It’s worse then you think. As a Australian citizen you are required to comply with any order which includes leaking code and introducing back doors. Failure to comply or notifying your employer about the request will result in federal charges with a sentence between 20 to 60 years in prison. The legislation that contains this was passed almost a year ago.

Recently there’s been a wave of mass disruptions and data theft in Australia including most of our ports halting operations for a day and one of our largest phone and internet service providers being compromised where millions of peoples personal information like driver licences and passports being leaked.

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has proposed cloud and messaging service providers should detect and remove known child abuse material and pro-terror material “where technically feasible” – as well as disrupt and deter new material of that nature.

The eSafety regulator has stressed in an associated discussion paper it “does not advocate building in weaknesses or back doors to undermine privacy and security on end-to-end encrypted services”.

I so love these magic wand-waving legislators. “Spy on your users and control what they do on your encrypted platform, but in a way that doesn’t break encryption or violate privacy…”