Comment The Meat of It (Score 1) 151
The Department is also advised that sophisticated criminals and terrorists are exploiting encryption and related counter-interception techniques to frustrate law enforcement and security investigations, either by taking advantage of default-encrypted communications services or by adopting advanced encryption solutions.
The Department’s current view is that law enforcement, anti-corruption and national security agencies should be permitted to apply to an independent issuing authority for a warrant authorising the agency to issue ‘intelligibility assistance notices’ to service providers or other persons. The issuing authority should be permitted to impose conditions or restrictions on the scope of this authority.
Where issued to a service provider, such notices would formalise existing arrangements....
When issued to a person other than a service provider, such as the subject of a warrant, the Department’s preliminary view is that a notice would operate in a similar fashion to orders made under section 3LA of the Crimes Act 1914. Section 3LA permits agencies that have seized physical hardware, such as a computer or an external hard drive, under a search warrant to apply for a further warrant requiring a person to ‘provide any information or assistance that is reasonable and necessary’ to allow information held on the device to be converted into an intelligible form.
Recommendation 16
The Committee recommends that, should the Government decide to develop an offence for failure to assist in decrypting communications, the offence be developed in consultation with the telecommunications industry, the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority. It is important that any such offence be expressed with sufficient specificity so that telecommunications providers are left with a clear understanding of their obligations.
The Department’s preliminary view is to support recommendation 16 in principle.
- Comprehensive revision of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, Submission 26