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Not really news, but I came across an article from a year ago: Police arrested a 22-year-old with cash, drugs, and an encrypted communications device.
Never mind the drugs; the state were particularly interested in charging the man with violating the Dedicated Encrypted Criminal Communication Device Prohibition Orders Act 2022. Communication using encryption that makes it hard for law enforcement to intercept the messages is illegal.
I was very disappointed - Australia was always in the back of my mind a place where I could maybe fuck off to and retire... Maybe not.
Jan 29 · 4 months ago · 👍 coderwx
Wow, that sucks. Hope that it doesn't spread.
No encryption, No online banking. So I think that it is still legal to use encryption in transit at least.
I am sure it's cleverly phrased to avoid interfering with banking and such, and focus on illegal activity. The bank will gladly turn over the records anyway. It is somewhat comical already - if we are not smart enough to decrypt your communications, it is criminal...
Given that the person being arrested was doing other illegal stuff, my guess is this law provides an "enhancement" charge in the same way that having a gun in your possession while committing a crime in the US is an extra charge. It's still not good--using proper security should never be a crime--but they aren't coming after people for using GPG.
I mean, in my opinion, if they want to lengthen sentences then they should just do that. (They shouldn't, but that's a more honest approach at least.) This whole approach of "enhancing" sentences with things that aren't normally criminal is completely wrong IMHO and it just makes ordinary people fearful of exercising their rights. But perhaps that's the real purpose!
I don't have time to check right now, but I believe that the law makes it very much illegal to use encryption for the purpose of preventing government surveillance, not as a way to inflate charges...
Unfortunately most nations publicly decry the Chinese state and then use it as a fucking model to emulate. These are very dangerous times we're living in currently.
@stack I just read through the law, and it's pretty bad. If the police suspect that you have such a "device", meaning you're using an encryption/chat app that isn't one of the mainstream brand names basically, they can get an order from a magistrate and perform a warrantless search of your person and property, as well as detain you.
The law: https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/pdf/asmade/act-2022-46
Explanation: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ab59aafa-9757-4bdf-9752-a36f0e8e56bf
There is always a hack around. Remember it.
@nikhotmsk: yeah, there is always a way to break the law and not get caught, but that is not the point. A society is less free if you have to go through a lot of effort to avoid being locked up. The worst oppressive governments don't prosecute everyone -- they use horrible laws to selectively silence those whom they perceive to be the opposition - whether it's true or not. Trust me, you don't want to live in a society like that.
what if that device is a google smartphone which is connected to google server via https - that's technically falls under the category law describe?
Not if they can have access to the data from Google... I think there are backdoors in everything, and what they are concerned with are things that people put together that they don't know about, and therefore are backdoor-free. Things like encrypted mesh networks, for instance, scare the crap out of them
i think the law doesnt mention what they have access to.
but just by following the law, can they say 'oh, u have a device, let us read, and then, oh it's password protected and the disk is encrypted' or 'oh he refused to open the email and he has encrypted connection to google', what i am saying is that it looks like every australian citizen who owns a smartphone can be blamed in having a devices which has encrypted communication.
Looking at the language, it looks like they are concerned with things they cannot easily get access to, and devices and systems they can't easily decrypt or even get metadata for.
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