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posted by janrinok on Friday April 13 2018, @04:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the governments-are-above-mathematics dept.

The Guardian reports that an "Australian bill to create back door into encrypted apps [is] in 'advanced stages.'" The Australian government is pushing ahead with controversial legislation it says will create "back doors" into encrypted communication services – but still can't say when it will introduce the bill.

After originally aiming to have the legislation before parliament in the first quarter of this year, the government has delayed its introduction. A spokesman for the acting attorney general, Marise Payne, would only say it was in "the advanced stages of development".

[...] "If it is to proceed, Labor calls on the government to release an exposure draft of this legislation, to allow for proper consultation. This is important given the complexities around this novel area of lawmaking."

Greens senator Jordon Steele-John said the whole concept was laughable. "Once the government has a back door into encrypted devices and platforms, everybody has a back door into encrypted devices and platforms," he said.

"That has been proven over and over again. Once it is created, somebody gets in. I wouldn't trust a government that can't keep Medicare information protected to be inserting a back door into a tin shed.

"So I certainly wouldn't be trusting them to do something as serious as this."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/13/australian-bill-to-create-back-door-into-encrypted-apps-in-advanced-stages


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday April 13 2018, @05:23PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday April 13 2018, @05:23PM (#666531) Journal

    Enforce it only after the fact. If you have a person of interest with some irresponsibly encrypted data, you try to compel them to decrypt, and when they can't or won't do it, you charge them with a crime [wikipedia.org].

    If the evidence needed to convict them of some other heinous crime is encrypted, you get to put them away for violating key disclosure law instead. It's another law on the books that can be used in order to ruin people's lives.

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