What about Australia in comparison? Australians can be legally compelled in secret courts to install backdoors in the companies in which they are employed, and gagged from telling the company itself or any journalists (see the Access and Assistance Bill). That doesn't cross the same 'agents of the state' line?
> Australians can be legally compelled in secret courts to install backdoors in the companies in which they are employed, and gagged from telling the company itself or any journalists (see the Access and Assistance Bill).
My thoughts on this as an Australian software engineer: how could they possibly “order” me to “install a backdoor”? To change a production system, I need an issue in the issue tracker, I need a PR, I need a colleague to review and approve it-if I’m not allowed to call it “install backdoor at Australian government’s demand”, what am I going to call it? How am I suppose to justify it to the reviewer? How do I respond to their questions? How do I convince them to approve it? “I’m sorry I’m not allowed to tell you why this PR is needed” is not going to get it approved
And in the (I think highly implausible) event the government did order me to do such a thing-first I’d insist it was impossible (due to the kind of internal controls I’ve already mentioned), and if they wouldn’t accept that answer, then I’d resign rather than do it. I don’t think the law can stop you from quitting your job, and once you quit, you are no longer able to comply with any such orders.
It seems to me like one of these laws which has disturbing wording but is going to be very difficult for the authorities to utilise in practice.
(Disclaimer: of course I don’t speak for my employer, etc)
I suppose you'd do it the same way any North Korean operative would. They'd offer you training on how to bypass the controls. They'd get you to exfiltrate the code and the product roadmap. They'd have someone more skilled suggest a plausible backdoor as part of an innocent change, like the xzutils one.
As for how they'd force you, just like any intelligence agency, they'd start with carrots. They'd offer you money, or the chance to feel you were serving your country (both are free to the Australian government, and likely more effective than a double ration of wheat). They'd have you do very innocent, justifiable things at first. They'd work their way up to higher demands. If you got cold feet, they'd tell you you were in too deep. They'd then consider the sticks. They'd threaten to expose your spying, or release some other compromat. They'd arrest you or a family member on a he-said-the-cops-said enemy-of-the-people crime like drugs, child pornography or terrorism, and make it clear that only your full cooperation would see a release.
Nobody thinks the Australian government relies on this kind of thing as much as NK, and the checks and balances of a democracy make it too expensive to do this at an industrial scale. But you'd be foolish if you thought the state doesn't have these capabilities, and the complete willingness to use them for matters of national security, and the ability to make it "legal", perhaps by pardoning people or not cooperating with any court.
The state always could go after your family, but it seems like some are much better at not doing that than others.
The state is a coercive institution, but seeing how Australia is a liberal democracy with a constitution I would want to see some actual proof of threatening families.
> I suppose you'd do it the same way any North Korean operative would.
What you are describing here is something any country could do – yes, it is conceivable that Australia's intelligence agencies could use bribery/harassment/threats/blackmail/etc to turn Australian citizens into unwilling spies – but the same is true of the UK, the US, France, Germany, whatever.
The thing that people are calling out Australia over, is a law which says a court can order someone to install a secret backdoor, and furthermore order them not to tell (almost) anyone about it. [0] And I'm sceptical that law could be used in the way you describe – e.g. "They'd offer you training on how to bypass the controls" – the law says a court can order you to install a backdoor – it doesn't say it can order you to attend a training course on how to "bypass controls".
Keep in mind, while proceedings are under seal, you are allowed to retain a lawyer, and your lawyer can make legal arguments before the judge, and can appeal the judge's rulings. IANAL, but would a judge rule that a power to order someone to install a backdoor extends to ordering them to attend a government-run training course on how to deceive their employer? Even if a judge did rule that way, would the appellate courts uphold the ruling?
Or, similarly – "They'd get you to exfiltrate the code and the product roadmap" – does a legal power to order someone to install a backdoor, extend to a legal power to order them to hand over generalised confidential information of their employer? Or similarly – "They'd have you do very innocent, justifiable things at first" – does a legal power to order someone to install a backdoor, extend to a legal power to order them to do "very innocent, justifiable things" which don't in themselves directly contribute to installing any backdoor?
And, as I said, if your lawyer can't talk the court out of it – resign. Will a judge hold that a judicial power to order to the installation of a backdoor extends to ordering a person not to resign their job?
Get a medical certificate saying you can't work. Get yourself admitted to a private psychiatric hospital on the grounds that the stress of this secret government order has caused you to have a nervous breakdown / panic episode / suicidal ideation / etc. (I think if I ever were issued such a secret government order, it really would have that kind of extreme detrimental impact on my mental health, I wouldn't be faking it.) I think a lot of psychologists/psychiatrists/etc would be very sympathetic to your plight. What's a judge supposed to do if they have a psychiatrist testifying that you are medically unfit to comply with the order, or return to the job which the order is associated with?
[0] You are explicitly allowed to tell your personal legal counsel.
it doesn't need to be every Australian. It only needs to be Australians that get jobs at fortune 500 companies. Australians don't even need to leave the country to be hired and compelled.
I'm pretty sure I see where you're going there, but hhjinks' argument covers that. Even if the Aus. government makes someone an agent retroactively after hiring the odds are still much smaller that an Australian is a government agent. Because every NK citizen is assumed to be an agent, but only some Australians become agents, retroactive or otherwise.
Besides, if we wanted information about Fortune 500 companies we'd presumably ask the US intelligence services or directly infiltrate their network from an Australian office. Many of them have a pretty big attack surface from the Australian perspective.
I understand your point, and that law is a problem. But there is a big difference between a law and a practice. In the case of NK, we have a long, documented trail showing that the country controls its foreign nationals. Despite that law, the same is not true of Australia.
Surprising we have so many NK sympathizers here. We have decades of reporting for different groups and yet here we are defending NK and calling folks racists.
I do not sympathize with NK at all, they are monsters.
What I am surprised about is that the same people who criticized other countries for doing X will not criticize their own/allied country doing a variation of X. I believe that we in the free West have a duty to keep our democrackes and we do that by not copying rules from the like of North Korea and by not constantly creating tools that help abolishing the division of powers.
That means when I critique Australia for that law I do so on the moral ground that Australia should know better, while North Korea is more or less openly evil.
I am a big fan of fixing our own problems instead of pointing elsewhere where it is even worse.
But I learned that there is a big group of people who think that pointing out that there is dog shit on the carpet makes you somehow a traiter and not someone who wants to live in a country without dogshit on the carpet.
Anyone from any country could be a state asset. That's all entirely hypothetical though. Maybe the universe is all a simulation! There's no limit to where you can go with hypotheticals.
The article, and linked sources, cite evidence from 6 named private citizens, each that have personal experience of multiple cases of exposing actual North Korean infiltrators posing as citizens of other countries to try and get tech jobs. Including one guy who infiltrated such a team of North Koreans. Then there are two successful convictions in court of US citizens aiding and abetting active cells of infiltrators.
So, these are not at all hypothetical and they're not just unsubstantiated claims by US agencies. In fact this issue is also reported by the United Nations.
This is true of every person everywhere, but it's not normal. Australians you encounter aren't pre-filtered to only include the ones who have received such orders.
Yeah this is true and a good point. As an Australian when the government passed that law it hurt so much, like a betrayal of enormous magnitude, it's disgusting.
I suppose one difference is that I can fight the government legally on the issue and am more free in many ways to resist, especially as I'm not employed by the state.
But I do agree, on the scale (0-1?) of how much your government can take away your liberty (when you haven't committed a crime) and compel you commit crimes, most western countries probably sit around 0.01 to 0.05 maybe, North Korea sits around 0.98 to 0.99 and Australia probably 0.4
Thanks for bringing that up, Australia seems to be the test state for how many draconian laws a "free" society will bare, and it is terrifying.
> But I do agree, on the scale (0-1?) of how much your government can take away your liberty (when you haven't committed a crime) and compel you commit crimes, most western countries probably sit around 0.01 to 0.05 maybe, North Korea sits around 0.98 to 0.99 and Australia probably 0.4
It is. The actual text of the law makes it very clear and it has been discussed a lot. That Home Affairs webpage that tries to spin it is yet another disturbing sign.
The only difference b/w western countries and eastern countries is in the freedom of speech. Though, the alien enemies act , and the canadian who got arrested for no apparant reason in USA.... yeah, I mean , the difference is close to 0.
US could definitely put a law where it can say that freedom of speech is harming the country by speculating in the stock market and now it needs to curb freedom of speech.
if you didn't mention United States - your statement would have been believable, but you cannot use words like US and civilized and democratic together in the same sentence.
The people on the receiving end of the US military industrial complex won't agree to your assessment. NK and China have never nuked a civilian city, never genocided civilian population with "strategic carpet bombing", and they never occupied one, never bombed one into the stone age, never caused millions of refugees
