Australia's parliament passed a bill on Thursday which would force large technology firms, including Alphabet Inc's Google, Facebook, Apple, Signal, and more to give police access to encrypted data, one of the most far-reaching requirements imposed by a western country which privacy rights groups say creates a dangerous precedent, according to Deutsche Welle.
The tech firms opposed the bill on the grounds Australia's legislation could be an example for other nations to follow suit.
The legislation is set to become law before the end of 2018.
“Let’s just make Australians safe over Christmas,” opposition Labor party leader Bill Shorten said.
The bill was passed earlier on Thursday by the lower house of parliament and was scheduled to be debated in the upper Senate, where Labor initially said it was going to make amendments.
But Labor said it was changing course on its reservations and would pass the bill on the grounds the coalition agreed to hear its amendments next year.
“We will pass the legislation, inadequate as it is, so we can give our security agencies some of the tools they say they need,” Shorten said.
"Failing to properly scrutinize this bill risks unintended consequences which may impact on the privacy and rights of law-abiding Australian citizens, the media and corporate sector," Arthur Moses, president-elect of the Law Council of Australia, a body representing the legal profession, said earlier this week.
The bill would implement fines up to A$10 million ($7.3 million) for institutions and jail time for individuals who fail to hand over data linked to suspected illegal activities.
Australia will become one of the first countries to impose broad access requirements on technology firms after a number of intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world have lobbied for the ability.
The Five Eyes intelligence network, including Australia, the United States, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand have all said national security was at risk since authorities could not accurately monitor the communications of terrorism suspects.
Australia's government said the laws were necessary to target any militant attacks, organized crime, but security agencies would still need to pursue warrants to access personal data.
Technology companies argue the law would establish a backdoor to users' personal data and creating tools for law enforcement to use would end up weakening security for everyone.
“This legislation is out of step with surveillance and privacy legislation in Europe and other countries that have strong national security concerns,” the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI), a group comprised of Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and Twitter, said in a released statement on Thursday.
“Several critical issues remain unaddressed in this legislation, most significantly the prospect of introducing systemic weaknesses that could put Australians’ data security at risk,” it said.
Some privacy experts said the Five-Eyes intelligence sharing policy could also raise concerns.
"There is an extraterritorial dimension to it, where for example the US would be able to make ... a request directly to Australia to get information from Facebook or a tech company," Queensland University of Technology's technology regulation researcher Monique Mann told AFP news agency.
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
Photo:
AP / Mark Schiefelbein
