NSW spying shake-up sparks Big Brother fears

[apothecary]

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/25/2069662.htm

The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties has slammed the State Government's overhaul of surveillance laws as highly invasive and unnecessary.

Premier Morris Iemma announced the new laws yesterday, describing the plan as the biggest-ever shake-up of surveillance legislation.

Under the new laws, police will have greater power to install, monitor and retrieve a range of surveillance devices.

The changes also include an extension of warrants from 21 to 90 days and retrospective applications for warrants in extreme cases.

NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Cameron Murphy says the laws will give NSW Police an unprecedented level of power.

"Most people would be frightened to know that police can stick a radioactive isotope on you and track you from location to location," he said.

"I think also people would be frightened to know that police can use listening devices and cameras to surveil your every move, every private conversation that you have and they don't even have to go to a judge to obtain permission to do so."

Mr Murphy says the changes remove police accountability and could lead to an abuse of power.

"This is a step towards NSW becoming a Big Brother state," he said.

"You're talking here about allowing the police to conduct intrusive surveillance using listening devices, radio isotopes [and] cameras, and they don't have to go to court to get a warrant until five days afterwards."

Cautious backing

The Opposition has cautiously welcomed the Government's beefing up of surveillance laws, but admits the changes will give NSW Police unprecedented powers.

Shadow attorney-general Greg Smith says police will be making decisions that used to be left to the judiciary.

"We're living in a different atmosphere now," he said.

"In 1984, there was a very strong push towards civil liberties and protecting privacy of suspects. Now there's much more of a trend of pushing the police tools to the limit."

But Mr Smith says it is a constant battle keeping up with crime syndicates and the new legislation should give police the edge.

"I will probably support most of it, in the sense that I think dealing with sophisticated criminals, you need every available tool to get evidence," he said.

"These guys are very counter-surveillance conscious."

[apothecary]

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/24/2069554.htm

The New South Wales Government has unveiled what it is describing as the biggest ever shake-up of surveillance laws in the state's history of law enforcement.

Premier Morris Iemma says the new laws will give police greater power to install, monitor and retrieve a range of surveillance devices.

He has told Parliament it is important that police are able to stay ahead of criminals.

"That's why we will give our police powerful new warrants to permit the use of surveillance devices in a wide range of circumstances," he said.

Assistant Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas says the new laws will make it easier for police to carry out their work.

"It is simply catching up perhaps with the really rapidly evolving environment in which we capture evidence," he said.

Under the changes, police will be able to use surveillance devices without a warrant if there is an imminent threat of serious violence to a person or substantial damage to property.

[CyberCat]

I'm sure keystroke loggers will be in their arsenal of spying tools, just like Remotely installed FBI keylogger. FBI Spyware in a Nutshell http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...showtopic=16269

[mu!]

i dont think they'd bother with keystroke loggers. they can just get everything that passes through your local telstra exchange.

[folias]

from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely"

An observation that a person’s sense of morality lessens as his or her power increases. The statement was made by Lord Acton, a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

--

In a country where police corruption is often rather evident... it seems EXTREMELY imprudent to allow more of this type of unrestrained power to police officers - who may not always have the public interests in mind and perhaps, often, only their own.

Julian.

[CyberCat]

i dont think they'd bother with keystroke loggers. they can just get everything that passes through your local telstra exchange.

I think you need to read it more closely. This will not always work. If you are black boxed (mirror port) at the ADSL Telstra exchange (basically a man-in-the-middle surveillance) they will be able to mirror ALL your internet traffic and monitor all clear text http communication. Now with https (SSL encryption) all traffic between your pc and the server is encrypted. However, with a black boxed in the middle they can still spoof the SSL certificate with their fake certificate. This depends on how high-tech the black boxed is, and whether it just monitors by duplicating all the Internet traffic.

Your PC <== fake ssl encryption ==> (fake ssl certificate)[black Box](real ssl certificate) <== real ssl encryption ==> SSL Enabled Server

The wiretap was done at PacBell's connection facility at 650 Robinson Rd. in San Diego. The DEA obtained what's known as a "mirror port," a feature that many network switches made by companies including Cisco Systems include for troubleshooting purposes.

A mirror port duplicates all the Internet traffic of one user to a second port on the same switch, without the suspect being alerted that electronic surveillance is under way. The scheme is probably easier to accomplish with a static Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is what the Escondido case involved.

According to the DEA, only IP addresses of Web sites (such as 216.239.122.200 instead of cnet.com) and e-mail headers are captured, and not the rest of the communication stream. That, they argue, makes it akin to existing precedent dealing with pen registers, which capture telephone numbers dialed and are permitted without any proof of probable cause of wrongdoing.

That was necessary, according to DEA Agent Greg Coffey, because the suspects were using PGP and the encrypted Web e-mail service Hushmail.com. Coffey asserted that the DEA needed "real-time and meaningful access" to "monitor the keystrokes" for PGP and Hushmail passphrases.

https://www.hushmail.com/about-how?PHPSESSI...521e96fb4b9bbf1

PGP and Hushmail encrypts the text before it is sent along an SSL encryption for extra security. Keystroke loggers are use to infiltrate your PC and monitor/steal passphrases and text before it is encrypted.

[CyberCat]

PGP and Hushmail encrypts the text before it is sent along an SSL encryption for extra security. Keystroke loggers are use to infiltrate your PC and monitor/steal passphrases and text before it is encrypted.

Hushmail open to Feds with court orders. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/hu...l_court_orders/

Edited November 10, 2007 by CyberCat