Australian Secretary Of Defense Not Concerned About Phone Hack; Doesn't Think People Want To Spy On His Phone

from the oh-really-now? dept

Ludlam: Do you use an encrypted phone, Mr. Richardson?



Richardson: No, I don't.



Ludlam: Right. Okay. Do you use a commercial -- I'm not asking you to name names -- but do you use a commercial telecommunications provider?



Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yes.



Ludlam: So there might be a SIM card in your phone or mind. Does this alarm you at all?



Richardson: No.



Ludlam: No?



Richardson: No.



Ludlam: Why is that?



Richardson: Well, because I don't particularly deal with people who... if anyone wants to listen to my telephone calls they can. I'd be surprised if they do, but I don't particularly have conversations which I'm particularly worried about.



[Laughter all around the room]



Ludlam: So it's okay if foreign spooks have hacked every mobile handset in the country because you don't have anything in particular...



Richardson: It's possible some might try to.



Ludlam: It's possible some just have.



Richardson: [shrugs] Well, it's possible.

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If you were the Secretary of Defense of a large country, you might think you'd be slightly concerned that foreign agents would want to spy on you. Not so down in Australia apparently, where the current Secretary of Defense, insists that he'd be "surprised" if anyone wanted to find out what was on his phone. Seriously.We've written about the recent story, revealed in documents leaked by Ed Snowden, that the NSA and GCHQ were able to hack into the systems of Gemalto, the world's largest maker of SIM cards for mobile phones, and obtain the encryption keys used in those cards. While Gemalto insists that the hack didn't actually get those encryption keys, not everyone feels so comfortable with Gemalto's own analysis of what happened.Senator Scott Ludlam (who we've written about a few times before ) reasonably found the story of the Gemalto hack to be concerning, and went about asking some questions of the government to find out what they knew about it. The results are rather astounding . First he had asked ASIO , the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, and they said it wasn't their area, but it might be ASD (the Australian Signals Directorate). The video below shows Ludlam asking the ASD folks for more information about the hack and being flabbergasted that they basically say they haven't even heard about the hack at all:Right at the beginning, the first person says he's not aware of the situation, and Ludlam asks "are you aware of the broad outlines?" and gets a "no I am not" response, leading to a rather dry "Really?!? Okay, this is going to be interesting" reply from Ludlam. It goes on in this nature for a while, with the various people on the panel playing dumb, and Ludlam repeatedly (and rightly) appearing shocked that they appear to have no idea about the story.But the really incredible part comes in the last minute of the video, in which Ludlam asks the Australian Secretary of Defense, Dennis Richardson, about his own concerns about his phone being spied on:So there you have it, folks. The Australian Secretary of Defense says that anyone is allowed to listen in to his calls, because there's nothing secret about any of them. I'm not quite familiar with public records/freedom of information laws in Australia, but is it possible for someone to put in a request for recording all of the Secretary of Defense's phone calls?

Filed Under: asd, asio, australia, dennis richardson, gchq, hacking, nsa, phones, scott ludlam, sim cards, surveillance

Companies: gemalto