🚀 go-pugleaf

dallet@ozemail.com.au (Michael Wines) writes:

>Recommendation 2: 
>That the Government give consideration to making the use of
>strong cryptography by service providers obligatory as a
>means of overcoming perceived enforcement problems with
>section 85ZE of the Crimes Act 1914.

Leaving aside the fact that the committee couldn't figure out the difference
between encryption and authentication, the notion that transmission of
unauthenticated cleartext should be illegal is something from Monty Python.
Even if the hundreds of millions that this would require for implementation
in Australia were spent, this would do nothing to prevent the use of telnet,
outdialers, anonymous remailers and fraud via overseas accounts to allow
users to mask their own identities. Voluntary digital authentication is
great; mandatory digital authentication is lunacy.

In fact it is particularly galling to me that the Committee justified
this lunacy by quoting my own testimony out of context and in direct
contradiction to meaning I expressed to them.

>Recommendation 4 :
>That Access and Service Providers be required to verify the
>identity of all clients and that all clients are over the
>age of 18 years.
>------------------------

>It is fairly clear from these two recommendations that the
>committee's intentions are to impose the enforcement burden
>on the providers. 

Oh the committee couldn't find their collective arses if they had a map.
They were just parrotting the line that the ACS's Phil Argy put to them
(cf. Appendix 3 of their report). That this balderdash comes from the
chief mouthpiece of the ACS is both shocking and deeply disappointing.
But I think the committee's main intention was just to twist testimony
into whatever weird shape was required in order to rubberstamp the DOCA
consultation paper. Phil only saved them a little trouble.

>Providers would be expected to identify
>all clients, and mandate the use of digital signatures on
>all messages. It would be technically quite simple to
>prevent the use of fake signatures. A massive database of
>signatures will not be necessary. Instead, signatures could
>be recorded at the time the identity check is made.

And never let anyone leave their terminal unattended ... deadman
switches, yeah, that'll do it! And never let anyone's phone lines get
tapped by unauthorised people ... replace all the copper wires with
optic fibers, sure! And disable telnet ... webchats ... IRC ... ah,
hell, this whole Internet thing leaks like a seive - better replace it
with one big controllable computer some place centralised. I wonder if
MSN have one they're not using ...

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