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The Australian Government believes that it needs a golden key to backdoor encryption within Australia via legislation. The Brits and the Yanks have both already had a nudge at this and both have conceded that requiring a backdoor to encryption is not viable but this will not stop the Australian Liberal Party from trying.
Digital rights experts have described the proposal as "ludicrous" as Cyber security minister Angus Taylor stating that the legislation would be presented for public comment within the next quarter. While the Australian Government has not detailed how it expects to gain access to encrypted data, companies may be penalized if they don't kowtow to the new laws. There is nothing to be discussed here that hasn't been said before other than the Australian Government sincerely believes it can force companies to divulge encrypted data to authorities on demand.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 18 2018, @01:59PM
The trouble with that is that that is exactly what the Government wants. They don't want the bad guys using standard channels with end-to-end encryption for their communications. Because then they have to find ways to filter out the "bad guys" talk from the "good guys" talk (which almost-but-not-quite requires access to the plaintext communications). The current "find a bad actor and then analyze the network traffic" takes them only so far because it implicates their pizza guy as well as the mastermind. They want the bad guys forced off the standard channels into very specific (and taggable in a global-Echelon sense) communications channels and formatting, where they can presume the person guilty (in an intel sense) just for using the medium.
So they win if the bad guys keep using it (which as fingryz pointed out may still happen - many people are stupid), and they win if it drives the bad guys off into doing something more easily trackable.
They only lose if the people insist upon a right to private communications without exception. Which actually is a blow to law enforcement - not saying they should have the right but just that it is easier to prove a conspiracy if you have absolute access to who says what.