Australia's encryption-busting bill also after PINs, passwords

The government has raised the prospect of using so-called decryption laws to simply get a provider to turn over a user’s PIN or password to get access to a target’s encrypted communications.

While much of the debate on the Assistance and Access Bill so far has concentrated on the prospect of encryption being weakened, the Department of Home Affairs indicated today encryption may not even be its primary target.

At a joint parliamentary committee hearing, shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC noted the bill contained just one reference to encryption in its 171 pages, preferring instead to use an umbrella term “electronic protection”. “We’ve purposely not used [the term] encryption in the bill because it’s about the framework and access to the issues that encryption causes,” Home Affairs National Security & Law Enforcement Policy Division first assistant secretary Hamish Hansford said.