Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
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Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#2I am particularly concerned how this will affect Fastmail, an Australian company.
I've hosted my mail there since 2002 and they've always been quite pro-privacy. But I fear that such a stance is now literally impossible for any Australian company.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#3I am particularly concerned how this will affect Fastmail, an Australian company. I've hosted my mail there since 2002 and they've always been quite pro-privacy. But I fear that such a stance is now literally impossible for any Australian company.
Atlassian is another company that comes to mind here.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#4Do we trust Intel chips are free from gov backdoors? Or that Microsoft/FB arent in bed with the NSA? I would say the precedent has long since been set.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#5Don't worry, nobody is going to build back doors into anything for a government which can't keep its own pants from falling down every couple of weeks. They're fishing for likes, desperately wanting to "keep Australia safe" with political spin and rushed laws, just in time for Xmas.
People can already have 100% private verbal conversations in person without anyone listening or knowing what was said. In the 21st century, this full-proof mode of communication has simply extended to digital mediums via encryption. They need to face reality of the modern age, and move on.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#6The thing that makes me most despondent is, you just watch them all get voted back in next election.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#7Do we trust Intel chips are free from gov backdoors? Or that Microsoft/FB arent in bed with the NSA? I would say the precedent has long since been set.
You're right, but this is the first time (I know of) that a government has explicitly required backdoors and forcing tech companies to download malware/spyware to their customers' devices. This new law brazenly makes encryption useless and sets a dangerous precedent.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#8I am particularly concerned how this will affect Fastmail, an Australian company. I've hosted my mail there since 2002 and they've always been quite pro-privacy. But I fear that such a stance is now literally impossible for any Australian company.
TCNs (which is the primary thing this article is about) won't practically affect email providers, because email providers already have your plaintext emails -- they don't need to implement new capabilities to intercept them. (As an aside, I use Mailbox.org which has a feature to auto-encrypt incoming emails to a PGP public key -- which means that only new emails would be usable with interception.)
However there is now a no-warrant-required method of getting information (in the form of TANs and TARs) which has no judicial overview -- previously they would've needed a warrant. This is definitely a massive concern, but given that you wouldn't have seen a warrant previously (Fastmail would get it) this is not a practical difference to you (obviously it's a massive ethical difference and so on).
But to be honest, I actually hope people stop using Australian services and big companies start backing out of the Australian market. It's the only way our dropkick government will realise how much of an own-goal this legislation was.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#9Don't worry, nobody is going to build back doors into anything for a government which can't keep its own pants from falling down every couple of weeks. They're fishing for likes, desperately wanting to "keep Australia safe" with political spin and rushed laws, just in time for Xmas. People can already have 100% private verbal conversations in person without anyone listening or knowing what was said. In the 21st centu…
But don't forget these fools whose pants constantly fall down can do horrendous damage as they run smack bang into the modern age. And they are unlikely to "move on". They are more likely to wreck everything, and then when they fail, try again but worse.
Re: Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
#10The thing that makes me most despondent is, you just watch them all get voted back in next election.
It looks like Labor will win next election, but that really doesn't matter. Labor voted for the bill unanimously.