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> “We never thought it would pass,” said Alan Jones, chief executive of M8 Ventures, a tech investment firm in Sydney. “We all just figured that Australia’s pol

by mtgx 8y ago

> “We never thought it would pass,” said Alan Jones, chief executive of M8 Ventures, a tech investment firm in Sydney. “We all just figured that Australia’s political leaders would consider the expert advice that told them this was nuts.” This is a counter-argument to all the comments I see on HN about "waiting and see if the proposal goes anywhere". It's usually too late to stop it if you do that and allow most if not all of the negotiation between parties to take place by the time you wake up and react.

alasdair_ 8y ago
>“We never thought it would pass,” ... “We all just figured that Australia’s political leaders would consider the expert advice that told them this was nuts.” Also known as the "Brexit strategy"
- bigyahu 8y ago
  (Alan Jones here) I should clarify my comments in the article. By “we” I meant our venture fund, M8 Ventures. I didn’t mean to imply no one in the local tech industry lobbied against it. A large number of industry groups, tech companies and individuals argued persuasively and at length against the many flaws in the legislation. I did not make a submission to the committee or speak in Canberra. I did, however, expect that expert advice would be listened to, understood, and acted on. And I did expect the Australian Labor Party to make good on their commitment to not allow the legislation to pass without amendment. Sadly, I was wrong. We are being governed by people driven by dogma who feel no responsibility to consider facts, science or data in their policy decisions.
stephen_g 8y ago
This time there actually was a big ground-swell of opposition. In the consultation period there were hundreds of submissions, all of them negative (except one from some random church in Tasmania). These were a mix of letters from technical groups, business groups, law groups, human rights groups, civil society groups, and individuals (both developers/specialists and regular concerned citizens). When the bill was being considered by the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security, some of these groups were called up. I read the Hansard (transcript) of the hearing - the testimony was impeccable. Clear, concise, and absolutely demolished the bill. Unfortunately, to give you the level some of the senators were working at, a lot of the questions came back to "but don't you think we need to stop terrorists?" when going through how it's technically impossible to do what the law enforcement wants without creating systemic weaknesses/vulnerabilities, and you can't just define that away like the bill tried to... Coming up to it being passed, there was a huge amount of calls, emails and letters to the members of parliament and senators. Several mentioned the unusual volume in Parliament, and also many in the opposition mentioned multiple times how many problems there was with the bill. They illogically passed it in mid-December to "keep Australia safe over Christmas" (despite the fact that nothing in the bill could be put into effect for months and Australian law enforcement and intelligence services already have far more over-reaching powers to do all sorts of stuff that would be illegal in the US and Europe). Opposition to the bill was way better organised, and way bigger than anything previous for the tech industry. We are getting better at the politics, but given the irrational actions of the opposition in voting for it (who had the numbers in the Senate to block the bill) I can only conclude that there must have been some dirty dealing going on either between the parties, or between the intelligence services and the parliamentarians.
- Joakal 8y ago
  That's crazy. Can you provide the link to we need to stop terrorists quote?
- vogelke 8y ago
  Could you provide a link to that transcript?
  - stephen_g 8y ago
    Here is the PDF transcript: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/commjnt/b9247c77-dfa4-44bb-8aa3-ce6bc01d20ca/toc_pdf/Parliamentary%20Joint%20Committee%20on%20Intelligence%20and%20Security_2018_11_30_6818_Official.pdf;fileType=application/pdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/com... The testimony from the experts was great, and the questions and responses from our senators was embarrassing. Just search 'terror' for some of them like the ones I paraphrased.
    - sullyj3 8y ago
      The transcript mentions a couple of times interference in the process by Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, the PM, does anyone know what this is referring to?

by mtgx 8y ago

alasdair_ 8y ago

>“We never thought it would pass,” ... “We all just figured that Australia’s political leaders would consider the expert advice that told them this was nuts.” Also known as the "Brexit strategy"

bigyahu 8y ago
(Alan Jones here) I should clarify my comments in the article. By “we” I meant our venture fund, M8 Ventures. I didn’t mean to imply no one in the local tech industry lobbied against it. A large number of industry groups, tech companies and individuals argued persuasively and at length against the many flaws in the legislation. I did not make a submission to the committee or speak in Canberra. I did, however, expect that expert advice would be listened to, understood, and acted on. And I did expect the Australian Labor Party to make good on their commitment to not allow the legislation to pass without amendment. Sadly, I was wrong. We are being governed by people driven by dogma who feel no responsibility to consider facts, science or data in their policy decisions.

stephen_g 8y ago

This time there actually was a big ground-swell of opposition. In the consultation period there were hundreds of submissions, all of them negative (except one from some random church in Tasmania). These were a mix of letters from technical groups, business groups, law groups, human rights groups, civil society groups, and individuals (both developers/specialists and regular concerned citizens). When the bill was being considered by the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security, some of these groups were called up. I read the Hansard (transcript) of the hearing - the testimony was impeccable. Clear, concise, and absolutely demolished the bill. Unfortunately, to give you the level some of the senators were working at, a lot of the questions came back to "but don't you think we need to stop terrorists?" when going through how it's technically impossible to do what the law enforcement wants without creating systemic weaknesses/vulnerabilities, and you can't just define that away like the bill tried to... Coming up to it being passed, there was a huge amount of calls, emails and letters to the members of parliament and senators. Several mentioned the unusual volume in Parliament, and also many in the opposition mentioned multiple times how many problems there was with the bill. They illogically passed it in mid-December to "keep Australia safe over Christmas" (despite the fact that nothing in the bill could be put into effect for months and Australian law enforcement and intelligence services already have far more over-reaching powers to do all sorts of stuff that would be illegal in the US and Europe). Opposition to the bill was way better organised, and way bigger than anything previous for the tech industry. We are getting better at the politics, but given the irrational actions of the opposition in voting for it (who had the numbers in the Senate to block the bill) I can only conclude that there must have been some dirty dealing going on either between the parties, or between the intelligence services and the parliamentarians.

Joakal 8y ago
That's crazy. Can you provide the link to we need to stop terrorists quote?
vogelke 8y ago
Could you provide a link to that transcript?
- stephen_g 8y ago
  Here is the PDF transcript: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/commjnt/b9247c77-dfa4-44bb-8aa3-ce6bc01d20ca/toc_pdf/Parliamentary%20Joint%20Committee%20on%20Intelligence%20and%20Security_2018_11_30_6818_Official.pdf;fileType=application/pdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/com... The testimony from the experts was great, and the questions and responses from our senators was embarrassing. Just search 'terror' for some of them like the ones I paraphrased.
  - sullyj3 8y ago
    The transcript mentions a couple of times interference in the process by Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, the PM, does anyone know what this is referring to?