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Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

abc.net.au

381–390 of 415 posts

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but health care

Typically included in your benefits package as part of the job. You don't have to give up Australian citizenship to get an E3, so if necessary you can fly back to Australia for treatment.

If you want to get double taxed, sure you can keep your Australian Medicare and private health insurance.

As far as the ATO is concerned, unless you discontinue both, you're considered an Australian resident for tax purposes.

Even though the US considers you a resident alien, the ATO requires you to at least look like you won't be coming back for >1 year.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#382
post #127
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This immensely stupid law applies to any business that operates in Australia, which includes Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Facebook, Github, and every other major tech company on the planet. If they want to continue doing business in Australia (and they very much do) then they'll be forced to comply, which means everybody in the world is negatively affected by this insanity.

If they want to continue doing business in Australia (and they very much do) Meh. 25 million people, and not a top ten economy. Australia has a powerful reality distortion field that makes it seem more important than it is. Must be the tourist marketing and the fact that it punches above its weight in producing successful entertainers. It’s more likely that WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging apps will just get pu…

The population isn't a relevant part of the argument, Mexico has 130 million people and has a smaller economy than Australia. After the top 6 or 7 economies, the next 6 or 7 are all comparable in size.

But more importantly, because of the high GDP per capita and low income inequality, Australians are wealthy with lots of disposable income. And so most international marketplaces see disproportionately high amounts of Australian spending when considering population size.

For instance, where I work, the top 5 spending countries are the US, Canada, Australia, UK, China in that order.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#383
post #159

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I'm patiently waiting for their proposed method of reading end-to-end encrypted messages without introducing a systemic weakness. I imagine that they ask for some tailored malware to be delivered to the specifically targeted device/user.

So the UK spooks have a wonderful euphemism for this. "Equipment interference": https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2018/12/06/uk_gchq_bulk_eq... Which, of course, leads on to a somewhat less specifically targeted "Bulk equipment interference", because once we have the capability, it'll _surely_ not get misused, right? I'm eagerly awaiting the hilarious verbal gymnastics they'll come up with to make a Technical Assista…

We won't see any of that hilarious verbal gymnastics because any individual would be crazy to try to fight one of these orders and face 10 years in jail.

The govt will just secretly compel them, and their activity stays secret - except the bad guys can now hack our compromised infrastructure and there will be inevitable leaks of data and exploits, just like Wannacry which was originally an NSA exploit.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#384
post #370
post #325

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EU seems to be pretty concerned with data privacy, and they even have laws protecting it.

They have laws protecting individuals from companies, not the government. The GDPR has special exceptions for government investigations, and many EU countries have strong domestic spy agencies that spy on their citizens.

Aside from the UK (which is doing its best to leave the EU, and never really felt like an EU country anyway), which countries are actually spying on their citizens like that to any great extent?

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#385
post #384
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have laws protecting individuals from companies, not the government. The GDPR has special exceptions for government investigations, and many EU countries have strong domestic spy agencies that spy on their citizens.

Aside from the UK (which is doing its best to leave the EU, and never really felt like an EU country anyway), which countries are actually spying on their citizens like that to any great extent?

The EU had (until 2014 when it was ruled to violate fundamental rights) a data retention charter which required member states to store all telecommunications data generated within the EU for a period between 6-24 months[1].

The GDPR explicitly allows for government surveillance to be excluded from the directive's protection.

Privacy International and a bunch of other NGOs have filed complaints[2] against "Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the U.K." for violating rulings by the European Court of Justice over illegal mass surveillance. Here's another article[3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2018/06/25/eu-na... [3]: https://medium.com/privacy-international/a-new-era-of-mass-s...

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#386
post #107

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God this is so true. I am so ashamed of our so-called representatives. Please, Apple, do what you know is right and disable all iPhones in Australia. Google, please do the same with Android. If you have a website, geoblock Australia from it. Quarantine us from the world. We are sick and will infect you all.

> If you have a website, geoblock Australia from it. Just did.. won't even respond to icmp. My Tokyo and UK sites.

This isn't going to help. It'd be better to refuse to do business with Australia, but be sure to show them just what they're missing out on.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#387
post #205

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They are allowed to provide statistical information (in 6-month windows). Still completely useless in a practical sense.

No. That was an amendment that was not passed. We got the full dictatorship version with no reporting at all.

Technically, it's not like a dictatorship at all. A dictatorship is a government where there's one person at the top with ultimate power. What you have really is more like a "cabal", much like China's government.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#388
post #304
post #45

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+1 block us. Apple if you are reading this stop selling us iPhones. Australians need to feel the pain of this otherwise nothing will change. 1 billion dollars wiped from Atlassian already. I’m hoping the markets react more and destroy the industry here. Might want to assume that all Australian developers are now potentially compromised.

Ugh, Trello is owned by Atlassian. Will this law mean we should assume Trello is compromised? Trello is based in the US, so I'm not sure how that plays out with the law.

If Australians work on it, then yes.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#389

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While you are probably correct, the world needs to urgently stop doing any business with China first. And since it’s not going to happen, other countries beyond China unfortunately start to get some funny ideas, too...

China is a 1.3 billion people Australia is 25 million. Big difference when it comes to cost and incentive.

Although, we’re a rich 23 million. Of course China’s middle class more than makes up for it, but there’s a reason tech companies like (liked?) Australia.

Re: Australian parliament passes encryption laws unamended

#390
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the U.S. "gag orders" equivalent to this new Australian law?

No, the new law has no judicial review and has a few other things that wouldn't fly in the US. It's markedly worse (though don't get me wrong, the US definitely has it pretty bad in this area too).

You say that like FISA Courts are actually judicial review and not rubbing stamps... where you win is that you have a stronger set of rights and case law about it.
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