The fact that both major parties have supported this legislation, and the previous ‘anti encryption’ legislation is very concerning.
This isn’t just an issue for Australia, through the 5 eyes agreements, the encryption legislation is likely being used to assist other 5 eyes nations. And beyond that, other countries will be watching the results of this legislation.
I feel the global tech community needs to condemn this. And I think they should do so by raising concerns with employing of Australian tech workers, at least until the laws co-opting Australians to implement backdoors for the government are repealed or clarified. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19505880)
A federal election is about to be announced, which means there will be a vote in approximately 3 months. Technology will never be an election issue, but jobs & economy always are. If these laws can be shown to directly harm our economy, and the prospects for Australian tech works (jobs), it might actually get some traction.
The time is now. Keen to hear the community’s thoughts.
The passage of this legislation has further closed the window for the big tech players to make the appropriate amount of noise about the anti-encryption legislation.
The opportunity was there a few months ago to blackout services to Australia with a heavily spun PR campaign about how if they can't serve Australians while respecting proper encryption, which has rightly become a major foundation of our digital communications, then they can't serve Australia at all.
The Australian govt. is mad if they think their usual "think of the children" schpeal tops the boomers generation's general ongoing emotional dependence on Facebook.com.
But we're far enough into the era of Big Tech now that the players with the most power don't give a fuck anymore about the internet's role as a potential enabler of The Good Parts of the western worldview (Facebook, being the outlier, never did and hardly pretended to).
Instead we have them being silent enough on anti-encryption legislation in Australia, and implementing censored search in China.
I don't think the rest of the tech world 'cares' that much about the government actions here due to relatively small market. The cynic in me thinks that they can still employ/host stuff here because more barriers have been put up for potential new Facebook sites.
Both major parties lost primary votes in NSW election last week despite winning. Whats to say it won't happen nationally? Despite the system allowing people to make sincere votes, the mainstream media are not talking about the policies of non major parties. So, it's up to us, 'tech workers' to inform others of alternative choices and let people know to not give a primary vote to the major parties.
Did you know a primary vote means money for that party? $2.75642 to be exact. Even if your vote did not lead your primary party to win, they would still get some money out of it.
Making philosphical arguments about censorship, technical feasibility etc will never resonate with politicians in this political environment. The only course of action is to focus on jobs. This problem will only worsen unless global tech come together. Industry needs to attach a clear and measurable cost to governments following this type of legislative actions. The cost is the loss of jobs and employment prospects for Australian IT workers in the global tech community. It's not fair on the individual but unless we focus on the bigger picture this is only going to get worse. Australian politicians are now operating without any cost being imposed by global tech community and that needs to change asap to step the tide. The Austrian voters need to also see the type and quality of products and services they receive from these company's impacted and degraded to reflect compliance with these laws - the impact needs to be felt by the end users in these country's. It's the only way to motivate change among the voters and defend internet freedom from further attempts to control it.
Society right now is toxic. If we had hosptials for entire countries half of them would be in the emergency room. The only energy that exists right now is type of energy that exeracerbates divisions between gender, race, religions and classes. This legislation is just another in a long line of legislative actions that have been taken over the past 20 years in response to horrific events that attempt to disguise the root cause of these episodes as something that can be addressed by imposing greater restrictions on individual freedom and liberty.
Australia doesn't work that way. Most Australians aren't in tech, and see IT as "those nerds who make my life difficult at work" at best. And if there's one thing Australians love more than pretending they don't love authority, it's seeing said authority fuck over a group they're not in who they think earns more than they deserve.
The government would not alter course one bit at that threat. Tech workers are not the sort of group the average person feels sympathy for. It would need to be something like Facebook or Apple literally not providing a service or selling iPhones in the country for a reasonable portion of people to start paying attention.
> Tech workers are not the sort of group the average person feels sympathy for
We’re also notoriously politically anodyne. Pissing off technologists rarely results in the kind of political pain (protests, constant phone calls, constant questions at town halls, media blitzes and attack ads) that other constituents, including those supporting such laws, regularly rain down.
You're underestimating the apathy we're talking about here. It's not a religious issue, so churches won't mobilise. The tech companies aren't going to cry if the labour pool loses Australians. And they aren't going to make a lot of noise on what might be even a slightly polarising issue for our sake.
Of course the tech companies won't. But I am sure the Australian tech community will feel quite angered that prospects of employability have greatly diminished or been hampered as result of public officials passing laws with zero effort to consult. And then if that anger can be directed to the polls you will have something that will attach a cost to legislators and that is all you need.
if they don't start making noise soon they better get used to operating environment of extremely heavy handed and reactionary legislation governing them ... no industry should want to be so politically vulnerable that in 5 days a parliament feels they can pass such imposing legislation without even effort to consult.
worse case scenarios politicans and major players in tech both feeel that they have reached point of growth that seeking comfortable protective and highly regulated legislative frameowrk to stem threat of competition from smaller entrants is beneficial and increase cost of entry new participants by such measures as this might be in self-interest. this is most dangerous scenario and why legislation that even let's assume has nothing but best intentions needs to be closely scrutinized and thorough industry and broader community consultation is a must.
The Australian tech community will just leave. The ones that stay here are either the sentimental ones or the stupid ones already. I know I've had much better offers from overseas that I have ever gotten here and I will more than likely be taking one of them in the next few years.
Are you not afraid that Australian laws will affect your employability even overseas? I am not sure if Australian citizens can be forced to comply with that anti-encryption legislation when they live outside of Australia but the insecurity itself could motivate some(?) companies to avoid employing Australian citizens. Can you estimate the impact?
One a person leaves a country, they are not under the jurisdiction of the laws of that country in any meaningful way. If he leaves Oz for, say, Denmark, Australian law has zero effect on him other than those agreed upon diplomatic agreements between said countries. Any tech laws he may have been under in Oz have zero bearing on him in Denmark. The Oz government would be risking a throttling if they tried to get him to act as a "spy" and insert bad code into a product in Denmark. At that point, he could approach the Danish government, ask for asylum, and it would likely be granted.
I left Fastmail over the recent Oz decision with encryption. I was a paying customer since 2002. It pained me horribly to leave, but I had no choice over principle.
Other than diplomatic norms, once a person leaves a country, he is bound by the laws of the receiving country. I base this on common knowledge and also having lived in 5 countries myself.
Australia and New Zealand are rapidly becoming draconian. I have friends in both countries. They are thinking of leaving because of all of this. The entire knee-jerk reaction to guns in NZ is but the latest in a long line of stupidities the Kiwi and Aussie governments have been up to. For example, in NSW, if you have a knife painted green, you can go to jail because it's a "zombie knife". Think I'm joking? Look it up. The last "free" state in Oz is QLD. The rest of them are up to their necks in draconian stupidity.
The problem is that few people can leave a clean slate. If one's parents or other relatives remain in the country, not being able to visit them there is very vexing.
If Australians are legally obliged to implement back-doors on behalf of the Australian government and not mention it to their employer, why would any of these tech companies want you?
Because Australia is part of the 5 eyes. Any backdoor put in place would have been blessed by some three letter agency from the US already. Any firm that can pay the wages I expect will have a government contract and lawyers on staff who understand how this works.
Hate to be the cynical guy but nothing is going to happen on this.
We have an election coming up. And given we have serious differences between the parties on critical issues e.g. climate change, inequality, health care I can't imagine this is going to factor in at all.
Not to mention that our IT sector is very limited compared to the UK, US, EU etc and so the impact will be negligible.
Things will change is global industry starts coming together and using Australia as an example by imposing costs on jobs, employment prospects, quality and availability of service. The tech company have so much power and reach that politicians can only dream to ever attain. They just need get bigger balls otherwise they are going find themselves in a global legislative framework imposed by knee jerk tech illiterate politicians that will make life very difficult.
>The tech company have so much power and reach that politicians can only dream to ever attain.
Not in Australia they don't. In a nation of 16 million voters the number of people working for a company that would lose its ability to operate due to this law likely number in the hundreds to perhaps a couple of thousand. Demands from that size/proportion of subsociety can be safely ignored by any government.
Additionally, most Australian tech companies deal in either B2B or other types of general management software. They won't be affected by this in the least.
>They just need get bigger balls
Facebook already has Australia by the balls. They don't need to do anything:
- If Australia blocks them, they instantly win because Australian society won't abide being denied access (especially the older segments who now suddenly have time to protest now that the website where they were spending most of their time is gone by government decree).
- If Australia has this law on the books, they win because it's harder for a homegrown Australian product to gain marketplace traction under these rules (while Facebook, not being subject to Australian law, doesn't need to obey them, and they're unblockable because of the earlier point- especially because HTTPS ensures that access to Facebook is an all-or-nothing affair).
And Australia can't develop a homegrown alternative either, because they simply lack have the skilled personnel to do it; the best ones already left for America, facilitated by a free-trade agreement between the two countries. The US Government has its policy levers to tweak if Australia wanted to renegotiate that deal to stem the bleeding from the brain drain their own policies and societal structure encourage (and they'd have to give up something else anyway).
A part of me feels that social media companies deserve this. For years and years, whenever the topic of meaningful regulation comes up, Facebook has always lawyered up and side stepped the question. Time after time Mark Zuckerberg has appeared or refused to appear before the government, telling us they're sorry, they need to do more, it's a hard problem to solve and they're doing the best they can.
Now that the "evil" effects of social media have become painfully clear, frustrated governments around the world appear to be changing the law in hamfisted ways. The pendulum has swung in the other opposite extreme.
Perhaps now they'll start thinking about how they should be running their platforms. I don't feel any pity for the burden about to be dumped upon Facebook and Twitter. I believe freedom of speech will somehow prevail in the end, but it might take several painful years.
If you have to migrate as a result of your government's tyrannical attack on freedom, you will be punishing them even more by assisting in the country's brain drain.
A tough sacrifice, but sometimes we must make sacrifices for our freedoms.
My company has stopped doing business with Atlassian due to Australia's recent legislature. I can't say we won't hire Australian citizens but they will be at a serious disadvantage. I'm sorry.
Has your company made this position in a public statement? Because I hear a lot of talk but little proof, I need proof to show people if I have a hope or swaying opinions when I talk with people about this kind of thing.
As am I. But the reality is, these laws have made that inevitable. The question is when, and how badly, will this affect the Australians tech opportunities.
This isn’t just an issue for Australia, through the 5 eyes agreements, the encryption legislation is likely being used to assist other 5 eyes nations. And beyond that, other countries will be watching the results of this legislation.
I feel the global tech community needs to condemn this. And I think they should do so by raising concerns with employing of Australian tech workers, at least until the laws co-opting Australians to implement backdoors for the government are repealed or clarified. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19505880)
A federal election is about to be announced, which means there will be a vote in approximately 3 months. Technology will never be an election issue, but jobs & economy always are. If these laws can be shown to directly harm our economy, and the prospects for Australian tech works (jobs), it might actually get some traction.
The time is now. Keen to hear the community’s thoughts.