Australias parliament recently passed the Access and Assistance Bill , which focuses on services built with end-to-end encryption. This new bill allows law enforcement to compel companies to modify their services and intercept data from their customers in its unencrypted form.
Law enforcement has always been able to request information from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant.
Encryption is a tool that provides many positive protections: most websites on the internet are now encrypted so that onlookers cant see what youre viewing.
Compromising security can have unintentional consequences, and the focus of most industry pushback is on embedding backdoors to give law enforcement access to information that they otherwise could not read.
Both the bill itself, and the controversy around the process by which it passed, have damaged the reputation of Australia in the international marketplace.
There are also concerns that individual employees may be forced to build a backdoor, without being able to alert their employer.
Digital privacy is no longer the sole domain of the deeply technical user, but a fundamental right and responsibility of every individual online.
Original article