>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. Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm
