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by JumpCrisscross 2554 days ago
> Everywhere, the email service will have to give your emails to the police when they come knocking

The Australian law is broader and contains fewer checks than anything comparable in the developed world. It lets law enforcement compel, with no oversight and in secret, any Australian "to re-engineer software and hardware under their control, so that it can be used to spy on their users" [1]. (Australia has no bill of rights [2].)

The American analog is an intelligence agency getting a national security letter [3] stamped by a FISA court [4]. The order can compel disclosure of information on hand, but cannot compel a product to be re-engineered [5].

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/new-fight-online-priva...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/opinion/australia-encrypt...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

1 comments

> "The order can compel disclosure of information on hand, but cannot compel a product to be re-engineered."

OTOH this could be unnecessary at large American companies because the needs of national security services may have been engineered in. Thinking of Room 641A [1], etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

> this could be unnecessary at large American companies because the needs of national security services may have been engineered in

That's voluntary co-operation. The situation is far from perfect in the United States, but Australia is an extreme case.