Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

abc.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 294 posts

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#31

Post by yingw787 »

jjcm wrote: post #4

That's one of the biggest things that lawmakers here couldn't seem to understand - tech companies have high mobility across borders. Even if a law has no teeth, why would Microsoft store data in Australia when the next country over can still serve data for the region? It just creates too much risk, from a privacy and PR standpoint. Startups will be more adverse to founding in Australia as well. It just creates a blac…

I think that "high mobility across borders" is an assumption based on existing trade regulations. From recent developments it's clear countries can and do force companies to do things they don't want, and companies will do it because they can't or won't lose access to consumers in those markets.

For example, Apple has begun storing Russian user data in Russia in compliance with Russian data storage laws (https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/01/apple-will-reportedly-sto...), and Google is still working on its censored search engine in China.

Of course, if nobody else does this, this means you may have older software on your systems or less priority in development roadmaps or whatever as your country is an edge case, and you can probably say goodbye to market leadership and have to coast on your existing advantages. However, if everybody begins to cartelize the Internet, you may not lose as much in comparison to everybody else, since you will no longer be the edge case but the common case, and it will be a bad time to start a company or store data anywhere you go at any time. Companies will simply have to live with the geopolitical reality. In this sense, the Internet devolves into a suboptimal Nash equilibrium, where everybody has data localization laws and nobody will want to loosen up because storing your citizen's information on servers in another country will leave your citizens vulnerable. If this happens, the large homogeneous markets with a single language, government, and economy (U.S/China) may have an advantage.

This is sad, and I hope they reverse this law. An open Internet is good for economic and societal dynamism (and as a civilization is tautological to organized chaos, slowing that down weakens said civilization), and I wouldn't know how to work backwards to where the Internet should be. In the meantime, maybe this will lift some open source, decentralized communications means past some threshold of viability.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#32

Post by satori99 »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #17
jaza wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote, the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and elsewhere. The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with o…

> the right to vote Yeah, but they mess even that up by making it obligatory. :)

Involuntary voting means that religious and other special interest groups cannot easily use their organizations to out-vote the more apathetic citizens. And therefore serious parties must target the center, or close to it, with policy.

I see this as an advantage of compulsory voting over other systems. Especially when voting is quick and painless, usually taking no more than 10 or 20 mins on a weekend every three years or so.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#33

Post by ameister14 »

judge2020 wrote: post #20
jaza wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote, the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and elsewhere. The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with o…

> like the US with its right to bear arms I find this funny because the SCOTUS basically can change the Constitution whenever they want. The second amendment only states that the United States itself has a right to bear arms in order to defend itself (have a Militia)[0]. It didn't provide citizens the right to personal protection by guns until a 2008 Supreme Court case [1]. 0: https://www.constituteproject.org/consti…

You find it funny because you have a misunderstanding over what the constitution says. It doesn't say that the state has external threats and so needs a militia, which is what would be implied by your 'state defending itself' reading. It says a militia is necessary to secure a free State, and so we can't infringe the right to bear arms. That doesn't just mean external threats, and in fact is rooted in the idea that the people are the defense of their community and the holders of their government.

That means it's not about the State defending itself, it's about the people defending the free State. The Heller case simply extended the existing individual right to own guns in order to protect their free State to that of protecting your person and home.

SCOTUS didn't change the Constitution however they wanted. That's ridiculous. They applied existing law to a situation they were asked to judge.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#34

Post by xxpor »

jaza wrote: post #13
dgzl wrote: post #3

From what I understand, Australia (and other nations) don't give their citizens explicit rights, such as to personal and property privacy.

Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote, the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and elsewhere. The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with o…

In the US there's no explicit right to vote.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#35

Post by ams6110 »

C14L wrote: post #12
doorbellguy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a thread I made about ProtonMail v FastMail and this one point came up at the top. However ProtonMail’s inability to support standard clients without an awkward bridge app seems to take edge off it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19372882

> ProtonMail’s inability to support standard clients without an awkward bridge app Isn't that one of the pros of Protonmail? All the data is encrypted and decrypted on the client. There is no way to have mail apps access the data without a piece of software that handles the encryption.

Unless you only send email to yourself, the hole in that idea is that all the recipients have a copy of your email.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#36

Post by Sabinus »

tracker1 wrote: post #24
jaza wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote, the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and elsewhere. The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with o…

The U.S. actually goes a step further... the only rights the constitution actually spells out are the rights of government. Most encroachments have been under the guise of "interstate commerce" or "taxation" in general... > The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. As to the bill of rights, so long…

Maybe if the police in America wasn't armed to the teeth and scared of being blown away by armed populace they wouldn't act like they do. For a country who keeps guns to hold governments accountable, your government is just a unaccountable as everyone else; if not more so.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#37

Post by neilv »

doorbellguy wrote: post #10
dreamcompiler wrote: post #6

I was about ready to move all my email over to Fastmail before this happened. But not now.

There was a thread I made about ProtonMail v FastMail and this one point came up at the top. However ProtonMail’s inability to support standard clients without an awkward bridge app seems to take edge off it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19372882

ProtonMail's bridge program is a bit of a kludge, and their proprietary protocol (rather than seeking IETF standardization) prevents implementing the protocol in the MUA.

I'd love to have a privacy-respecting mail hoster, but the ProtonMail bridge program is too unattractive to make the switch.

(Which is not to say that IMAP itself isn't a mess, but MUAs have gotten it to work, and we'd like for whatever other protocol we move to instead to also be an open standard.)

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#38

Post by KorematsuFred »

mastazi wrote: post #30

I have migrated to Australia many years ago and I have recently become eligible to become a citizen. However I’ve heard stories of tech companies refusing to hire Australians because of the AA Bill, so I’m holding it off for now. The problem seems to be the provision that a tech worker can be coerced by the Australian Government into creating a backdoor, and they are not authorised to disclose it to their employer. I…

Is this true ? There is no way I am hiring an Australian citizen then.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#39

Post by BLKNSLVR »

mastazi wrote: post #30

I have migrated to Australia many years ago and I have recently become eligible to become a citizen. However I’ve heard stories of tech companies refusing to hire Australians because of the AA Bill, so I’m holding it off for now. The problem seems to be the provision that a tech worker can be coerced by the Australian Government into creating a backdoor, and they are not authorised to disclose it to their employer. I…

Good news: https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/659332/encryption-l...

Bad news: This is still the words of a politician, so it's likely they're relatively empty and the changes may be trivial and won't address the fundamental distrust it has sown in Australian-developed and / or operated technologies.

Re: Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia

#40

Post by dragonwriter »

xxpor wrote: post #34
jaza wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote, the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and elsewhere. The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with o…

In the US there's no explicit right to vote.

> In the US there's no explicit right to vote.

Yes, there is.

There is no explicit general prohibition on laws impairing that specific right the way there is some other rights, but the existence of the right is explicit, among other places in Amendment XV, Sec. 1: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This explicitly states that the right exists, and then goes on to prohibit denying or abridging it on an enumerated set of bases. (There's two other voting rights amendments following the same pattern.)

Post reply on HN