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Australians Can Now be Forced to Unlock their Phones

posted by martyb on Friday December 07 2018, @12:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the 1984-is-not-a-howto-guide dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @02:07PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @02:07PM (#771138)

    They will never find my porn collection of illegally flat chested ladies.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 07 2018, @02:36PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 07 2018, @02:36PM (#771148) Journal

    Officer, I don't know my password. So I wrote it on this yellow sticky note. But unknown to me, it has somehow become illegible due to a build up of some unknown white sticky substance.

    --
    The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday December 07 2018, @09:23PM

      by edIII (791) on Friday December 07 2018, @09:23PM (#771309)

      Pretty sure that you cannot hand a cop that substance, or in any other way "give it" to them. Ask Pee Wee Herman :)

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @11:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @11:46AM (#771497)

      My password was: IKilledMikeDon18021982

      I can't give you my password, orificer.