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Would an Australian employee of 1Password be forced to lie to us and do something that we would definitely object to? We do not, at this point, know whether it
by danieltillett 8y ago
Would an Australian employee of 1Password be forced to lie to us and do something that we would definitely object to?
We do not, at this point, know whether it will be necessary or useful to place extra monitoring on people working for 1Password who may be subject to Australian laws.
So not only does this idiotic law destroy the Australian software industry, it could prevent Australians from being hired outside Australia. Someone or some group in the Liberal/National Party (the current government here in Australia) really, really, really hates developers.
Edit. Time for some Aussie geek civil disobedience I think.
Edit 2. We have a huge number of Aussie developers here on HN. Let's use this to organise some sort of protest. Either that or we will all be off to Centrelink.
- berbec 8y agoI can imagine go-banning a country from GitHub repos. This is true insanity on Australia's part. Don't they know any backdoor will undoubtedly be found and spread? People find vine abilities in software designed to be secure. When there is an intentional backdoor, it will be abused even quicker.
- danieltillett 8y agoSeriously our current government is a thick as two planks of wood, but this law is so stupid that it must be deliberate. Maybe whoever wrote this law ex-girlfriend left him for a software developer, because it seems almost perfectly designed to punish developers.
- FuckOffNeemo 8y agoRead up on the article about how it's going to happen. Hide a third party in your group chat as a silent observer that you can't see. Terrifying. Wickr for all comms, here I go.
- Valmar 8y agoAs long as we can still clone and pull anonymously, I'll be half-happy, at least. :)
- ehnto 8y agoI hope they do. I hope the global tech industry ostracises us and our tech industry falls apart, and that the politicians wear every bit if it in some kind of political aftertmath, referendum, vote, protests, I don't care. My worst fear isn't this causing damage, my worst fear is that the tech community will be apathetic and impotent, like they have been all other erosions of privacy so far.
- BigJono 8y agoI'm far more worried that this bill will be forgotten than acted upon. What happens 2 decades down the track when a newly elected government suddenly realises that through 20 years of apathy they've been slowly handed every tool they need to turn themselves into the 4th Reich?
- aplummer 8y agoInsanely it is bipartisan, I think only the greens voted against it.
- danieltillett 8y agoI know :( I love Australia, but I despair at the politicians we elect.
- jay_kyburz 8y agoVote Green and we might see some changes.
- dwd 8y agoProblem is the Greens are unelectable in the lower house because they dilute their message across too many fringe issues that the majority of the public don't care enough about. If they focussed on climate change, renewables, health and education (issues that affect the majority) they would have a better chance of picking up some lower house seats. Otherwise we need a modern day Don Chipp to splinter a group off of either the LNP or ALP and form a new party that can hold key votes in both houses.
- jay_kyburz 8y agoPerhaps, but voting Green next year will send a clear message that we are looking for change.
- lurker72 8y agoWhat sort of change? I agree with the parent that they spread themselves across too many fringe issues. I.e I may vote the greens to help save the environment, but that doesn't mean I care about kids with gender dysphoria.
- icebraining 8y ago
- FuckOffNeemo 8y agoI guess I'm moving back to the UK. No wait, can't do that either. Perhaps I'll live in the US for a while, I haven't lived there yet. Or just become the digital nomad and move off to Budapest like many of my past colleagues and friends. I don't have the emotional depth at this point to articulate a well thought out perspective on what impact these laws will have one me, our industry or my own personal safety in Australia. But I can say for sure, that the entire thing is completely fucked.
- mav3rick 8y agoHow do they like living and working in Budapest ?
- FuckOffNeemo 8y agoThey fucking love it. The work is occasionally sparse, they've expressed it's not some where to raise their family but as couples/single income workers, they wouldn't trade it for the world. Edit: typo, spare=sparse.
- danieltillett 8y agoWell if you are Australian you are fcuked everywhere. What company is going to want to hire a Australian developer who can be pressured into secretly inserting a backdoor into your software?
- shard972 8y agoOr worse, what about Australian companies? I work at a company in Australia that works on systems that will get deployed into locked down enviroments for privacy reasons/laws. Could the Australian government force us to spy on our overseas customers? What about our indirect customers (Customers of Customers)? Can the Aus government strong arm us to spy on these people we in theory could spy on but don't deal with directly. All of this while lying to our clients, legally of course....
- brokenmachine 8y agoYes. But don't you feel safer over Christmas? /s
- jay_kyburz 8y agoMy understanding is that this is the whole point of the five eyes program. It's illegal for the US to spy on its citizens, so they ask Australia to do it and report the findings. According to Wikipedia, Snowden revealed that the five eyes countries "have been spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens."
- Jerry2 8y agoI can already see it on HN in a few days/weeks from now: Hiring Australians considered harmful
- mirimir 8y agoWell, under the current circumstances, how can it not be? I mean, who pays well enough for employees to risk prosecution and huge fines? The honest ones will just quit. But now that I think of it, does that in itself violate the law, or at least the nondisclosure aspect?
- boyter 8y agoI don’t know if quitting is a valid way out. More likely need to get fired.
- mirimir 8y agoSo what, just be clueless about it, and get caught? This is just so stupid and sad.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoPossible canary quitting. "I'm resigning for patriotic reasons."
- mr_toad 8y agoForcing someone to do a job is slavery. And I’d argue that forcing someone to spy on others, to engage in sabotage, and to lie is a violation of basic human dignity.
- Radle 8y agoBeing a citizen awards you with rights and responsibilities. Whether we think that implementing backdoors is morally right, that does not mean that Australian citizens do not have responsibilities to their country. And neither does it mean that the Australian government cannot force their citizen to fulfill their legal responsibilities. A lawful order by your government is not slavery.
- mickael-kerjean 8y agoCan someone share if there's any protest or event one could participate to maybe change things or at least gain public attention? I'm one of those sole trader based in Sydney extremely worried by this law and very willing to protest
- ajdlinux 8y agoOr, alternatively, maybe it's just not true that you need to do this, because maybe the law doesn't work how most software engineers automatically assume it does, and maybe it doesn't apply based on citizenship... (It's still a really bad law, but for different reasons, and the ridiculous rhetoric from all sides is ridiculous. There's been a few good people like Stilgherrian writing decent commentary.)
- askmike 8y agoThe article states that the law is too vague to know how it will be used: > There is a great deal of vagueness in the law in its current form, and we do not know how it will be interpreted and used when it goes into effect in March. When dealing with security issues, you are dealing with worst case scenarios. If a law can be abused I am happy my password manager has thought about how to best protect me from this scenario. Same as with software vulnerabilities: if 1password detects one that doesn't mean that someone read my passwords, but I expect them to work on it nonetheless for the slight change someone might.
- ajdlinux 8y agoYes, it's a bad law. Yes, in large part that's because it's vague. No, it's not so vague that it's impossible to figure out any limits to the implications for service providers. The worst vagueness is in specific areas (e.g. what does the prohibition on "systemic weaknesses" in mandated technical capabilities actually mean - lots of expert opinion says that the definition of that particular safeguard doesn't actually protect us against very much). The final section of their post discusses a common idea that interception agencies can request individual employees to do things without their employers' knowledge. I'm pretty confident this is bogus, and appears to be based on a misunderstanding of statutory interpretation that some organisations have encouraged (see the thread at https://twitter.com/stilgherrian/status/1072666031963979777 https://twitter.com/stilgherrian/status/1072666031963979777, which includes at least one actual lawyer), and at least one representative of the Australian Government who was involved in drafting the legislation has explicitly denied this (towards the end of the recording at https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-global-developments-encryption-and-surveillance-law https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-global-developme..., there may be better and more formal written sources for this). Also, they're wrong about the start date of this legislation - it's already commenced. So, yes, the law is very bad and vague (in parts), and yes, you need to think about worst case scenarios, but that doesn't excuse poor analysis. edit: I should also add that apart from the badness of the law itself, the Government primarily has itself to blame for not communicating with industry and community and allowing wild speculation to go around unchecked - they have really lost control of the narrative here, and that's bad for their own desired outcomes more than anything else.
- lurker72 8y agoIt's not just the liberals at fault here, the labour party also supported this bill. Both sides of the same corrupt coin, beholden to their five eyes masters.
- BigJono 8y agoIs there anything we can do that will have an actual impact? I don't really rate standing in the streets with signs as an effective tactic in this country. Remember only one of the submissions on this bill was in favour of it, the politicians here don't listen to words from the citizens.
- xf86alsa 8y agoAsked a Swedish security firm this exact question the other day. They said they would not hire anyone from Australia anymore, which is a shame.
- Cub3 8y agoAs an Australian front end developer currently sitting in the UK, my plan has always been to go home in 5 or so years. Am now deeply concerned with what the industry will look like in that time, not only are there major bandwidth issues due to the NBN mess but laws like this that carelessly punch holes in security make a bunch of startups non starters onshore.