AUT: [Fwd: LL:ART:Student exposes spying plans] (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 21:07:17 +1100
From: Kerrie Christian <kcact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Illawarra-L <illawarra-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: MAI-NOT <mai-not@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Fwd: LL:ART:Student exposes spying plans]

Electronic Frontiers Australia Web Site - complete Walsh Report
http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Crypto/Walsh/index.htm

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>From Hobart Mercury, as a backup to the article from the Australian,
posted few days ago (Oz Secret plan for spies to bug PCs), see:
http://technology.news.com.au/techno/4352808.htm

  Student exposes spying plans
  By MATTHEW ROGERS

  15jan99

A HOBART university student has unearthed secret Federal Government
plans to let Australia's top spy agencies hire computer hackers to
break into the PCs of suspects.

Former Hutchins student Nick Ellsmore stumbled on the plans in the
State Library in Hobart.

The 19-year-old information systems and management student was
researching an assignment on Australian cryptology restrictions when
he found the secret Government report.

It was written by former ASIO deputy director Gerald Walsh in July,
1996. The report warned that publicly-available encryption programs
made it impossible to track criminal activity using computers and
called for the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and the National Crime
Authority to be given wider powers to crack the codes.

It said improved technology rendered law agencies almost powerless
and recommended inserting codes into programs allowing keystrokes,
including passwords, to be recorded.

Uncensored copies of the Walsh report were inadvertently sent to
university and state libraries around Australia before Canberra
banned  its publication for reasons of "national security, defence
and international relations".

Aware of the background to the Walsh report, Mr Ellsmore immediately
alerted privacy campaign group Electronic Frontiers Australia to his
discovery, which posted the unabridged report on its Internet site
and    sparked a national media sensation.

"I found it in the library about a month ago ? it had been sitting
there since the first print run in about October, '97," he said from
Sydney yesterday, still shocked by his find.

His discovery comes as a major embarrassment for the Federal Attorney-
General's office, which is now scrambling to find if any other top-
secret reports have accidentally been released to libraries.


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