Australia government agencies use encrypted messaging apps such as Signal. But should they?
The revelation that a journalist was included in a highly sensitive Signal group chat for Trump officials planning a military operation on Yemen has raised questions about the broader use of encrypted apps by politicians and public servants in Australia.
The Atlantic reported on Tuesday that its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally included in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app with more than a dozen senior Trump administration officials.
The news sparked alarm about a potentially catastrophic breach of military information and raised questions about the use of commercially available encrypted apps among public officials in the US and beyond.
So what's the situation in Australia?
Politicians and their staff in Australia have long been known to use apps such as Signal to communicate. Use in the public service and political service is believed to be common, to the point where last week, Australia's information regulator released an investigation into how agencies were using encrypted apps and what security and record rules were in place for work-related conversations occurring on them.
In it, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) reported that of the 22 government agencies that responded to a survey on encrypted app use, 16 permitted its use by staff for work purposes. Of those, just eight had policies on the use of the apps, and five of those addressed security requirements for communicating on the apps.
Guardian Australia contacted Penny Wong and Richard Marles' offices for comment on the use of encrypted apps by the foreign affairs and defence departments.
In a response, a government spokesperson said: "The Government complies with the obligations under the Archives Act and the FOI Act," but did not answer specific questions about whether ministers used Signal for sensitive communications with department staff or officials.
The home affairs department was also asked about its use of encrypted apps and did not provide an answer before publication.
One unnamed large agency mentioned in the OAIC report had a 'comprehensive' policy on the use of Signal and endorsed its use for app security reasons, but only on mobile devices managed by the agency.
It had cybersecurity guidelines and a requirement that the disappearing messages functionality should be turned off. It also included instructions on how to copy information from Signal to the agency's primary record-keeping system.
In a response to the report, the Attorney-General's Department – which oversees the OAIC – said it would support government agencies with 'information management recommendations and guidance' on the use of messaging apps. A spokesperson said all commonwealth agencies had legal responsibilities to preserve records 'under Australian archival law, privacy law, and freedom of information law'.
'The report will assist the National Archives of Australia and Office of the Information Commissioner (OAIC) to provide effective regulatory guidance in this area,' the attorney general's spokesperson said.
The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has responsibility for the repository of official documents of the government.
The OAIC did not comment on the US news, but the commissioner, Elizabeth Tydd, told Guardian Australia last week that most agency policies, where they existed, were left wanting when it comes to security and record requirements.
'In the main the policies did not properly address archive, privacy, FoI requirements, and I think you can say with only five addressing security requirements that they're not adequate to support staff in upholding their responsibilities or delivering the rights that are provided to the community through legislation and that are [overseen] by the OAIC,' she said.
In 2016, it was reported then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former prime minister Kevin Rudd communicated via Wickr about the Australian government supporting Rudd's push at the time to be appointed secretary general of the United Nations.
It was also reported in 2018 that the then foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and her Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi, communicated over WhatsApp about the Morrison government's decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Toby Murray, a former public servant and professor at the University of Melbourne's School of Computing and Information Systems, said the use of commercially available encrypted messaging apps in government was the next step in the encroachment of consumer technology such as smartphones into the workplace.
He said it was important for agencies to have policies in place.
'It's very easy to make the assumption that because these apps are encrypted, that that therefore means that they are quite secure … when in fact, that may not be the case,' he said, adding that having clear guidance around use was 'really important'.
Murray acknowledged that politicians and their staff were 'in quite a tricky position' when it came to setting rules – 'in the sense of being very time-poor, having access to all sorts of information and also being potential targets from, say, foreign intelligence services'.
He also highlighted the importance of security hygiene for individual device users.
'It's difficult to get people to understand, for instance, that just because the app might be, you'd hope, highly secure, that doesn't mean the device that you're running on is necessarily going to be,' he said.
'Of course, it would be great if all of our politicians thought very hard and put a lot of effort into their security hygiene of their devices, but I think we all have to acknowledge the reality that's probably not the case.'
'Messaging apps may present recordkeeping and risk management challenges for agencies to consider when authorising their use,' an NAA spokesperson said.
'Australian government agencies are required to meet their recordkeeping obligations regardless of the tools and technology being used.'
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Tolokonnikova had been just 22 when she and two other members of Pussy Riot were convicted of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' for staging an anti-Putin 'Punk Prayer' protest in a Moscow cathedral in early 2012. After her release in late 2013, she kept demonstrating, and kept making art. In 2021, the Russian government labeled her a 'foreign agent'. A recent multimedia performance, Putin's Ashes, which came to Los Angeles in 2023, had landed her on Russia's wanted list, and led to her being arrested in absentia for the crime of 'insulting the religious feelings of believers'. Los Angeles was the latest stop in a series of museum exhibitions that had brought the artist to Berlin and Linz in Austria for a show called Wanted. 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In her replica cell, Tolokonnikova thought about the Los Angeles mothers and fathers who had just been torn away from their families, people who were 'hard-working breadwinners and caretakers', not violent gang members. She looked at the art decorating her cell's walls, drawings sent by current and former political prisoners in Russia and Belarus, 'people imprisoned for 10, 15, 20 years, simply for being good'. 'I was thinking of dehumanization and scapegoating as a universal mechanism – applied with heartbreaking ruthlessness both back home and here,' she wrote in the email. 'I was thinking how the western idea that history inevitably moves toward progress is a mirage.' When her performance hours were done, she walked out into the Los Angeles streets for comfort. It was early Sunday evening, and the protests downtown had been going on most of the afternoon. 'People were giving out gas masks, water, and protective glasses,' she wrote. What captured her attention was not moments that would be played and replayed on the news, like Waymo automated vehicles set on fire, or protesters streaming on to the 101 highway. It was the way being at a protest feels: 'That spirit of care and solidarity is precious,' she wrote. 'People were being shot with rubber bullets and burned by tear gas, yet they refused to leave.' On Wednesday, the museum announced that the rest of Tolokonnikova's performance would have to be postponed indefinitely, because of 'ongoing demonstrations and military activity'. 'Every single event I did in Russia was shut down by the cops,' she posted on Instagram, 'and now it's starting to feel a lot like Russia.' Tolokonnikova, who faces immediate arrest if she returns to Russia, is not an optimist. In recent months, she has repeatedly compared her art practice to the musicians who kept playing on the Titanic as the ship went down. 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When I walked inside the replica cell, it was bigger and far more detailed than I expected, with battered, blue-painted plaster walls etched with graffiti, a desk for Tolokonnikov's music equipment, and a toilet in the corner that she planned to use during her performance shifts, which would last either six or eight hours. The floor of the cell was dirty, and the observation holes fit into the walls had heavy metal covers that could slide open or closed. There were surveillance cameras all over the cell, even one pointed at the toilet. The Russian prisons where she was incarcerated had 'cameras right above the toilet bowl, which makes no sense for us people who live outside of jails', she said. 'But once you're in, you kind of just know, well, that's what it is.' We talked with the noise of construction around us, and the sharp smell of iron in the air, a sign of the metalwork in progress nearby. Partway through our conversation, the metalworker approached, wheeling the massive cell door, to ask Tolokonnikova about the finish she wanted on the metal. Each of these details mattered to Tolokonnikova. One of her inspirations for the durational prison performance is her friend Marina Abramović, known as 'the grandmother of performance art'. Another is the late conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov, who had meticulously replicated an old, deteriorating Soviet public bathroom and displayed it in a European gallery so western audiences could understand the context of his art. 'It's one of the works that changed my life for ever,' she said. For authenticity, the table in her cell was covered with a garish plastic tablecloth printed with lemons, a 'very post-Soviet thing' that people incarcerated in Russia use 'to recreate this idea of comfort of coziness, in jail'. 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On certain subjects, Tolokonnikovia can be laconic, even dismissive. Asked about how she was preparing to protect her mental health while reenacting her imprisonment in Los Angeles, she said she had not really made any plans. 'Self-care is not my strong suit. I'm just like: I don't have time for this.' When it came to performance, she said, Ambramović had told her several years ago that 'once you commit to an idea, it basically negates all the fear' and that 'if you believe that the particular artistic idea that you chose is good enough, then you just kind of don't care about physical safety, or emotional safety'. 'I'm sure it's gonna be triggering as fuck at some points for me to sit there,' she added. 'But do I care? No. Because I think the work has to be done, and I'll deal with it later.' Tolokonnika's punk aesthetic is not something she adopts for performances. She told me cheerfully about almost getting blown up by pyrotechnics at a recent unauthorized concert, and praised the work of LA's Dead City Punx, a hardcore punk band and one of her planned collaborators in Los Angeles. 'One thing that I just don't vibe with in modern American society – there's an entire thing about safety. And I've lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,' she said. 'This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they're not afraid.' Tolokonnikova told me she had hoped that people would come to her Moca exhibit with their children. 'I've always been obsessed with building a version of Disneyland, but much more radical and grim,' she said. She had worked with Banksy on Dismaland, the artist's 2015 dark Disney satire, but she's still thinking about the possibilities of a more revolutionary theme park. 'It's just a giant waste of time and money the way that Disneyland looks now. It just doesn't accomplish anything,' she said. Imagine, she suggested, if the animatronic characters of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride were instead a way for kids 'to learn the history of the feminist movement'. 'So instead of pirates doing this,' she said, jerking her arms, 'it could be like, you're a suffragette being arrested.' 'Obviously, I don't have a budget to build Disneyland,' she added. 'But it was a dream of mine for ever.' Police State had been scheduled to run through June 13, with a final performance by Pussy Riot Siberia, Tolokonnikova's new performance collective, to close it out. Now, it is postponed to an unknown date in the future. 'I guess the National Guard will be performing POLICE STATE instead of me this week,' Tolokonnikova wrote on Instagram.
