Technology

Andy Yen says draft safety standards ‘would force online services … to access, collect and read users’ private conversations’

What the hell Australia. This isn't gonna magically help you prevent the next Emu war.

It's worse then you think. As a Australian citizen you are required to comply with any order which includes leaking code and introducing back doors. Failure to comply or notifying your employer about the request will result in federal charges with a sentence between 20 to 60 years in prison. The legislation that contains this was passed almost a year ago.

Recently there's been a wave of mass disruptions and data theft in Australia including most of our ports halting operations for a day and one of our largest phone and internet service providers being compromised where millions of peoples personal information like driver licences and passports being leaked.

I recently switched my email from gmail to proton mail, because fuck google's.. well... everything. Glad to hear that Proton Mail keeps fighting for privacy!

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has proposed cloud and messaging service providers should detect and remove known child abuse material and pro-terror material “where technically feasible” – as well as disrupt and deter new material of that nature.

The eSafety regulator has stressed in an associated discussion paper it “does not advocate building in weaknesses or back doors to undermine privacy and security on end-to-end encrypted services”.

I so love these magic wand-waving legislators. "Spy on your users and control what they do on your encrypted platform, but in a way that doesn't break encryption or violate privacy..."

If a corporation won't ruin a good thing, you leave it to government to get the job done.

The Australian government would have you believe that we're in the middle of some kind of CP endemic and everyone needs to suffer for it.

This will catch precisely nobody, as the criminals will immediately move to a different platform, of which there are many.

I host my own mail. If the AFP want to inspect it, they'll need a warrant.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The eSafety regulator has stressed in an associated discussion paper it “does not advocate building in weaknesses or back doors to undermine privacy and security on end-to-end encrypted services”.

But privacy and security groups argue the draft standards, as written, could allow the eSafety commissioner to force companies to compromise encryption to comply.

Andy Yen, the founder and chief executive of Proton, told Guardian Australia the proposed standards “would force online services, no matter whether they are end-to-end encrypted or not, to access, collect, and read their users’ private conversations”.

“These proposals could not only force companies to bypass their own encryption, but could put businesses and citizens at risk while doing little to protect people from the online harms they are intended to address,” he said.

A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said Inman Grant welcomed feedback on the draft standards – including on the technical feasibility exception.

“Having mandatory and enforceable codes in place, which put the onus back on industry to take meaningful action against the worst-of-the-worst content appearing on their products and services, is a tremendously important online safety milestone,” Inman Grant said.

The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 60%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Good. I fully support them. Fuck this shit

Organisations and groups who want to protect privacy should come up with ways themselves on how to protect their services from certain activities.