Australia Passes Anti-Encryption Bill—Here's Everything You Need To Know

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Australia Passes Anti-Encryption Bill—Here's Everything You Need To Know

https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/australia-anti-encryption-bill.html

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Australia's House of Representatives has finally passed the "Telecommunications Assistance and Access Bill 2018," also known as the Anti-Encryption Bill, on Thursday that would now allow law enforcement to force Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and other tech giants to help them access encrypted communications.

The Australian government argues the new legislation is important for national security and an essential tool to help law enforcement and security agencies fight serious offenses such as crime, terrorist attacks, drug trafficking, smuggling, and sexual exploitation of children.

Since the bill had support from both major parties (the Coalition and Labor), the upper house could vote in support of the Assistance and Access Bill to make it law, which is expected to come into effect immediately during the next session of parliament in early 2019.

Although the new legislation does not properly clarify specifics around the potential power that the Assistance and Access Bill could give Australian government and law enforcement agencies over citizen's digital privacy, it contains new provisions for companies to provide three levels of "assistance" in accessing encrypted data, as explained below: