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Australia's tech industry savages Labor for backing bill
- macintux 8y agoMuch discussion overnight here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18661483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18661483
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- peatmoss 8y agoIt really bums me out, but I think I’m going to have to abandon Fastmail on principle. Hopefully this law will be repealed quickly before the damage to Australian software companies is too great.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- regecks 8y agoWhy victimize Fastmail? Law enforcement access to your email inbox remains exactly the same as before this bill was passed. If you're just punishing any Australian company, FeelsBadMan (as an Australian developer).
- kuzko_topia 8y agoWell, maybe because this person is doing just that, at it's scale. In the end australians are responsible for the laws they get voted so... that's probably, from an outsider's perspective the only guarantee of taking a "probably not crappy decision" imo...
- peatmoss 8y agoServices are complicated, and I expect that encryption is used for a variety of purposes throughout. If a company is based in a jurisdiction that weakens the ability of service providers to use encryption for a wide variety of purposes, I’d rather avoid services based in that jurisdiction than develop a nuanced understanding of a service’s architecture and the interaction with the local laws that govern it. In the end, I think I’ll probably look to some EU-based provider, largely because they seem to have the most reasonable set of laws with respect to human rights and privacy. Sorry you feel like this is me victimizing Australian software devs. Honestly, I love Fastmail. But your country now has laws that preclude the service from moving toward a better encryption posture. If I ever want better, or don’t want to suss out how things got worse, I gotta abandon Australia. No hard feelings. As others have pointed out, there’s at least two parties with unencrypted access to any given email I send or receive. And unless I’m PGP or SMIME encrypting everything, te security posture of email isn’t great to start. But I like to support services that make surveillance marginally more costly and marginally more resilient to volume back-door compromises. Australia’s taken a step back here and legally weakens Fastmail’s ability to improve here. So long and thanks for all the fish.
- hedora 8y agoI thought Fastmail offered (as much as is possible) “secure” email, but it says in their blog post that they routinely hand entire mailboxes over to law enforcement. On the top hit they say they host everything in New Jersey, USA (with backups in seattle) but later say they are only governed by Australian law and don’t respond to US court orders: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html Caveat emptor, I guess.
- mtgx 8y agoFastMail was never a "secure email service provider" - just an email provider that offer a good (UX-wise) alternative to Gmail, without mining your private conversations for advertising purposes. I think they made it pretty clear a while back in a blog post on HN that security was not their #1 concern, like it is say for ProtonMail or other end-to-end encrypted email services.
- PenguinCoder 8y agoUnless you and everyone you associate with were encrypting every single email passing through FastMail servers; this change doesn't mean a thing. I know for a fact of a few companies (non gov orgs) that scrape netflow and other data straight from peering points at ISP locations. I use Fastmail, and I'm not happy about this recent bill. But I don't believe it matters at all from what is current done/enabled.
- praneshp 8y agoI reached out to Fastmail support, who referred me to this post they wrote: https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/ https://fastmail.blog/2018/09/10/access-and-assistance-bill/
- MrEldritch 8y agoDon't worry - the rest of the Five Eyes will be getting their own version of this law soon, so Australian tech won't be at a security disadvantage for too long.
- z_ 8y agoWhy would they need those laws? One of the benefits of the Five Eyes establishment is that you can share intelligence. Having an allied partner able to do collection and analysis neatly side steps protections design to stop your own country from doing this type of activity on their own citizens.
- brad0 8y agoI am really unhappy this has happened. I’m an Australian living in the USA for a large tech company. I’m on a work visa. I’m going to visit family back in Australia this Christmas. What happens if during the time I’m outside the USA the company I work for pulls my visa? I have to abandon my life that I’ve setup here? Surely I can sue the Australian government in that case. There’s no way I can earn the money I earn here back in Australia.
- g45y45 8y agoGermany. Thats my plan if I need to leave the US. I will never work in Australia again after this or under this regime. I encourage Australian technologists to escape while they can.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoThey dont care about you... They are in a relationship and need to provide usefulness.
- TheMagicHorsey 8y agoThe utter stupidity and short-sightedness of politicians is on display in both the US and Australia this week.
- brad0 8y agoWhat happened in the US?
- craftinator 8y agoYeah, I'm curious as well! US legislators are surely just as aweful, but I haven't read about anything exceptional this week.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe hearing where Steve King asked iPhone questions to Google and asked why Trump shows up under "idiot" so often in image searches. When it is entirely automated.
- shard972 8y agoCan we at least have a more intelligent conversation about how google designs its algorithms than "It's entirely automated". Everyone here knows that google didn't just plug a bunch of servers together and it just magically came up with a search engine. The idea that google has completely washed its hands of any untoward tweaking of search results to favour one party or another is just ignoring the reality of the claims being targeted at google. It didn't help either that when questioned about things like the plan to "improve hispanic voter outreach in key states" that google just pretends like it never happened.
- gumby 8y agoThe coalition clearly did this at the behest of the US and UK to be a 5 eyes beard. Yet this very action locks Australian tech companies out of those countries -- it's threatening my ability to work. Labor had no reason to kowtow to this crap.
- xfitm3 8y agoHave a source suggesting it was the US/UK? https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/627249909/australia-and-new-zealand-are-ground-zero-for-chinese-influence https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/627249909/australia-and-new-z...
- AzzieElbab 8y agoThey are simply making implicit things explicit. Though, I am not sure why
- chopin 8y agoMaybe the implicit thing didn't work?
- marcus_holmes 8y agomore likely the Coalition needed something they could all agree on to be seen to be doing something. There's precious little that the various bits of the parties agree on, so picking on the nerds was an easy one.
- zerotolerance 8y agoRemember Lavabit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
- patchtopic 8y agoI am disgusted by these clowns and as an Australian embarrassed that somehow these people ended up in power and representing us. also: https://twitter.com/beneltham/status/1070276535007948800 https://twitter.com/beneltham/status/1070276535007948800 i.e. it appears one the new powers cant be used by anti-corruption agencies.. funny that..
- iron0013 8y agoWhy is Labor being "savaged" if the conservatives are the ones presenting, pushing for, and providing the overwhelming proportion of the votes for the bill?
- dillonisacunt 8y agoBecause they let the bill pass the senate unamended.. did you read the article?
- gnode 8y agoIs the effect of this limited to domestic industry, or does it affect Australians working abroad? Can the Australian government ask a citizen working abroad to spy on their foreign employer, and threaten them with imprisonment if they return without doing so?