In 1993 the US president Bill Clinton’s administration introduced the “Clipper chip” into America’s digital and consumer electronics. It was one of the earliest attempts to enforce a backdoor into digital products, and the first in what is known as the cryptowars, when the US government fought to control and regulate strong encryption.

The Clipper chip was a catastrophic failure. It’s a failure the attorney general, George Brandis, may find instructive, as he places Australia on the frontline of a new cryptowar.

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This weekend Brandis sought to revive a debate that has continued for several years about granting governments greater access to encrypted messaging communication to aid criminal investigations.

In an interview with Sky News, Brandis said he would approach the Five Eyes intelligence network – made up of the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia – to ask them to consider imposing greater legal obligations on device makers and social media companies “to cooperate with authorities in decrypting communications”. He looked favourably at laws passed in the UK that require device makers and messaging providers to provide greater assistance to authorities in decrypting messages.

Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) George Brandis: in the UK, authorities are able to impose obligations on device makers to cooperate on encryption. https://t.co/dlBhjeL3yh pic.twitter.com/EagLjgockT

Brandis has stressed this is not about creating a “backdoor” but it’s hard to see how what he’s proposing could possibly be achieved without this. What he appears to be suggesting is creating a cross-jurisdictional system that would compel different providers and services to provide law enforcement agencies with greater access to communications.

This would only be possible with a vast data retention regime scheme imposed on devices and messaging services, and a system by which the app companies and providers had access to the keys that encrypted communications.

That’s not just a backdoor – that’s more like a giant sinkhole that your backdoor fell into. It’s a gaping, cavernous hole in the architecture of the internet and that’s a big problem for a number of reasons.

To start with, strong encryption is vital to national security. If you “impose an obligation” on a company to make sure they can give access to it, you risk making those tools less secure.

Undermining these protections would undermine all kinds of important cryptography. Apps including Signal and WhatsApp, which uses Signal’s protocols, are designed so providers can’t decrypt messages because they know that if they could they would be far more vulnerable to attacks and exploitation. Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, a more tech savvy leader than most, uses Signal and Wickr because they are designed to be more secure.

There’s precedent for this. Phil Zimmerman, the founder of the encryption program PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), has outlined that the cryptowars of the 1990s actually weakened US cyber defences.

“You don’t have to distrust the government to want to use cryptography,” he wrote in a 1999 essay. “Your business can be wiretapped by business rivals, organized crime, or foreign governments. Several foreign governments, for example, admit to using their signals intelligence against companies from other countries to give their own corporations a competitive edge.”

Brandis’s proposal envisages a vast regime of surveillance that hugely increases the risk of government and non-government intrusions into privacy in order to combat a very specific threat. The UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression, David Kaye, has written extensively about the value of encryption for safeguarding basic human rights. In a paper that considered the value of encryption, he wrote that “encryption and anonymity provide individuals and groups with a zone of privacy online to hold opinions and exercise freedom of expression without arbitrary and unlawful interference or attacks.”

The attorney general’s scheme could only succeed if the US came on board, because most of the well-known messaging services are based there. But it would be fruitless, because companies would simply move offshore to evade the onerous new obligations on them. Organised criminals and people committed to acts of violence who use these apps would be likely to go with them, but so would the millions of users who want to ensure their data is secure.

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In a small number of criminal cases there clearly are difficulties in gaining access to encrypted communications. But vast powers are already available to law enforcement and security services. Australian federal police and state and territory police agencies can use what is known as a 3LA warrant. This is often issued in computer crime cases to force a person to decrypt their phone and computer. It can only be used against individuals, not telecommunications companies.

Because terrorism investigations are usually tightly focused, Australia’s security services are also increasingly targeting devices themselves. Much of the current debate is focused on the use of a small number of apps, such as WhatsApp , Signal and Telegram. The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has warned against the “app cult” that has developed in the past few years, since phone-based encryption apps became popular. Assange highlights that these apps are only as safe as the devices you use with them. As the CIA Vault 7 leak has shown, law enforcement agencies can penetrate many devices without needing to target apps. Australian law enforcement agencies have been making use of these tools for many years.

The Clipper chip failed because it made users less secure, not more, and the US government underestimated opposition to it. Brandis may find this instructive if he is considering embarking on a new cryptowar.

Contact Paul Farrell securely using the Signal messaging app on +61 457 262 172 or over email at paul.farrell@theguardian.com

