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In the aftermath of the Australian government passing laws that allows the government to force companies and individuals to work with officials to bypass encryption, scary implications of the new laws are being discovered. One very concerning effect is that officials can now force Australians to unlock their phone — granting the government full access to anyone's email history, personal files, pictures and other files on their phone. Senator Steele-John was quoted as saying "Far from being a 'national security measure' this bill will have the unintended consequence of diminishing the online safety, security and privacy of every single Australian,". With fines of up to $50,000 for individuals who refuse to hand over an unlocked device or cooperate with authorities, new devices and software are expected to enter the market including dual OS devices, hidden partitions, encrypted files and partitions similar to TrueCrypt, cloud only applications, device wipe pins, secondary hidden OS functions and other security measures which so far have largely only been implemented on desktop computers. This latest bungle by the Australian government may very well propel mobile device security forward decades in the same way RIAA and MPAA advanced P2P.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday December 08 2018, @11:26AM
I like the idea of progressive fines, and it occurs to me a way to implement on top of the current system would be to keep the penalty unit system in regard to fines, but make the actual unit value a variable based on income/wealth. This would only require modifying the law that sets the value of a penalty unit.
I also lean towards basing it much more heavily on the side of wealth rather than income. Entitled trust fund brats should not offend with impunity just because they have zero "income", while hard workers pay more just because they did a lot of overtime.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.