Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
While I understand why they didn't mention this (because it's not clear if this interpretation of the bill is correct -- given there is currently no common law around it), I would like to point out what is the most concerning thing (to me) about this legislation.It potentially allows the government to turn employees into saboteurs. According to s.317C(6), a "designated service provider" can be someone who has developed software that is likely to be used in an electronic service that has one end-user in Australia. This is a very wide net and immediately includes effectively every free software developer, and the employees of every tech company. Now, there is an argument to be made that employees don't qualify (because they're acting on behalf of their employer), but that's not clear at the moment. It also includes sysadmins (or even ex-sysadmins) as people who can be "activated" as saboteurs.It should be noted that it's very unlikely that this legislation would result in the Armageddon most people (including myself) are quite worried about. I imagine it's much more likely this power will be used against a few big players (Apple, Facebook, Google) in order to add features like being able to add additional devices to group chats (or something like that). But obviously the law gives them much more power than that, and that's a very big concern.(And the fact that only 2 MPs voted against it tells me there's almost certainly some back-door dealings that resulted in this bill being passed.)