Attorney-General George Brandis has created a tremendous amount of confusion over what the government plans to do about encryption in the wake of the London attacks – but, given his famous bid to explain metadata, one should, perhaps, not be surprised.
In what was claimed as an exclusive by the Sydney Morning Herald, Brandis gave vent to his thoughts about how authorities could decrypt messages that were sent by terrorists.
It would have been good if the attorney-general had sought to understand how encryption works before he opened his mouth. But then when has the nation's first law officer ever sought to do so? His pomposity does not allow him to ever bother about such trivialities.
One of his statements, in particular, was laughable. The SMH quoted Brandis as saying: "If there are encryption keys then those encryption keys have to be put at the disposal of the authorities."
{loadposition sam08}One has yet to hear of encryption that was effected without encryption keys, but as Brandis revealed when he went on his metadata crusade, the good minister probably is privy to secrets that neither you nor I have access to.
The idea that only "good guys" can be given access to secrets safely has been dealt a blow by the recent leak of NSA exploits on the Web. But these factors are not a consideration for politicians who have an agenda.
The extent of Brandis' ignorance can be seen by the suggestions he had to offer. It is important to also note that at no point was he challenged by his interrogator. But then, like Brandis, Fairfax Media has a proud record of publishing what one can charitably characterise as nonsense when it comes to encryption. These two articles provide proof of that.
Brandis babbled on about asking the five English-speaking nations to come to some kind of common approach on breaking encryption. He forgot that Britain already has a law in place that requires Internet, phone and communications applications firms to store records for a year and allow law enforcement to access the data on demand.
He also suggested that companies be asked to co-operate, saying of the Five Eyes nations, "I think we've got to take a common position on the extent of the legally imposed obligations on the device-makers and the social media companies to co-operate".
It is extremely difficult to see any of the companies involved — and they are mainly American — agreeing to open up their encryption schemes for any government to access. That would be the best way for them to see sales fall.
What Brandis has forgotten is that the cat was let out of the bag four years ago when the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told the world via journalists that the NSA was busy hoovering up any and all digital data that it could. Since then, the use of encryption has grown by leaps and bounds. US companies have started offering data storage in other countries that are not subject to the NSA's influence as a selling point.
At the time of the Snowden disclosures, there were reports that some countries like India and Russia had gone back to typewritten and hand-written communications to avoid leaks. One wonders what Brandis' solution would be to access communications that are written on a piece of paper and then burnt after they have been read? Would he want paper to be made indestructible?
Terrorists and anyone else who plans to wreak havoc are not tied to encryption. A read of the book Masterminds of Terror, the best account of the 9/11 attacks, would be instructive. The government has chosen to make a big noise about it in order to divert attention from its inability to tackle what is a political problem. Remember that despite all its talk about the IRA problem being a law-and-order issue, it finally went away only when it was treated as what it was: a political problem.
Terrorists have political motives for everything they do. It is high time that the government stopped peddling simplistic solutions to distract the public and got down to the hard job of tackling it as it should be.