oops stuffed up the link: http://aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=pjcis/nsl2012/additional/discussion%20paper.pdf

Part of the "discussion paper (pdf) also says "give us your passwords or else":

Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979

14.Reforming the Lawful Access Regime

a. expanding the basis of interception activities

15. Modernising the Industry assistance framework

a. establish an offence for failure to assist in the decryption of communications

b. institute industry response timelines

c. tailored data retention periods for up to 2 years for parts of a data set, with specific timeframes taking into account agency priorities, and privacy and cost impacts

I for one welcome our green watermellon, commie, non gun toting, ethical, environmental, pro choice, pro secular, pro internet privacy overlords. Go the greens!

Wrong. All that has been said is one sentence in a discussion paper(pdf). Here it is:

Relevant Act: Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 Terms of Reference extract: 15. Modernising the Industry assistance framework a. tailored data retention periods for up to 2 years for parts of a data set, with specific timeframes taking into account agency priorities, and privacy and cost impacts

The details are sorely lacking. Here is Electronic Frontiers Australia's submission to the inquiry (pdf):

EFA is seriously concerned at the lack of detail provided by the Attorney-General’s Department in relation to this proposal, as well as the lack of any cost-benefit analysis or even a substantive justification for such a wide-ranging proposal that would affect all Australians. It is therefore very difficult to make meaningful comments on a proposal that lacks any substantive detail. EFA recommends that the Committee reject this proposal out of hand, and request that the Attorney-General’s Department provide a detailed proposal that includes an explanation of the justifications behind it and a cost-benefit analysis.

Join Electronic Frontiers Australia, they'll keep you posted and are fighting the good fight.

Except the current AG is a woman. And so is the person that appointed her (the prime minister).

Get a bicycle. Get fit, stay private, don't emit co2.

LulzSec (and Anonymous) have 'demonstrated that an awful lot of people are either asleep at the switch or believed in arcane security methods like security through obscurity.

Wait what? Lulzsec showed that security though obscurity is bad? I thought the whole point to their "AntiSec" cause was to stop security companies publicly announcing vulnerabilities. Isn't that the definition of security through obscurity?

Sounds like the kind of thing you'd use JACK for on linux or mac. No idea how you'd go about it on windows.

Yeah it's not practical, yeah it's expensive, but damn, if it pays off, it pays off big time. Besides, it's not like we're asking you to pay for it, SETI runs off private money.

Personally I think they'll have more of a chance in the fledgling field of optical seti, where they're looking for aliens pointing laser beams at us... yes really.

This is definately one of the best posts I've ever seen! Good job Gothic_Walrus.

I really don't recall the IRA ever doing anything so big. Their worst attrocities were two incidents where they blew up pubs.

Personally, I thought planting bombs outside McDonalds on Mothers Day while not huge in the scale of casualties, definately ranks up there as an atrocity.