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[Music]
so the next speaker is Kurt obsil he's a
guest from the United States um and he's
working or he's not only working he is
the executive director and general
counsel of the Electronic Frontier F
Frontier
Foundation and he is a longtime working
attorney and he has had many
high-profile cases against the National
Security Agency for example and that's
also his topic I guess um this Talk's
called it always feels like the five
eyes are watching you so give a nice
warm welcome to Kurt please thank you
thank you everybody uh it's a it's a
pleasure to be back here at CCC thank
you all for coming I know there's a lot
of uh a lot of interesting things to do
here so thank you for taking some time
out of your uh CCC experience to come
see this talk uh today we're going to
talk about the five
eyes uh the five eyes are an
intelligence Alliance it is a group of
countries intelligence Services who have
agreed to work together share data uh
and it is the uh as far as we know at
least the largest uh intelligence
Alliance uh in the world uh its members
are Australia Canada New Zealand the
United Kingdom and the United States uh
each one of them one of the eyes uh and
they share information about all sorts
of intelligence it's primarily uh
signals intelligence but it also
involves human intelligence uh which is
uh you know actually working with with
sources uh uh like the more what the uh
spies do and geospatial intelligence
which is like looking through satellite
information and trying to drive
intelligence from that uh the five eyes
as we will see it originated uh in the
second world war it continued on very
strongly in the Cold War uh and it
continues to this day still spying on
all of
us so it's members uh the United States
that primarily the uh National Security
Agency but also uh that works with some
of the other agencies like the CIA and
the
FBI uh the United Kingdom as primarily
the government Communications
Headquarters or
gchq uh as well as other uh services
such as the uh famed MI6 and James
Bond the Australian signals directorate
which is their signals and intelligence
uh uh
agency uh and when when it comes to some
of these Partners they have uh
particular areas of the world that
they're responsible so for example
Australia has responsibilities in the
Pacific area uh in this uh excerpt here
it is showing that it's Indonesia
Malaysia Singapore uh based on
Australia's unique language capabilities
and Geographic access so uh each of the
members has certain responsibilities
which may be exclusively theirs and then
they share the uh the
information uh Canada has the
communication security establishment uh
which is also known as CAC for the
communication security establishment
Canada and uh the several other
intelligence Services uh this this
excerpt shows some of the uh depth of
the cooperation it talks about exchange
of officers joint projects shared
activities there's a strong uh embedding
within each
other and then uh New Zealand where it's
the government communications security
Bureau as well as some other
intelligence agencies uh in this excerpt
it is talking about uh how how Keen they
are to share data uh they've uh working
to uh meet the standards of that to they
can get into the X key score we're going
to be talking a bit about the X key
score later on uh and it says it's hoped
that sharing will be achieved so we can
offer full take collection data uh full
take is a way of describing the sort of
a mass bulk surve Ence kind of
information which New Zealand is
gathering and then uh sharing with the
other ones so it started out uh as I
said in the second world war where the
US and the UK made several uh
intelligence agreements uh in the' 40s
uh these intelligence agreements also
worked with several of the uh uh allies
Western European countries uh but then
postwar it shrunk down to just the US
the UK and the key dominions that that
time they were dominions of the United
Kingdom Canada uh New Zealand and
Australia they've since become more
independent the term five eyes came from
uh just shortening the the formal way of
saying it when describing the
classification level was Australia
Canada New Zealand UK US eyes only that
was a bit of a mouthful so that got
shortened to the five eyes uh and then
they actually have an acronym even
shorter FV
e as a way of uh uh tightening it down a
little bit
more so uh the the main document is
What's called the ukusa agreement uh so
it was originally called the British us
Communications intelligence agreement uh
but uh the name was revised in 1955 to
the ukusa agreement uh and the US and UK
are still the primary uh bodies that are
are part of this they are the first
parties while Canada Australia New
Zealand are second parties so they're uh
not full but they are very close to
being full within this uh within this
agreement now there have been many plans
to uh expand the number of is some
discussions of it there have been
various proposals to add a six country
to make it six eyes uh France and
Germany reportedly were approached to uh
become part of it there also are some
wider groups which uh
uh include we had first Pary second
parties now third parties uh and so the
nine eyes some stoden documents revealed
a group called The Nine eyes Denmark
Norway the Netherlands and France added
into that as SE as third parties and
then there's also a group called The
Sant seniors Europe uh which is more or
less 14 eyes because that takes the nine
eyes and adds in Belgium uh I think I
overdid France sorry about that Belgium
France Germany Italy and
Sweden and I may have missed one in
there but you can see at the very bottom
of of the screen here the full list of
that
um now the five eyes agreement for a
long time was an extraordinarily closely
held
secret uh the ukusa agreement the very
existence of it was secret until
2005 uh and the text of the agreement
was secret until 2010 uh it is now
available there's the the URL if you
want to go uh uh look it up and read
some of the the agreements and it's
accompanying appendices and a lot of
documents that uh uh set it about uh the
agencies that were heavily involved that
were themselves secret the NSA gchq and
CC for example were not publicly
acknowledged until the uh the 70s and
for a while even after they were
information about them was leaked they
were still denied uh in the United
States the uh the joke was that the NSA
was no such agency uh referring to the
practice of denying its very existence
in one sort of interesting Quirk
Australia uh the Prime Minister didn't
find out that Australia was part of this
group uh until
1973 uh when there was a uh uh internal
uh dispute in Australia which led to
some investigations into their
intelligence services and then they
discovered that in fact there was this
uh this agreement uh but now the five
eyes is a little bit more open about its
uh existence uh they now have annual
meetings and issue uh press
releases during the Cold War the 5is
focused primarily on the Soviet Union
and China which were considered to be
the big threats the Communist threat of
that era uh and it was mostly extensive
NSA gchq cooperation we see here in the
pictures that's the GC gchq headquarters
on top the NSA headquarters on the
bottom uh and they use that in some key
uh moments of the Cold War um some
Vietnam the conflict there um in the CIA
backed coup in Iran uh in the ' 50s in
the Chilean coup that brought Pinos to
power information derived from the five
Eyes Collection were used to uh AFF
effectuate those coups uh one of the Key
Programs uh was for signals and tet the
chelon collection and analysis program
now etalon is actually just one of the
code names for the program it's the most
well-known code name so I'm referring to
it there uh but it had several names
over the years and uh it started out in
the' 60s and it was using uh Earth
stations to gather information from
satellites because at that time for a
lot of longdistance uh data and
telephonic uh Communications were being
beamed up to satellites beamed back down
to the Earth and it was possible to to
receive the satellite signal even if you
weren't the intended recipient uh and
that was a primary source of
communications intelligence and so they
used the geographic coverage of the five
eyes plus their uh technology and
building down uh receiving stations to
gather information throughout the world
and bring it all
together though over time Echelon became
more or less obsolete fiber optics began
to to supplant sat satellite
Communications uh and satellite
Communications of course still still
exist they're still used but they're
often being used for things like uh
video uh things which are uh uh you get
the idea of what you're trying to spy
upon just from like the metadata of
knowing what video is being sent you
don't need as much of the raw data and
they were getting worried that they were
getting very little intelligence uh
through these uh down links and they
needed to get on to the uh internet more
where the fiber optics were carrying
more and more of this
data uh and this really ramped up in the
New Millennium after uh uh 911 there was
a strong desire to expand in this
capacity pushing the limits of Law and
policy uh and they wanted to live on the
network to try and get back to the the
place where they had a deep insight into
World communication
uh and a lot of the global IP traffic is
being routed by cables that go through
members of the 5is they were some of the
more technologically uh uh quick to
adopt the internet and had a lot of the
cables going through the country as it
was uh and this allowed them to engage
in some of the bulk collection two of
the programs that have become well known
through the uh Snowden leaks the
Upstream program from the NSA and the
tempora program from the gchq
you so the uh uh this is an example from
the nsa's Upstream
program uh this is uh came from uh eff's
lawsuit against the National Security
Agency we are now in our 10th year of
suing the NSA uh and they haven't
successfully gotten rid of the case yet
which I think is a somewhat of a of a
victory uh and what we show here is the
fulam street facility fulam street is
just a building in in San Francisco a
windowless building that serves as a a
routing and peering Center for AT&T in
there the information comes through goes
through an optical splitter one copy
goes on to its destination through the
peering links the other copy goes to NSA
controlled room and then to a secret
Network which goes back to the
NSA uh and similar designs with this
sort of split optical splitter are uh
throughout the uh the network where
they're getting this take from the
Global
Communications uh tempora uh Works in in
a similar manner the gchq refers to it
as a buffer so they have a buffer which
they've taken from Fiber Optic Cables
going back a certain period of time um
and then they share that with the five
eyes through X key score uh you can see
here from this excerpt that they have a
massive amount of data they're very
proud that this is more data than
several all the other uh databases
combined uh more than 40 billion pieces
of content per day so this give you a
sense of the scope of the surveillance
that is being conducted and then uh used
in this uh in addition to this bulk
collection the 5i members are involved
in active collecting programs they will
develop and deploy malware uh develop uh
back doors to allow them access to put
that malware on they have tailored
access operations which is where they go
after after more specific targets
directly uh trying to attack uh a known
person uh or entity and then corporate
access where they are obtaining
information from the internet service
providers from the telephone service
provider the large internet companies uh
through famously there's the programi
prism that came out through the Snowden
leaks and they also will use as I did
with prism secret warrants other legal
process to obtain information from the
companies and put it into their sharable
system and in some cases when they
weren't feeling like they were getting
enough from the companies they also took
active measures as one of the uh Snowden
documents uh revealed they found that uh
links between data centers uh at Google
were not being encrypted and so they
were able to get in between those links
and get the data that was as far as
Google was concerned inside their system
but was now accessible because the SSL
was removed
uh so some examples of things that that
came through this cooperation uh there's
the rean malware that was uh allegedly
made by gchq and NSA working together uh
this was found on belgacom a Belgian
Telecom provider and also on EU official
uh computers so this was being used by
the 5i members to spy upon the European
Union see what was going on there uh the
Snowden uh documents showed that the NSA
was behind this uh this intrusion into
the EU
networks another example uh Eternal blue
and this kind of shows how some of these
uh uh things can go wrong this was a
exploit uh exploit to SMB that could
allow for remote code execution uh and
then uh it was leaked by a group called
The Shadow brokers who uh somehow got a
hold of a variety of NSA tools and and
leak them it was eventually used by w
cry uh and caused a a worldwide trouble
there uh and even though once it uh was
known to have leaked their patch was out
it's still actually very dangerous
because people are slow to patch so this
shows an example of how some of these
tools where there you know will tell you
that it's designed to make the world
more secure are in fact backfiring and
can make things less secure another
example of that uh Juniper the uh
Juniper screen OS used dual e
cdbg uh this uh was something that the
NSA inserted a flaw into it a flaw into
its random number generator that uh
allowed someone who knew uh what what
constants were being used to have an
easier time to decrypt the C uh traffic
going through the Juniper uh iron that
was using screen OS uh though the funny
thing about this one was that uh when
this was discovered it ended up using
different constants than the NSA had
originally provided which suggests that
this back door that they had created uh
to allow easier access to uh uh
communication streams would had been
compromised and put under the control or
made easier for a third party where the
basically the back door got out of their
control so a little bit about how the
five eyes works well uh I mean it's more
or less straightforward they connect
they collect uh intelligence signal stal
human intelligence they share that with
other members under the uh five ey
restriction uh they make an agreement uh
not to spy on each other's government
officials uh government entities though
uh not so much uh as far as each other
citizens uh and the other uh advantage
of some of this how it works is that if
one part of the five eyes is engaged in
particular spying the others can deny
that they're doing that spying because
you know literally they are not uh and
still get the data uh so a lot of the
things that came out that later were
shown to be part of five i programs uh
when they came out there was some
denials from members of the five eyes
who weren't the ones who were part of
that aspect of the
collection and very dangerously it
allows for some domestic
workarounds where if you have the uh if
you're a member of the five eyes you may
have as all of them do uh um
restrictions on when you can spy upon
your own citizens you might have to go
to a court uh might have to get special
process might have to go through a lot
more uh
paperwork um but that may not be true
for the other members of the five eyes
who might be able to spy on your
citizens and then share the information
back so uh David blunkett a former uh
Home Secretary of the UK was talking uh
to uh to Parliament
and he said that the NSA were
circumventing the UK restrictions where
the UK would have to go through this
additional process if it was to ask for
information about uh UK citizens but the
NSA instead just offered to give them
the information without the asking and
so that was somehow able to get around
that uh that restriction the other thing
which is pretty key for the domestic
workaround is this notion that
unintentional collection
uh isn't a problem to share and
unintentional collection is that they
are intentionally collecting bulk data
in this case talking about uh metadata
but there's no intent to Target an
Australian National this is one of the
Australian ones uh because they're just
collecting everybody and it just so
happens there might be some in there but
because it was unintentional that is
something that can be shared and I think
this is this is a very dangerous notion
one of the core dangerous Notions of
bulk collection is that it doesn't
matter unless you are specifically
targeting if you target everybody you
can get everyone but you're doing it
unintentionally and so it doesn't
matter and then once that data is
obtained it's very easy to share through
the uh XK uh X key score system they The
Operators can determine what level of
sharing is available on that they could
select for some data a five eyes defeat
checkbox select that box and it will not
be shared with other five members but
it's not
required uh and they can basically put
on there a whatever selector they deem
appropriate and then it can be shared
with those members they're a little bit
more selective for the third parties the
nine or 14 eyes that might be uh might
be part of it but there's a lot of
sharing within the original five
eyes so to give an example of how the
third parties can get some access uh
Germany's B and uses X key score uh and
this uh excerpt they talk about
successfully using some DSL wiretap
collection and also the uh bfv the uh uh
German uh domestic intelligence Service
uh was looking for more uh X key score
access uh and the NSA seemed to be
delighted to provide that so they may
not be getting everything but there's a
lot of cooperation trying to get this uh
this data and share
it so to to bring this sort of more
towards where where is this going today
and where are the problems today I want
to take a deep dive on encryption which
is something that is very important for
the world it provides privacy and
security for billions of people uh and
that privacy and security is vital for
the functioning of a Democratic Society
but the five eyes they want to return
the world to the days where it was easy
for them to get massive spying on data
and so uh they have a very keen interest
in encryption this is from the
xkeyscore uh sort of a promotional PDF
that was leaked through the Snowden
documents and they give the example of
encryption well you can just go to the X
key score and say hey show me all the
encrypted Word documents in Iran or all
the pgp usage in Iran and you could
substitute any country for Iran in this
this example so they want to be able to
get that uh they have a uh storage
facility where they keep encrypted data
for as long as it takes to uh decrypt
it uh but encryption is getting
increasingly frustrating for the 5is uh
this is this just just one example uh
htbs in Chrome over last couple of years
from 2015 to 2018 where it's going from
you know a little below
50% uh up to somewhere you know in the
uh mid 80s different countries have
different adoption rates what the trend
is is there and I think this example uh
is more or less reflective of overall
trend things like let's encrypt have
made it a lot easier to encrypt uh uh
internet traffic and so they're finding
it more and more the communications that
they're trying to spy upon are encrypted
they're also finding it frustrating that
the devices that they seize are often
encrypted so in 2017 the Ministers of
the five eyes met in Canada and in
issued a joint communic
okay so as I said they had previously
been secret but now they're a little bit
more often so they're they they're
issuing the statement and here it says
they they said you know here's the
problem we're worried about
encryption uh and we're committed to
develop our engagement with
Communications and technology companies
to explore shared Solutions while
upholding cyber security and individual
rights so this is part of their their
sort of their softer touch they want to
engage with the companies but that
softer touch had a little bit of a a
force behind it uh which was the then
recently passed UK investigatory Powers
Act uh now the the act itself claims
that it doesn't allow for uh back doors
it never certainly mentions the the word
uh backd doors uh but that's because
it's so broad that they don't have to
mention backd doors uh it has extremely
powerful warrants that can Target people
Target
organizations uh it has one particular
feature a technical cap ability
notice which is basically their approach
to dealing with the encryption problem
in a in a nutshell which is they're
saying we don't want back doors we don't
want to break encryption we just want
you to be able to provide the ability to
disclose the content of Communications
in intelligible form so encrypt it all
you want so long as you can give us
plain text access whenever we ask for it
uh which you know is sort of the
opposite of what you're looking for uh
in
encryption and so how would they how
would they Implement that well we got a
little bit of a clue earlier this year
when uh Ian Lev's gchq's uh technical
director proposed a solution uh where
it's was called a ghost user to surveil
encrypted uh group chats a ghost user is
someone who joins the chat but is not
revealed to the members of the chat so
if you're on signal for example it would
be you know you and the people that
you're signaling with and then an
invisible user that would also be be
part of those Communications but in
order for it to work it has to suppress
warning messages it has to do something
basically that would kill uh the
authentication system so that you would
know who you were talking to and be able
to see if there was somebody added added
to the chat but this is sort of an
example of of the ideas that they are
trying to propose where they're saying
we are not breaking encryption because
we're not like messing with the math and
anymore uh but instead we're doing
something within the uh the
authentication
model uh and then shortly thereafter the
five eyes met again in
Australia and they they uh issued
another joint statement uh and had a lot
lot of discussions in this uh a couple
of these are are are notable one is that
government should not favor a particular
technology they say uh and this is a
lesson that the uh five eyes learned
from the first crypto Wars of the 9s
where uh several ideas were proposed uh
Key escro Systems the Clipper chip and
then security researchers investigated
them found flaws and they were turned
out to be not very good systems and so
they decided to move away from proposing
specific solutions that would be subject
to that kind of review attack and then
uh ultimate disclosure that they weren't
working uh uh and saying this is
actually a problem for the providers to
create these
Solutions uh and
then they up the Ane again this is the
second paragraph there and I want to put
some emphasis if you don't do this if we
continue to encounter impediments we may
pursue technological enforcement
legislative or other measures so
previously they're saying let's have
some constructive engagement but now
they're saying hey
that's some nice encryption there be
shame if something happened to
it uh and this wasn't a a idol uh threat
because at the same time in
Australia uh they were working on a new
piece of
legislation now Australia is a little
bit of a special place during the debate
about uh uh encryption in Australia the
Prime Minister said well the laws of
mathematics they're nice and all but
they don't apply in Australia only the
law of Australia applies and this of
course response to various uh Security
Professionals being saying that it
doesn't work you know you can't you
can't make a back door that isn't a back
door you can't make access to plane text
uh and still have a secure end to- end
system but nevertheless uh Australia
kept on going and earlier this month
they passed the assistance and access
act uh which is a uh it's a complex law
it has uh uh many facets to I can hit
some of the highlights
here um so one aspect is you know
similar to the the uh investig Powers
Act it's like the investigat Powers Act
Plus+ uh they have the SEC secretly
issue orders to compel companies to
re-engineer software and Hardware in
order to comply with their with their
notices uh it put some Hefty fines for
corporations the fines could go go up to
uh 10 million Australian dollars uh and
for individuals it could go up to 50,000
Australian dollars and potentially
prison time for for failing to comply uh
there's a pretty tough position uh
provision that seems to go against uh uh
International Norms on uh freedom of
expression uh that suggests that
counseling a technologist to to oppose
this to to not cooperate could itself be
a crime and the fact that they like some
emphasis on individual Technologies a a
fine for them also at least it creates
the Spectre that the Australians May if
they're not getting sufficient
cooperation from a company approach
individual Engineers who are working for
that company and try to get them to do
something with a Secret order I'm not
sure how that would be able to to work
very effectively in in practice uh for
someone to be able to change the code
without other people uh knowing about it
but I think it's something that that a
lot of Engineers are rightly uh rightly
worried
about um so they also like well what
what is the scope of this well it says a
designated Communications
provider don't worry about it they must
not be required to implement or build
systemic weaknesses or systemic
vulnerabilities this was their their nod
to the criticism that they had received
uh that this might create uh uh
weakening security uh though you might
be wondering okay well what's a systemic
weakness or systemic vulnerability and
that's a very good question because
systemic is not defined uh so we can
sort of imagine that they're at least
excluding uh something that would affect
a small number of
people uh but it's unclear whether their
view of what is systemic is going to be
the same as the computer scientists who'
have been working on encryption who are
very worried about things that are
systemic for example the ghost in the
machine that the gchq had proposed I
would call a systemic weakness because
is
systemically removing the security model
for those Communications while they
might say it's not systemic because
we're just going to go in and monitor
particular conversations but not all of
them but we'll see what that ends up
meaning also it's limited to what they
say designated uh Communications
providers but this is very broadly
defined as well and they're trying to
say that it is basically any company
that has a Nexus to Australia
now this may be end up being uh uh more
complex than that because uh while a lot
of companies do business in Australia
they don't necessarily have offices or
Engineers there uh and a lot of the the
companies that they're sort of most
concerned about are not in in Australia
in every in in sort of a heavy way uh so
whether or not those companies sort of
feel like they have to abide by this law
we shall see some uh uh some projects
like open source projects have said
we're just going to not have anyone go
to Australia anymore and we won't have
to worry about that but that's a harder
thing to do for a company like uh uh
Google or uh Apple when they're trying
to create their more secure messaging
systems uh and to give us sort of a
sense of what they consider the types of
assistance that that they might ask for
uh they have things like removing a form
of electronic protection that that means
cryptography uh if they have the
capability of doing it uh so they're not
also sort of some some discussions of
this have said if you have the keys
they're more about if you have the
capability um providing the design specs
to the agency uh this is in case they
want to create their own uh attack
mechanism or exploit on it and that
brings us to the next one which is
installing maintaining testing whatever
software given to the provider by the
agency so after they get that
information develop their their exploit
based on it they might say hey here's
this box stick it on your network don't
worry about it um or you know add this
uh add this software so it can exploit
on the uh uh Target company
system um and you know you also have
things like helping uh tester develop
their own systems and and capacities so
trying to go sort of both sides of that
where they're putting obligations on the
the providers as well as trying to help
the agencies be able to break those
things um there's another one here
notifying agency of major changes to
their systems that are relev to the
effective execution of a warrant what
that is talking about is if they are
going to be adding something that adds
more security that if if it's previously
they were able to uh get that
information with a warrant uh but now it
will be less effective because an
additional security system system was
put into place they want advanced notice
about that so they can potentially do
something about it so for example uh on
your iPhone if you back up to the iCloud
then often times there is a copy of your
data where Apple has the
key uh and so if they seize your phone
want to get the encrypted information on
there and they can't get it from the
phone they can get the same information
from the iCloud BL app but if Apple made
it so that you held the key for your
backup or a similar service came about
um then that would be perhaps one of
these changes that they're looking for
uh notice
of and then uh we'll just end on the on
the last one concealing the fact that
agencies have undertaken a covert
operation so secrecy is a big part of
this and so they will be doing these
operations potentially installing
software Hardware on the networks
potentially uh asking them to uh remove
things but don't tell anybody about
it now many people have have said to the
the uh uh Australians that uh uh this is
not feasible this is not uh practical
that you're uh uh you know you can't
remove the uh the encryption without
breaking it uh so they have a provision
here that the uh the director general of
security one of their top intelligence
officials uh he not supposed to be
issuing this unless uh uh the uh
director General is satisfied that it's
practical and feasible so that means
sort of the decision-making Authority on
determining whether the complaints about
its practicality and feasibility are
true are the Australian government so
they could say you know what we disagree
we think it is practical and feasible
and so despite whatever arguments you
have gone the laws of mathematics don't
apply here only the law of Australia so
uh go ahead and do
it so why does this uh why does this
matter well it matters for a lot of
reasons one is that the five eyes is
conducting surveillance
operations on a global
scale uh they are creating with this
bulk surveillance something similar to
the panopticon the panopticon refers to
a a prison design where uh as seen here
the prison would be a circle around a
Central surveillance
location uh and that would mean that all
the
prisoners cells could be viewed by the
surveillance and they wouldn't know
whether their individual cells were
being viewed and the idea was to induce
better behavior from the prisoners
because they knew they could only always
be spied upon they're always being
subjected to to surveillance and that
was designed to intimidate them into not
doing bad behavior uh and by creating a
a regime where all of our Communications
are capable of being smiled upon where
there is no security that you can be
sure of that you can go to a company get
something which seems to be an end to
end product but know that they might
have gotten a technical assistance
notice that might have introduced a flaw
to the system like that ghost that would
be able to listen in then you're subject
to the panopticon where you're always
knowing that big brother is watching you
the second thing is that this is not
just for identified targets you know a
lot of times the the rhetoric around
this will'll talk about we're using this
just to get sort of the bad guys the
terrorists and such but they're still
collecting all the data because
essentially they're trying to create a
time machine so that if later they find
out that somebody is is worthy of their
attention they don't just start
surveilling them but they can go back
say what wow what was their what was
their email emails from 5 years ago uh
you know what what uh uh have they been
searching uh through their browser prior
to when we became interested because
they have that take and you know the
further back in time perhaps the less
that it goes but we've also seen things
like uh the NSA built a massive facility
uh in Utah uh that can store you know
years and years of full take from
telecommunications uh so they'll be able
to go back in time pretty far and like
this is something which is fundamental
to go goes against fundamental human
rights privacy is a fundamental human
right uh it has been enshrined upon
things as the universal Declaration of
Human Rights uh virtually every Charter
of Human Rights uh identifies privacy as
something that is important most
constitutions will have Provisions about
it and it's trying to strip away that
privacy with the thin veneer of saying
well but we won't look at the data until
we think that there's a reason to so you
still have privacy and that is that is
not right and so it falls a foul of some
key principles where that surveillance
should be necessary and proportionate
should you only conduct the surveillance
when it is necessary when there is a
reason to it that allows you to Target
that person that that entity uh for an
important state interest but also it has
to be proportion
that the amount of surveillance the type
of surveillance the activities should be
proportionate to the threat that you're
you're mitigating and I put up a link
here to the necessary proportionate
principles uh necessary proportionate
dorg these are some principles that were
derived by a number of Civil Society
members and NOS to set forth uh what
would be a good way to balance between
these very important human rights uh and
the investigative capacities of nation
States and it's very important if we're
going to have a free Society moving
forward that the surveillance abides by
these principles and it is
disproportionate to do bulk surveillance
and one of the things I was saying is
that why uh encryption is particularly
important is because they want to
destroy encryption to allow for that
bulk surveillance that if uh if there's
a particular Target they have plenty of
tools from malware tailored access
operations to be able to do pretty well
surveilling a particular person but the
encryption gets in the way of doing
massive surveillance and storing all
that V making it available through
things like X key score so that they can
go back in time and that is the sort of
the greatest danger to having a free
Society of the mass of
surveillance uh and by doing this very
publicly it also normalizes Mass
surveillance so that you know there
there's a a line of rhetoric they
sometimes use that uh because you know
the five eyes are Western democracies
that you know they're the good guys and
we shouldn't worry so much about misuse
of these Powers but even if you buy into
that it normalizes Mass surveillance for
all the other countries in the world so
if you find a country that you would
find
authoritarian uh that uh will not be
respecting human rights principles they
can now say hey we're just doing what
these other countries do it is part of
what every country does and so breaking
encryption ask for the back doors making
sure that we can get access to plain
text for example is something that all
the countries can ask for and if you
even if you feel that it's okay that
Australia can get this information and
then share it with the other five ey
members or maybe the 14 eyes maybe you
don't feel so much that China should get
this that they should be able to say
that all devices sold in China will have
a back door that goes to the Chinese
government maybe it's the Russian
government that you're worried about but
in all these circumstances it makes it
too normal uh and also the as we saw
with some of the examples uh on the
malware and such that the weaknesses
that have been introduced into the
system by the by the five eyes have been
used by others they've gotten outside of
the control and that even if they feel
like well it's not a systemic weakness
to use their their term uh that it can
become a systemic weakness when it is
massively exploited when it goes out
through perhaps it's the shatter broker
Perhaps it is just its independent
Discovery by a security researcher we
don't know all the ways they can come
out but we do know that weaknesses do
become discovered and do become
exploited and so once you put them
in they can be
abused uh and then the five eyes offers
no real protection for for its allies in
fact there have been examples of the
five eyes spying on countries which
would ordinarily be considered allies
members of NATO for
example uh there's not very much uh
protections for ordinary 5i civilians
because they have that ability to spy
and share the information with other
members and there's nothing for the rest
of the world that just they uh have have
very little uh in the way of
restrictions on what can be done for
everybody
else uh and so while security is so
important uh a key thing the problem is
not that it's too strong we already have
weaknesses in our information security
and finding more in order to enable the
spying is going to be ultimately
counterproductive now in this way the 5i
they say we're we're all about security
they were trying to say you know we're
trying to secure the world uh but
they've actually introduced widespread
insecurity and the encryption example is
very is sort of the the the key to this
one because that is really where they
are at least in in the public relations
having the the method of attack right
now uh they want access on demand to
encrypted are and they're saying that
this is what they call responsible
encryption but the only responsible
encryption is strong
encryption and if you have access on
demand you've destroyed the Trust In the
End to End security model you've made it
so it's not possible
to have a fully trustworthy system and
if you destroy that trust that is a
systemic
weakness so uh a lot of the work has
been done from uh the five trying to
introduce into security researchers the
notion that we should be continuing to
have what they call the debate and try
to figure out ways in which you can have
your cake and eat it too where you can
have strong encryption but nevertheless
get access and they say we need to
research this we need to discover
instead what we need to do is find the
weaknesses that already exist and try to
fix them so don't be seduced by the uh
temptation to try and find a better
escro system a better way of providing
that access but instead we should fight
for the strongest possible encryption so
that we have secure Communications and
therefore we can have a Democratic
Society thank you very
much
well thank you Kurt I think we have
plenty time left for some good questions
if we have them so line up at all the
microphones and let's start with signal
angels I heard you have something for
us
from from the
internet can you you command on the use
of arms export control regulations in
particular B arrangement to prevent the
spread of strong
encryption uh sure so is asking about
the the vasar arrangement uh which is a
uh an arrangement uh where they're
trying to list out some uh Munitions
that uh cannot be exported who have
export controls and you know for many of
you munition may bring to mind things
like tanks and guns and such but uh in
in some cases they're looking at for
example tools pen testing tools as
falling under the sort of the category
of things which should be uh restricted
uh also strong in encryption device and
I think this is this is kind of a
mistake that it it is not uh really
realizing that in order to test security
you have to use the tools that can break
Security even if those might be tools
that could be used for evil so a lot of
the uh controversy that come up from
from vasar is that uh uh in a you know
well-intentioned uh attempt to try to
make it more difficult to sell uh attack
tools to repressive
regimes uh but they also overdrew it so
that it was removing some tools that
were necessary for security researchers
okay um let's have microphone four
please yes uh thank you very much for
your talk that was uh very informative
um my uh question is I mean they've got
the technology to do the surveillance do
they also have the uh AB ability to do
some um manipulation on the data and are
they actually performing those
manipulations
uh so that's it's an interesting
question I I don't have any uh evidence
that it has been done at any kind of
scale um but the
ability uh certainly if you have a fiber
optic tap for example on a system uh as
as we understand how they do it they
just put an optical splitter take two
copies on their way uh but it is
certainly possible to have a more
complex uh computer system in in its
place that would look at some of the
data and determine that some of it could
be changed should be changed it may be
too detectable one of the things they're
very worried about is being
detected uh so I'm not sure how that
would work at scale without some lag for
the particular information that was
being stripped and and and moved and we
haven't seen any any sort of documents
about it being done at scale now moving
back not at scale uh there certainly has
been some information manipulation over
the course of the you know uh uh almost
100 80 or so years that the five eyes
have been working together uh with with
some of like you know uh uh during times
of
conflict for example we talked about the
Vietnam conflict the Gulf of tonan
Institute was later revealed to have
been a bit of a sham uh so at a smaller
scale certainly it is in the history of
these agencies to engage in in
disinformation but I think I'm not sure
that that's applying to the massive
scale well let's have microphone one
please uh yes thank you for the
depressing talk
um everything that
you kind of summarized is essentially a
legal attack it's not a technological
attack is be a little bit closer to
sorry uh everything need summarized is a
legal attack it's not a technological
attack really is there a place left that
is traditionally uh neutral jurisdiction
like I don't know Switzerland some
Nordic country where at least you cannot
be spied on without knowing it or this
battle is completely lost at this point
well so that that is a good question and
uh I think that you know there still is
somewhat of an ability to base yourself
in a particular country based on your
knowledge of their laws and the
restrictions they have on them that
country doing surveillance on it on its
citizens and you could sort of Imagine a
country that had sufficient transparency
and control so you had a a reasonable
amount of faith in that but the thing
that you can't control for is whether
they have been themselves compromised by
a third party for example the five I so
you give you know uh Switzerland uh and
uh uh is it possible that the five eyes
have done surveillance on Switzerland
without the Swiss permission it's
certainly possible I know I I I've not
seen any information that that has
happened but a lot of really interesting
stuff happens in Switzerland and they're
extremely interested in the flow of
money Switzerland is is well known for
its banking system and its secrecy uh a
little bit less secret than it used to
be but nevertheless that that's one of
their their their principles uh so that
is a bit of the the risk so I mean think
of it sort of like a a uh a multi-prong
thing that you need to have the law that
says that you would be protected you
need to have a policy that makes that
law actually effective the the you know
country that abides by the the rule of
law but you still need the third
component which is a technological
protection a syst system that you can
trust that even if somebody was trying
to actively exploit it they would be
resistant to that thing so hoping that
they don't because they have the law and
policy but also in case that they do or
maybe a third party does that you have
that system and to have confidence in
that system and I think those systems
still will exist and they will continue
to exist because uh you can develop an
open- Source product make it available
not go to these countries R and someone
can look through the code and and have
at least a reasonable idea that there's
no intentional back door there's no
intentional ghost user capability that
it has a system where if anybody's added
to a conversation you need to verify
keys and and go through a process so the
technological step I think you need in
addition to being comfortable with the
uh the nation
state well that's a microphone to uh
hello um so this is perhaps a little bit
more of a comment but um so there's a
thing in modern like messaging programs
like signal called a forward secure
ratchet and the we think what it does is
it allows the encryption to sort of heal
if a device is compromised at a
particular point in time and what this
is actually good for is it lets us
simplify the authentication between
devices um so one interesting thing
about this ghost user problem so a major
a major sort of academic open question
is has been how would you how do you
generalize these for secure ratchets to
to multi-party things and uh and we
don't really have a great answer there's
some nice things but the ghost user
problem says that maybe the right way to
think about this question isn't uh how
do we just generalize the forward secure
ratchet with the healing property but
actually how do we make it specifically
resistant to these ghost users how do we
make it so that it's mathematically
impossible to hard to to hide who are
the participants so that and and this
might be the right generalization for
this kind of problem anyway it's just an
interesting thing I took away from your
talk uh well okay thank thank you for
that that comment uh so I'm I should say
as an initial response comment and I'm
uh an attorney not a not a technologist
so I I work with a lot of technologists
uh and so I I couldn't tell you
specifically
about that uh that system though it is
to my knowledge that signal is uh
working on trying to to solve this as as
some other uh endend uh uh uh messaging
providers are um and that uh uh I would
say as a sort of more of a a higher
level thing as
technologists what yall need to create
please hopefully that people in this
room will will do this is a great user
interface that simplifies the key
authentication management transfer
systems so that people can quickly and
easily verify the the keys of of the
other members of their group uh and make
it so that uh uh it's very hard to add
an unauthenticated unverified
person okay let's hear from the internet
again signal
Angel we have a few more questions from
the chat um the first one how far do you
believe sick in has come since the
Snowden leaks do you believe it is far
worse than in
2013 yeah that is another good question
uh I mean so we we have uh uh we had a
great Trav of information that came out
in in 2013 during the leaks some of
which actually was not you know right
there at 2013 was describing things that
were happening uh a little bit earlier
there have been various followon stories
so we do know a few things uh about you
know what has happened uh uh since and
there have been a few reactions like in
in uh in some places the reaction has
been to pass legislation to authorize
more of these things things like the
investigatory Powers Act and this
assistance thing and uh the uh United
States the foreign intelligence
surveillance act had some modifications
so that really doesn't give you like a
whole lot of faith uh it gives
more legal cover to some of the
activities that they were doing and in
the context of at least some of these
laws there were there were various
things that were put as a nod to the
civil liberties concerns uh that uh we
saw this just now where they're saying
well we won't do systemic weaknesses in
some of the other bills you know there
there are things like well when you're
presenting it to the court the court can
get experts so it's harder for the uh
the agencies to bamb Boozled the judges
by uh technobabble you know things like
that that are
reforms um but it hasn't I think gone
far enough to give us the confidence
that there have been real reforms and
then there is sort of the concern at the
same time that uh their capabilities are
increasing at an increasing uh rate like
the ability to store data if you think
how much you know it cost to get like a
terabyte of of data in 2013 how much it
cost today then sort of think about uh
how much traffic they can uh cover by
Massive data storage how many years back
uh full take they can store uh and it's
it's going to be an ever increasing
number it's going to be ever cheaper to
store massive amounts of data that will
allow them to go with their time machine
further back in time so yeah I am a
little concerned with some of that uh
decrease in costs that that was actually
one of the greatest protections we had
for our civil liberties was it was too
expensive to spy on everybody you a long
time ago to find out where you are they
needed to have a person walk behind you
or like a car follow you around and then
they got like a beeper they had to stick
it on your car but they still had to you
know stick the Beeper on and have
somebody tracking it but now we all have
a phone in our pocket that gives at our
location all the time uh and so they can
just query a database and find out uh a
any particular phone numbers movements
these are a lot of things which give
them greater capacity so I kind of
think they're in the Golden Age of
surveillance despite their claims of
encryption causing them to go
dark let's go to microphone one you
would down in the beginning hello um
what can you tell us about the position
and role of the European commission
about all all these issues thank you of
the UK or european commiss AC the you
yes the UN or UK the EU oh
EU um so what can I say about the EU on
this well I think when when some of
these things came out the EU did some uh
investigations into it uh and has been
generally saying that that uh this is a
problem uh for some of the the that was
reacting mostly to the uh the Snowden
leaks uh but then you know also a lot of
the uh data protection uh efforts in the
uh in the EU have been focused mostly on
what information is available to uh
commercial encies they do have some
effect on government agency but not a
particularly strong uh restriction
against National Security uses so I
think the EU could do more to make it
clear that this would not be acceptable
for for EU uh uh
members so I think we can squeeze on
number
four um all right so I was wondering
about the access and uh availability act
the Australian one you told us about um
from a legal or business perspective uh
how edible are companies actually for it
and can they
avoid it by limiting or not doing annual
actual business in Australia at all and
did some companies already sort of said
they would want to so I think uh some of
the companies came out uh pretty
strongly uh against the uh the bill uh
as I call Apple uh submitted uh comments
that were uh pointing out some of the
the flaws in the in the bill um now it's
uh it's one thing to to say that this is
flawed and and try to stop the bill uh
it's a little bit of a heavier thing to
say well then we're just simply not
going to do business uh in that country
and that is as one of the the challenges
for any kind of global
uh corporate Enterprise where they have
to make some choices about whether or
not they're going to do business in a
regime that might assert
jurisdiction and try to uh make them do
things that they don't want to do and
we've seen you know occasional examples
of that um after uh Google discovered
that China had hacked into its systems
and was uh uh getting information about
some uh dissidents through that that
hack
uh they did stop doing uh business in in
China for a while but then uh I think
they're they're still interested in
potentially doing that uh and working on
a a search engine that will be
acceptable to the Chinese uh so the
these these marketplaces provide a
strong Temptation now I I think you know
Australia is uh uh not you know the the
largest of of markets uh it's it's one
that uh some of these companies could
decide not to do business with without
sacrificing a giant swath uh but would
they do that it kind of will will depend
uh they have to decide okay if we stop
doing business here uh how much money
would we lose if we continue to do
business here and we're forced to
compromise our products worldwide in
order to comply how much business would
we lose especially if that ever got
found out uh and then the other
possibility is say okay well we we're
making a special Australian version uh
and that you know that was there's some
bad history for that uh for a long time
uh in in the 9s uh there were two
different versions of the then most
popular browser the Netscape uh
Navigator one for uh us domestic use one
for international uh and the one for
international had very weak encryption
so that it was easy for uh the uh uh NSA
and and five by Partners to be able to
crack that encryption but this was
really silly because it was fairly
trivial for someone to get a copy of the
stronger encrypted version uh and
ultimately you know that uh that export
control of the stronger encryption
turned out to be uh a violation of Law
and so now we have everybody gets gets
the stronger version uh and so I think
you know if you if you try to say okay
you know I've got this uh messaging
software and here's my Australian
version I think many people would be
like maybe I shouldn't get the
Australian version uh if they think that
this is the reason why they're having
that uh two
products okay so I think we have already
overstepped our time so I'm sorry for
all the other questions but I'm sure
they can find you at least it's not the
internet all right so give another round
of applause for Kurt please thank you
everybody thank you for coming out and
thank
you
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