Australia’s highly controversial new encryption-busting laws have plenty of high profile critics, but when it comes to lodging formal complaints against security agencies, it’s cryptography developers who've been throwing grenades over official certification.
And, well, that hasn’t been going so well.
The annual report of Australia’s spy watchdog, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, has revealed the Australian Cyber Security Centre was the subject of a complaint over its “lack of response” to an application “for certification of encryption software” from an angry developer.
Very angry.
While the specifics have been shielded in the IGIS’ (unclassified) annual catalogue of spy misdemeanours, the event was significant enough to warrant a small case study from the watcher of watchers.
And it's rather a salutary lesson on how not to deal with difficult and irascible people over electronic channels: because just because you block them out, that doesn't mean they'll actually go away.
The IGIS has standing Royal Commission-grade powers to unilaterally launch 'own motion' investigations if it doesn't like the smell of the wind. And predictably, it has seen many florid and mundane accusations levelled at spies over the years.
They range from inaccurate and unfair adverse assessments affecting security clearances, citizenship and visa applications to tin-foil hat grade claims of subliminal mind control through television sets.
In the case of the ACSC, which scored its own special breakout box under the heading of “improving agency procedures”, the lesson dished out is that there’s an established process for dealing with people who don’t like to take no for an answer, especially when anger management isn’t great.
The IGIS wrote that after it received the complaint, “the ACSC informed IGIS staff of ..
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