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Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#22It really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australian software companies is too great.
Why victimize Fastmail? Law enforcement access to your email inbox remains exactly the same as before this bill was passed. If you're just punishing any Australian company, FeelsBadMan (as an Australian developer).
I thought Fastmail offered (as much as is possible) “secure” email, but it says in their blog post that they routinely hand entire mailboxes over to law enforcement.
On the top hit they say they host everything in New Jersey, USA (with backups in seattle) but later say they are only governed by Australian law and don’t respond to US court orders: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html
Caveat emptor, I guess.
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hearing where Steve King asked iPhone questions to Google and asked why Trump shows up under "idiot" so often in image searches. When it is entirely automated.
Can we at least have a more intelligent conversation about how google designs its algorithms than "It's entirely automated". Everyone here knows that google didn't just plug a bunch of servers together and it just magically came up with a search engine. The idea that google has completely washed its hands of any untoward tweaking of search results to favour one party or another is just ignoring the reality of the cla…
Also, it is a poorly kept secret that google employs a small army of editors to curate the top search terms.
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why victimize Fastmail? Law enforcement access to your email inbox remains exactly the same as before this bill was passed. If you're just punishing any Australian company, FeelsBadMan (as an Australian developer).
I thought Fastmail offered (as much as is possible) “secure” email, but it says in their blog post that they routinely hand entire mailboxes over to law enforcement. On the top hit they say they host everything in New Jersey, USA (with backups in seattle) but later say they are only governed by Australian law and don’t respond to US court orders: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html Caveat emptor, I…
FastMail was never a "secure email service provider" - just an email provider that offer a good (UX-wise) alternative to Gmail, without mining your private conversations for advertising purposes.
I think they made it pretty clear a while back in a blog post on HN that security was not their #1 concern, like it is say for ProtonMail or other end-to-end encrypted email services.
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#25It really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australian software companies is too great.
Don't worry - the rest of the Five Eyes will be getting their own version of this law soon, so Australian tech won't be at a security disadvantage for too long.
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#26They are simply making implicit things explicit. Though, I am not sure why
Maybe the implicit thing didn't work?
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#27They are simply making implicit things explicit. Though, I am not sure why
Maybe the implicit thing didn't work?
more likely the Coalition needed something they could all agree on to be seen to be doing something. There's precious little that the various bits of the parties agree on, so picking on the nerds was an easy one.
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#28I am disgusted by these clowns and as an Australian embarrassed that somehow these people ended up in power and representing us.
also: https://twitter.com/beneltham/status/1070276535007948800 i.e. it appears one the new powers cant be used by anti-corruption agencies.. funny that..
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#29The coalition clearly did this at the behest of the US and UK to be a 5 eyes beard. Yet this very action locks Australian tech companies out of those countries -- it's threatening my ability to work. Labor had no reason to kowtow to this crap.
Have a source suggesting it was the US/UK?
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/627249909/australia-and-new-z...
Re: Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
#30It really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australian software companies is too great.
Don't worry - the rest of the Five Eyes will be getting their own version of this law soon, so Australian tech won't be at a security disadvantage for too long.
Why would they need those laws? One of the benefits of the Five Eyes establishment is that you can share intelligence. Having an allied partner able to do collection and analysis neatly side steps protections design to stop your own country from doing this type of activity on their own citizens.