Australian surveillance laws bad for global internet security, claim critics

Tech giants come out swinging against the proposed law.

“The law wouldn’t be protecting citizens, but would “weaken the security and privacy of regular customers while pushing criminals further off the grid”. ”

The Australian government has, so far, received 31 formal submissions from tech giants and experts speaking out against the proposed Assistance and Access Bill. While the government claims the law won’t require companies to build backdoors into their encrypted messaging platforms, the tech giants disagree. A private industry body called The Digital Industry Group, representing Google, Facebook and Twitter, says that allowing law enforcement to access private messages would open a can of worms, potentially exposing users to hacking. Cisco also agrees that the vaguely worded law could strong-arm companies into creating backdoors, something CEO Chuck Robbins promised never to do.

Apple has criticised the law as “dangerously ambiguous” and “alarming to every Australian”. According to the Cupertino firm, the law wouldn’t be protecting citizens, but would “weaken the security and privacy of regular customers while pushing criminals further off the grid”. Mozilla is worried about the integrity of its open-source software, saying it would “need to close portions of its source code and/or release builds that are not made from its publicly released code bases”, which “is at odds with the core principles of open source, user expectations, and potentially contractual license obligations”.