Governments can’t be trusted with our private info

The cyber hack is precisely the reason we’re right to be deeply suspicious of government claims it can safeguard our information, writes Miranda Devine. An unsecured Telstra pit in Canberra is another.

If the government can’t keep its own information secure, why should we trust it with our private details?

This week we discovered that Chinese (probably) hackers have broken into cyber systems in Parliament House in Canberra and the servers of the Liberal, Labor and National parties, setting off fears of Trump-Clinton style interference in our upcoming federal election.

“We know these are good hackers who will have multiple ways in and multiple ways out of these institutions”, says Alastair MacGibbon, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

“We don’t know all the places they’ve been [and] we don’t even know the extent of their activity.”

It’s not a good look for a Prime Minister who promised only last week that keeping us safe and secure was his motto.

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Australia's chief cyber security adviser Alistair MacGibbon speaks to media about the cyber hack yesterday. Picture: Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images

And it doesn’t fill you with confidence that the government can safeguard our health records, tax returns and untold other personal information it requires us to cough up.

The most recent cyber invasion also highlights the folly of anti-encryption laws the government pushed through parliament last December against the objections of the tech industry, ostensibly to protect us from terrorists, criminals and paedophiles.

Tech companies and telcos will be forced to insert a “back door” — a systemic weakness or vulnerability — into all encrypted systems, so the government can access our private communication.

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Anti-encryption law will make us less safe

In fact, as IT professionals and cyber security experts warned in more than a hundred submissions ignored by the government, such an extraordinary expansion of the surveillance state won’t keep us safer. Criminals, terrorists and paedophiles will just move into offshore encrypted software and systems, such as Telegram and Signal, which are immune from Australian laws.

An unsecured Telstra pit in Canberra containing cabling that provides communication between government departments.

“The irony is that they’re trying to make cyber security insecure and the first people to get hacked are the politicians who voted for the legislation” said a cyber security expert yesterday.

But’s not just Chinese hackers tapping into Parliament House computer servers that we need to worry about.

There is an unsecured access pit on a main road, a few hundred metres from Capital Hill, where anyone could break into ICON, the 840km of “dark fibre” cables that is the supposedly secure communications network between government departments, many of which don’t encrypt their data. In fact, according to ICON’s website, there are 1766 pits around Canberra.

The cover over the pit is heavy and difficult for one person to move but anyone with a white van and the right tools could get inside and use a $250 device from Amazon to intercept private communications between government departments.

The rectangular manhole cover has been secured with various household padlocks over the years, say cyber insiders. But, today, even that Bunnings level security is absent.

So much for cyber security in Canberra.

@mirandadevine