It's an Australian law, so it can only affect people under Australian jurisdiction -- I didn't think that needed to be said. There are significant numbers of free software developers in Australia (I'm one of them).

The point is that all software engineers (in Australia) being able to be co-opted as saboteurs is a fairly "meaningful" problem and should be a concern to everyone...

Well, if it comes to it, we could always choose to just blacklist all Australian devs from writing software.

Which is why this bill is a complete disaster for the Australian tech industry. Every single software company in Australia just became blackmarked and could be "potentially compromised" by the government and whoever has figured out the governments likely hamfisted and boutique backdoor solutions.

Even someone's little SaaS can be asked to turn up dirt on someone. I literally couldn't comply. I don't write encryption algorithms for a living I just build websites. I can't not encrypt people's data and according to european laws I can't store most of it anyway. Here, gov, have a username, email address, and this blob of encrypted text. Enjoy the insight.

It's getting so hostile to do business in software. At least construction and engineering liabilities are clear cut. I don't even know what my risks factors are anymore and they change every month.

It took longer than expected, but the governments have finally decided it's time to ruin the internet. I am going to go be a carpenter or something.

What a shitshow.

Do we know of any organised groups who are opposing this? Both of our main political parties are in bed with this disaster so we can’t leave it to the opposition.

You’re clearly smart and lucid. Me perhaps less so but I have some spare time. Who else? Where are they gathering? What can I do?

I’m talking basic communications and publicity stuff, not anything anarchistic. Helping non-tech journalists. Writing articles to help the public understand this stuff. Lobbying MPs.

Maybe I just found a way to keep myself busy...

Greens, acs.org.au, possibly some of the business/legal councils

> I literally couldn't comply. I don't write encryption algorithms for a living I just build websites.

I don't think you'd have to "break encryption" or do anything advanced, the main thing they're looking to ask is to circumvent encryption. For example sending the plaintext password for a specific user from the login form, or OS backdoor, etc., delivered through a special software update just for that user. Additionally the wording of the law does not allow for an inability for you to do it, I believe you would be compelled to hire someone that can.

I believe you are right. What an insane proposition though.

How do you advertise for the position? Lie about the job and then once they are on board the government hits them with the no-tell paperwork? What a shitty person I would have to become to make that happen, and I would have no choice at that point.

Perhaps they would have a saboteur on staff they would be willing to lend. Very hard position to hire for, no doubt.

Yeah, and I guess most contractors would refuse to have anything to do with the project once they found out what was involved.

Actually I'm not sure you could hire a contractor, since you'd probably be under a secrecy constraint and wouldn't be able to tell them what needed to be done.

> It took longer than expected, but the governments have finally decided it's time to ruin the internet. I am going to go be a carpenter or something.

Honestly, not bad advice.

I recently had some electrician, plumbing and gas work done and the bill was around my contractor rate here in NZ.

Given the politics and bs around the big corps and govt ministries my skillsets fit into (business analyst/pm) a trade has been something I've been considering seriously for a while now. The peace of mind and lack of toxic office cultures is really appealing. They're apprenticeships too, so you're paid as you learn.

My father started his own house painting business when I was born. It's tough work and not great pay, but he loves the peace of mind of being his own boss. I worked with him growing up and can attest that owning your life in this way is actually very liberating.

Being in NZ, I wonder: do you know Mike Rowe, from the American TV show 'Dirty Jobs'? If not I encourage you to research him and the TV show. It's not very often I recommend television.

This law is so entirely bad, it's literally making highly-paid software engineers, who are essential to our way of life, seriously consider revoking their citizenship, leaving the country, working in another field, and encouraging other countries to boycott dealing with Australia entirely.

Just thought I'd note that. This is crazy.

There's another alternative you maybe haven't considered: give up your Australian citizenship.

This is something I'm seriously considering. I live in Europe anyway, and at this rate I have zero interest in ever living in Australia again. I won't return, and I won't do anything to support Australia in any way, if I have to go down this path.

The Australian government has truly committed a hostile act against its own citizens.

Suppose there is an Australian who works on important and widely used open source infrastructural software, has commit rights, and is compelled to insert a back door by this new law. Well, obviously that would be really bad. But it seems unlikely to succeed; too many eyeballs. Something closed like a mobile communications app in an app store seems like a more plausible target, but we should already have no faith in apps in app stores in the first place, with or without such laws in existence, wherever they come from. Even with "open source" apps, there is no way to know that you're running the same code. More generally, I have no faith at all that a person or company that develops such apps in (insert other country here) is not similarly compromised, even if they don't have an explicit law like that. For example, some countries have secret courts and secret court orders, so who knows? So as an end user I wouldn't personally feel any more secure if Australian developers were banned from participating in projects I care about, and of course that'd be terrible for those developers.

On the other hand, if I were a global company developing proprietary software with development offices in Australia I'd be pretty concerned... and complain loudly and publicly and lay down what the consequences will be. Maybe there could already have been court orders and ways to compel companies to assist at the management level (in probably any country), and maybe there could potentially be moles (from any country) hiding anywhere, but if the more tinfoil hat interpretations are correct this turns every employee on that continent into a mole, and even worse, risks accidental compromises through incompetence (beyond the specific target of a warrant/order/whatever). Right?

In the late 90s I recall hearing of crypto work being done in Australia to avoid the crypto export laws of certain other countries. If I'm remembering that correctly, its software development economy may have benefited in the past from other countries making choices like these, and I suppose it will now suffer. Why would a bank or whatever want to expose itself to that? Australian offices could totally finish up blacklisted for certain software projects.

Maybe you're joking, but this will arguably affect employment prospects for Australian engineers etc. And their acceptance by open-source software projects.

That sounds like a reasonable outcome...

No, not reasonable, but it's the will of the Australian people and we should respect their sovereignty.

This was not the will of the Australian people.

There was a "consultation period" and 99.7% of the submissions were against it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/a3j466/assistanc... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dowpZ_Xtr1N_DgkHJN8i...

Put it this way: it was passed into law with bipartisan support by both democratically elected legislative chambers of the Commonwealth of Australia.

All it took to convince the representatives and senators was for a submission from the Australian Federal Police that it was necessary to investigate threats over Christmas.

I really wish at least one of our representatives cared about being soft on privacy.

I honestly can’t tell if this is an honest comment, or a dark ironic reference to Trump, Brexit or current Italian politics.

The demand would come directly from the US government, after it passes the same law in five years. You do realize this is ultimately FVEY doing a trial in Australia, yes?

You could say that about any bad bill passed in any of the five eyes at any point in the past. The reality is, that's not how things work.

For example, in Britain you can be arrested for modestly offending someone on Twitter, due to their speech crime laws.[1] That's never going to commonly be the case in the US due to very strong speech protections.

Australia did away with its guns. The US is never going to follow that example. Australia's actions were not a trial for what would happen in the US.

The large counter examples to your premise are numerous.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-...

Neither of the examples you gave have anything to do with signals intelligence.

But yes, FVEY isn't an overarching conspiracy that implements all digital authoritarianism, nor does it have a monopoly on promulgating such corruption - I doubt FVEY itself coordinated the attack on Kim Dotcom. Nor is it the only such conspiracy - Sweden isn't part of FVEY yet eagerly went after TPB and Assange.

But pointing to such agreements is a good analogy for the similar ratcheting totalitarian trends we observe across countries - how intertwined the governments are, and how willingly they give up their citizen-subjects to each other. This is the larger issue - regardless of the actual mechanics of pollination, we can be sure that after the bugs have been worked out in Australia, we'll be staring down the same exact bullshit in the US.

(And I do apologize for blowing up a thread about Australia with US centrism. The point is that we, the people, are ultimately all in this together. Looking to US-exceptionalism as a reason to write off what's happening in Australia as their own problem is a broken outlook)

> Looking to US-exceptionalism

That's funny, the only exceptionalism I feel we've exhibited for a while is our exceptional ability to bury our heads in the sand and deny the existence of all the inconvenient problems we have to address in the future. :/

My response had nothing to do with US exceptionalism (eg my reference to US policies on gun control was an intentional negative example). It's pointing out that the five eyes don't simply copy each other's choices when it comes to major laws / law changes.

Each nation in question has different protections, or lack thereof, when it comes to privacy, speech, property rights, et al. One size will not fit all, each country would see a different response to the same attempted legislation. The US Government has tried for two decades - with very little success - to reach for something equivalent to what Australia just rushed through in no time at all. What would completely rewrite so much US law and interpretation so rapidly as to make such a drastic change possible in the US anytime soon? Nuclear terrorism, as a society shaking event, is about the only thing that comes to mind as plausible and that's far-fetched.

US exceptionalism is referring to the original comment I responded to, not yours. Now maybe that comment was just interpreting "every free software developer" out of context, but it certainly fits the common pattern of myopically ignoring a trend from an imagined immunity.

USG basically tried once to mandate backdooring encryption itself - in the 90s, when the entire topic was only relevant to a small community, there was basically no low level "street crime" involving encryption, and doing so required restricting individuals' distribution of software.

The renewed push is based on telling commercial companies that they have to setup their systems to assist the police, completely in line with precedents like CALEA. The much more diffuse tech-using community is already primed for heavy handed authoritarianism based on how these companies already operate, and also in general due to being pumped full of the terrorism by the 24/7 "news" cycle. I'd hope you're right that the US has constitutional protections to backstop this, but from my perspective those "protections" serve more as coping mechanisms rather than as effective restraints on government power.

I can perhaps see a legal exception for US Free software devs who aren't working commercially, but I can just as well see a malinterpretation declaring them as engaging in commercial activity ala Wickard v. Filburn.

> Australia did away with its guns.

No it didn't. Saying it did helps prevent the US implement similar measures.

Yeah, just remember not to go to Australia on holiday. It's more of an issue for companies that have a business presence in Australia, the usual suspects that sell proprietary software or advertising there. It also makes it hard to trust software developed in Australia.

Perhaps people outside Australia should also be wary of software from companies that do business in Australia, if there's any reason to think that the Australian government may want your data.

That's a good point. There's no guarantee that compromised devices will stay within Australian jurisdiction. How are diplomats affected by this law?

I'm just looking through the bill and noticed that as well as targetting anyone who provides an electronic service that has one or more users in Australia, or anyone who develops software used in such a service, it also targets anyone who "manufactures or supplies components for use, or likely to be used, in the manufacture of a facility for use, or likely to be used, in Australia". So they can also demand that equipment manufacturers insert back doors. Manufacturers may just ship their compromised hardware worldwide, for convenience when other governments demand the same service.

The law seems to permit them to target people outside Australia suspected of violating foreign laws, possibly at the request of a foreign government. So the US, for example, could ask Australia to use its new powers to force a Chinese manufacturer to help bug a US resident, if I'm interpreting it right.

This is exactly what these laws are really about.

They are so the US and other 5 eyes members can spy on their own citizens in ways that are illegal under their own laws.

These laws are terrifying for everyone, not only Australians.

I am really not trying to be an alarmist but couldn't one be extradited to Australia for not complying?

Non-compliance with a TAN/TCN is a civil mater and the law explicitly states that being required to do an act or thing in a foreign jurisdiction that would contravene the laws of that jurisdiction is a defence for non-compliance.

> being required to do an act or thing in a foreign jurisdiction that would contravene the laws of that jurisdiction is a defense for non-compliance

There is no law in the US prohibiting me from creating an alternate login screen for one particular customer just in order to capture their login password. So as a US citizen I have no defense within Australian law against an Australian demand that I capture the password of one of my users... perhaps a parliament member of the Australian opposition.

I can choose to simply ignore the demand. The US will not extradite me for violating a foreign law that does not have an equivalent in US law. But I suppose I can never go on vacation to Australia.

Are you sure there is no law against this in the US? Isn't this potentially: 1. Circumventing an electronic protection 2. Unauthorised access (if your employer does not authorise the changes) .etc.

Yes, I am fairly sure.

> Circumventing an electronic protection

> Unauthorised access

The company providing the protection cannot by definition circumvent it or be unauthorized. If a third party decides to deliver a payload to your browser to discover your Facebook password, then they are violating the DMCS in the US. But if Facebook decides to deliver a payload to your browser to discover your Facebook password that is simply them doing business in a different fashion. This isn't a violation of US law, so refusing it do it would be a violation of Australia's very poorly-considered new law.

I'm obviously not an expert on US law but I find it very hard to believe that it is legal for an employee of a US company, without the permission of that company to put up a fake login page for particular users and then provide that information to a foreign government.

Now if the TAN/TCN was issued to a US based company that would be a different issue but then you as an individual would not be in violation of it.

Not that that makes it a better law, but I think for people not physically in Australia the risk of being issued an enforceable (under Australian law) TAN/TCN is quite low.

It is not legal. It would break so many laws that a prosecutor would have a difficult time sorting through them all.

Assuming you're in the US, you won't get extradited for anything unless your conduct was actually illegal in the US.

Definitely not in the case of the US. For other developed, liberal democracies, it'd be similarly very unlikely. It'd be equivalent to allowing China (or Turkey, etc) to extradite a citizen over speech that offends said foreign government.

The US is particularly aggressive about not ceding legal / constitutional sovereignty to other nations or entities.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That wasn’t their point. These are global services and many of them are written and controlled by people who aren’t under the authority of Australian law.

I don't really follow these things much but isn't Julian Assange wanted for breaking American law while not under its authority? Wouldn't America need reciprocal deals?