Christopher Joye has a monumental piece in the AFR today – talking about cyber warfare and the threat to Australia. Short precis here.
Sitting in an office in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s Soviet-style building, which mirrors the Orwellian bunker one might imagine, Australia’s most experienced spy master, David Irvine, has a lot on his mind as he gazes over Lake Burley Griffin.
Irvine, the director-general of ASIO, knows Australian business and the government are engaged in a new, and irreversible, “cold cyberwar”, which the Americans have designated as the fifth and most uncertain defence domain.
Great intro – good points made throughout the whole piece too. But … I am not entirely convinced. We read
The Chinese were fingered in the hacking of Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s computers in the 2008 US presidential election campaign. In 2011 they allegedly penetrated the parliamentary email systems of 10 Australian federal ministers, including Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and compromised emails belonging to the European Union President and his advisers.
Okay – that is very naughty and I expect the appropriate authorities to deal with that. What do ASIO want?
To protect business, ASIO supports Parliament introducing national security legislation making changes to four laws which would require telephone companies and internet service providers to store for at least two years basic information, such as the type, time, duration and identifiers of messages. ASIO’s concern is that the data, which is the minimum it says it needs to investigate threats, is being discarded by smaller telecommunication companies.
Civil libertarians argue the changes would be an unjustified invasion of privacy and raise the spectre of a security state.
Really? So storing Australian phone details will stop the Chinese from hacking the Prime Minister’s email? How does that work? A foreign power poses a credible threat to national security (I can accept that proposition) and in response the authorities want to spy on their own citizens (that’s the bit I’m struggling with).
I understand that Abbott has okayed the idea.
C.L.
2 Jan 13 at 10:10 pm
I am suspicious when an authority such as ASIO wants more powers of surveillance over the citizens of a country, which in this instance is us. Once a break appears in the dyke, it soon becomes a flood.
The ALP also will use its current beef, favouring censorship of the press and other media, as the Trojan Horse to further make inroads against our freedoms. ASIO is designated to pull the trigger.
Hubert East
2 Jan 13 at 10:23 pm
Real issue, then addressed by an unrelated solution that furthers the statist agenda. Why do we see this foisted upon us again and again?
big dumb fu
2 Jan 13 at 10:23 pm
They want it for forensic purposes. Cyber intruders (criminals, spies, terrorists..) simply follow the line of least resistance. The more systems they can infiltrate – yours, mine, your ISP, my ISP – the greater the chance of them reaching their intended destination, be it the PM’s email, ASIO, or Rio Tinto.
They need the evidence.
Lazlo
2 Jan 13 at 10:47 pm
Because they are amonst us, our ‘citizens’, like the 7/7/05 terrorists in the UK.
Lazlo
2 Jan 13 at 11:02 pm
I’m with you on this one all the way, Sinc. No need for such measures, they are unrelated to fighting the Chinese or whoever. “To protect business”, bollocks to that. Business protects itself, ASIO doesn’t help.
m0nty
3 Jan 13 at 12:05 am
Sinc,
what exactly are you struggling over?
Louis Hissink
3 Jan 13 at 12:43 am
I suppose Mr Sinclair, it boils down to, “who’s an Australian?”…. Is a Chinese Australian, “Australian”?….. a la the Fitzgibbon defence minister and the Helen Lui scandal… etc.
But I do get your point in this respect.
I expect my spies in my spy agencies to be, well, Spies.
Thus they operate behind the back of the law, in the shadows. They are Australian patriots who will die for our country or spend the rests of their lives silently in our jails or anyone else’s…. or take poison, etc.
…. I don’t expect our spy agencies to be swanning along on the coattails of the law oppressing us instead of our rivals and enemies.
I’d rather have some little obscure bureaucratic department that loses the plot occasionally and can be denied and “dealt with”…. Than have the whole legal or political system of our country being compromised by Authoritarian tyrants using laws we have stupidly committed to paper.
Spies, spy. Just don’t get caught fellas….. and when you write your memoirs. Do it in invisible ink.
J.H.
3 Jan 13 at 12:45 am
We all saw what happened when they beefed up the laws in 2005/6: Internment camps, thought control, people forced to eat boring left wing food stuffs, masturbation banned, babies punched, gay marriage made compulsory….
The horror, the hoooo-o-o-o-orrrooooooor!
If m0nty thinks it’s ebil, it must be ebil. Eeeeeebil, I tells ya.
Abu Chowdah
3 Jan 13 at 1:21 am
The Chinese would take one look at Madame Slush’s email and realise it’s cheaper to just buy what they need. They’re probably more interested in rigging Hilmer’s RSPV dating site in their favour.
ASIO seem to have the religion of the Perpetually Aggrieved tied up already.
I’ts the Lee Browns they need to keep an eye on.
Forester
3 Jan 13 at 6:56 am
Some of those Chinese Australians are descended from individuals who came here during the gold rush and have deeper roots in Australia than many of the people descended from Europeans who came subsequently. Just saying…
Sinclair Davidson
3 Jan 13 at 7:55 am
I’m not sure what ASIO is really addressing here which is not being addressed by business itself.
Any organisation with real IP / privacy concerns to protect, address it via the strategies provided by its risk management committee.
Most corporates are locked down so tight it inhibits business operations.
Token
3 Jan 13 at 8:06 am
In this post Mordy world that is a dangerous term to define.
As Mark Steyn notes, the lyrics “There were funky Chinamen from funky Chinatown” has been defined as a hate crime in the UK.
Token
3 Jan 13 at 8:10 am
Any excuse to (further) control the population.
Is there existing in Australia a major and forthright political party who actually stands up for our culture, traditions, rights and freedoms; because I see scarce defense of them from either the Socialist Labor/Greens and the Coalition, who seemingly mouth appropriate words, but I suspect won’t ‘walk the walk’ at crunch time.
A Lurker
3 Jan 13 at 8:54 am
Allegedly…. it’s easy to allege things then make up a new law no? Outside of defence and perhaps trade the Chicoms probably have as little interest in the likes of Gillard as the Australian public does.
Chris M
3 Jan 13 at 9:06 am
Obviously the Prime Minister sends her policy instructions by email.
Tel
3 Jan 13 at 9:51 am
I used to work with a fellow who could trace his ancestors back to the victorian gold rush.
Two brothers came out to work the mines, after a year or so they each brought out their 9 wives(?)
He had his framed family tree on the lounge room wall, it went from 2 to about 200 in 4 generations.
After the Victorians bunged a tax on chinese workers they used to land them in Robe SA where they could walk across the desert to the mines to dodge it.
Forester
3 Jan 13 at 11:16 am
It is so much easier for ASIO and whatever other government agency to spy on all Australian citizens.
Look at the alternative: the various police and spy forces would actually have to get off their collective lazy arses and actually do some police work.
Bit by bit, the government is chipping away – eventually, there will be cameras in every room of every house – after all, if you’re doing nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about……
TonyO
3 Jan 13 at 12:14 pm
I wonder if “Chinese” is code for something else. Do the Chinese really care about the internal shenanigans of the Obama and McCain electoral campaign? One imagines what they would have made of Joe the Plumber or the various other bizarre media storms in teacups that the modern campaign is made up of.
Possibly Chinese addresses are simply used as a cover for people with very different affiliations. I mean imagine the stink of Israel was found accessing the same data? And which nation do you think would have the greater hacking capacity? But far easier just to tut-tut and say the Chinese. The Chinese might well have interest in the content of various communications at high levels, but they are hardly interested in manipulating at the level of electoral politics – partly because they don’t have the media interests or the specific cultural understanding that could leverage any information. That would not be true of everybody though.
Grey
3 Jan 13 at 5:31 pm
Greys
After your recent revelations about who killed JFK (as against JR) and your support of Iranian regime hanging homos and stoning women having sex outside of marriage you ought to be the last fucking person talking about national security matters, you nutball.
Call 000 and get an ambulance to take you to an ER for the mentally disturbed. You need help, not posting comments on blogs.
JC
3 Jan 13 at 5:52 pm