I wonder what goes on in the mind of politicians who support this kind of laws.<p>Do they not understand it? Did they get paid to pass it? Do they hate freedom? Do they actually think it's a good law? Would they like to have lived in the USSR so they can experience the peak non-freedom experience? Are they masochists?
Hasn't passed the Senate yet.<p>There is an arm-wrestle over a nasty piece of refugee legislation that might see both acts not get voted on today. That means it won't be back in parliament until next year and the government is looking so shaky it might not be in power then so... who knows!
We (Australia) are doing this mostly as a five-eyes partner on behalf of the US to support their intelligence efforts.<p>This is the price we the Australian people pay for:<p><pre><code> 1) The promise of future protection by the US in the event of a war (hmmm I wonder who will start it) [1]
2) In theory better terms of trade (ok, after lots of haggling) [2]
3) Access to exclusive visas w/ the US (ok, not so exclusive if Ireland have their way). [3]
</code></pre>
Worth it?<p><pre><code> [1] https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/the-miscalculation-that-could-escalate-into-war-between-china-and-the-us/news-story/c597fe4fa7ea9e7a9929b4258625bd19
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-10/malcolm-turnbull-donald-trump-working-tariff-exemption-agreement/9534984
[3] https://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/what-is-e3-bill-what-would-it-mean-for-irish</code></pre>
Does anyone understand how this affects fastmail?<p>their blog post seems to say it isn't a big deal
<a href="https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/" rel="nofollow">https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/</a>
First the UK and now Australia. Next New Zealand and then Canada. Then the USA will have its five-eyes partners outsourced and fully-equiped to do all its internal spying.
Is this even technically possible? What happens to all the businesses in Australia that built products around crypto where it’s impossible to go backwards.
The expectation of bipartisanship on 'national security issues' definitely makes the average citizen feel powerless, which is particularly worrying because all of the privacy/centralised control overreaches are easily framed as such.<p>I'd happily contribute monthly donations to an EFF-style organisation who are proving effective (or at least tenacious) in lobbying for individual rights protections and extensions, does anyone have any personal recommendations based on their own research?<p>I'm aware that the EFF has an Australian partner branch, and that there are a small handful of other digital rights groups, but if someone has looked into it more thoroughly it would be nice to hear what you found.
ugh. I'll never forgive the LIB's for what they did to the NBN project.<p>Now I'm being pushed to put the ALP on the same shelf.
If this shitshow of legislation passes the senate then Australia is no longer safe and can no longer export tech to places like Europe.<p>what a fucking joke.
I think it's about time that we Australians had a discussion about a constitutional bill of rights (modelled on Switzerland ideally).<p>The common argument against this is that common law protections would be strong enough to make it unnecessary, but that's ignoring that governments can pass laws that end up invalidating older common law protections. And as we've seen in the past decade, our government (both Labor and the Liberals) have been slowly degrading our rights -- they effectively suspended habeas corpus in 2005. From memory, there are even restrictions on how much you can tell your lawyers about you being tried for terrorism!<p>A constitutional referendum is going to be a very hard fight. But I think that the Australian public could see the problem if we compare ourselves to other nations -- the "it's all for national security" argument is specious given that we can show evidence of many countries which have such protections and still have national security protections.<p>One of the most concerning things is that the canonical example that motivated this bill actually includes a presumption of guilt of the person being investigated. That's a great start...
Tangential, but the article badly malfunctions in Chrome with JavaScript disabled. It seems to redirect to <a href="https://www.gizmodo.com.au/?nojs=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.gizmodo.com.au/?nojs=1</a>, which then starts to reload the page over-and-over at about half-second intervals on my machine.<p>Anyone know what's going on with the article?
Is this really what passes for journalism, a bunch of links to twitter posts? Anyway, I believe that this law will result in technology providers ceasing to offer their services in Australia. Of course if that happens, only businesses that can be compelled provide technical assistance etc will be left.
Here is my attempt at apolitical summary for those seeking a quick rundown on the situation. Apologies for brevity since I'm on mobile - there's a lot of small things joining together to make this an interesting situation.<p>Aussie Parliament has two houses: the lower house of representatives, and the upper house (of review). A bill has to pass both in the same form before it can become an Act (law). This one has passed the lower house, and not yet the upper.<p>The current government can't force through legislation without support from independents since they don't have a clear majority in both houses, and there are some types of lost votes in Parliament that if lost threaten the concept that they're actually a 'government'. This situation involves something like that, but it's a rare thing (1940s was the last time this kind of situation resulted in a government resigning).<p>Today was the last day of Parliament sitting for this year, and the government had promised to put through the encryption legislation by now, so it's in place for Christmas. They have some reputation on the line, stating many times it is a necessary law to have in place for the safety of the Australian people over summer.<p>At the same time, there is some legislation in the Parliament that will change how some Australian refugees on the island of Naru are treated, potentially allowing them into Australia. This is a very hot political topic with lots of debate and nuance - so forgive me if I simply say the government wants the refugees to stay on Naru and the opposition wants them to be able to come into Australia.<p>Both of these law changes were in the Parliament today, and both were expected to go before a house for a vote this afternoon. There is argument over the opposition deliberately aligning the to issues, but I'm not across it. Importantly, it was almost certain that if the Naru bill went to a vote, the government would lose, and be in the unfortunate position above of perhaps not being a legitimate government anymore.<p>The government therefore faced two choices: Allow the situation to contribute, lose on immigration and stability, but win on security and reputation; or prevent the Parliament continuing and win (for now) on Naru, but lose on security. They chose the latter.<p>Subsequently, both the government and the opposition have blamed the other for putting politics before people, on one of the two issues respectively. However, the encryption bill only passed the lower house because of the support from the opposition (at the time), who may have been in a better position to know the Naru bill was going to line up in terms of timing.<p>Quite a busy and tense close to our country's Parliament for the year!