Officials assured that US agencies do not have unauthorised entry to Australian parliamentary IT operating systems

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Parliamentary officials say Microsoft has given some assurances that electronic communications by MPs are not being accessed by American intelligence agencies through a “back door” in the IT operating systems.

Last November during a Senate estimates hearing a senior parliamentary official left open the prospect that parliamentary communications in Australia could be monitored by US intelligence through a “back door” provided by Microsoft operating systems.

The lack of clarity and the concern about the broad sweep of electronic surveillance and intelligence sharing, undertaken through the “5-Eyes” partnership of the US and its allies, prompted Greens senator Scott Ludlam to pursue the issue by putting further questions on notice.

Both Ludlam and South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon have been concerned about the security of Australian parliamentary communications since the Prism surveillance program was first revealed by National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS) has responded to Ludlam’s questions by saying Microsoft has advised that there is no back door in the Australian parliamentary IT system.

“There is a significant degree of speculation resulting from the Snowden revelations that a back door exists,” DPS says in response to the questions.

“Based on the available material, the speculation appears to relate to back doors in cloud-related software products rather than internal environments. DPS has not been provided with any specific advice that Microsoft products or any other products have been ‘backdoored’ by foreign intelligence services.”

DPS says it has held discussions with both Microsoft and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) “regarding backdoor exposures and Prism”.

“Microsoft has advised DPS that there is no back door within the Microsoft suite of products, nor have they made any attempt to source information from the parliamentary network or provide information to any other entity,” the department says.

“Microsoft has advised that they comply with all jurisdictional laws in relation to these matters.”

DPS says it does not hold parliamentarians’ data in the cloud and adds “we are taking all reasonable steps to prevent systems such as the alleged Prism system compromising our ICT environment. Our security tools have not identified any evidence of this style of illicit data collection from the parliamentary network”.

DPS advises Ludlam to pursue the issue further with Microsoft or with the ASD if he has further queries.

Eija Seittenranta, who is responsible for ensuring network security in Australia’s parliamentary IT systems, told the Senate finance and public administration committee in November that no specific action had been taken to secure the parliamentary network against surveillance by US agencies under the Prism program.

Ludlam inquired during the hearing whether ordinary MPs and staff should then assume their correspondence could be monitored by US intelligence via a “back door” in Microsoft systems.

Seittenranta first told the committee her IT team had not taken any action to close the back door and would be reliant on industry to provide the baseline level of network security. She said her team would be reliant on advice from the ASD.

“We don’t have the technical skills to create patches,” she said.

Steve McCauley, the assistant secretary of the infrastructure services branch, then contradicted his colleague. He told the hearing that DPS was aware of the concerns around Prism and that the Australian parliamentary system was “patched”.

“We are aware of such communications. We are patched. There are no outbound messages that are sent to Microsoft … that we are not aware of,” McCauley told the estimates hearing. “We work with ASD, they also monitor all outbound messages in conjunction with us in a partnership.”