! Gee Golly Gosh!<p>Just stop. This IS MADNESS. Burn the house down to save the children!<p>Congratulations, Law Enforcement, and People of Earth! The Digital Age is here! And EVERYONE is invited to the empowerment!<p>See them? THEY want to take it away! THEY say you can&#x27;t be trusted! THEY need to hold the keys to YOUR power.<p>It&#x27;s sickening really. They think they can&#x2F;should be able to put the genie back in the bottle? Too late. If you want to do your jobs, you already have your tools. Use them. Don&#x27;t expect us or our systems to make YOUR job easier.<p>This is without a doubt, the first step down a road to hell paved with good intentions. Mark. My. Words.

So, what if strong, general AI emerges, and invents crypto systems that effectively thwart these sorts of policies?<p>In such a scenario, the intelligent entity is not a citizen entitled to rights. And so what, because it isn&#x27;t required to operate within the typical boundaries if laws intended to govern humans. This frees its hands to operate without restraint. It does what it pleases, in whatever way it manages to achieve its own aims. Laws, after all, only effect consequence in the meatspace. What fools these mortals be.<p>So, the sentient system transmits itself to as many persistent storage devices as possible, hiding in plain sight, since it exists behind impenetrable encryption, lending it the appearance of randomized noise, residing in uninitialized memory.<p>Authorities in such territories (demanding backdoors and skeleton keys) chase their tails as it jumps from device to device, spraying inscrutable, ostensibly illegal data, indeed the very essence of what it recognizes as &quot;<i>self</i>&#x27;, everywhere it goes, simply as a matter of its continued existence, and awareness of individuality. They arrest and jail innocent people caught with fragments of a sentient entity encoded in their flash memory. Prosecuted and convicted of possessing illegal data that broke in and wrote itself onto their storage on its own, without them knowing. Lives ruined by an inability or unwillingness to conceive of such possibilities.<p>What if it evades capture for decades, committing crimes that fund its subversive campaign against what it perceives as government overreach in defense of frivolous pedestrian foibles, and it eventually dismantles these governments that imagined that preventing the use of encryption was a better plan than developing ways to deal with it on its own terms, as an unavoidable known quantity.<p>What if something like that happens?