[AusNOG] Assistance and Access Bill moves to PJCIS

[Paul Wilkins]

Reuben,
Anyone with an interest in FOSS is deeply concerned for the consequences.
eg: the Mozilla submission makes for compelling reading. The specific
concerns with FOSS is that the code base is public domain, where the
inclusion of binary blobs is antithetical to the community trust model.
Overseas developers will need to have a long think before attending
Australian conferences, where their attendance renders them subject to the
Australian jurisdiction. It also makes it difficult for Linux distros and
Linux solutions to bid for government contracts, which will hurt our local
software industry. This has obvious economic repercussions.

Kind regards

Paul Wilkins

On Wed, 5 Dec 2018 at 23:59, Reuben Farrelly <reuben-ausnog at reub.net> wrote:

> On 5/12/2018 8:33 am, Nick Stallman wrote:
> > Also does this mean that the custom firmware for one or a handful of
> > targets is not a systemic weakness, but if (when) the custom firmware
> > leaks out publicly and can be used criminally, it suddenly does become a
> > systemic weakness?
>
> I wonder how this is all going to play out with license compliance of
> the GPL and other similar licenses, especially if there is talk about
> covertly modifying code or systems.
>
> Are these Government organisations also going to be also inherently
> violating (or forcing other parties to violate) the license terms of the
> GPL if they prohibit distribution of their modified and now vulnerable
> source code?
>
> If a company is instructed by law enforcement to insert a backdoor into
> an authors' code but not be permitted to distribute the source for the
> backdoor along with the original source code, will the author be able to
> sue the company under copyright law?
>
> Does the Australian Government think they are going to be able to
> encourage the likes of Lineage or a budget overseas tablet manufacturer
> to assist in providing private code for law enforcement purposes?
>
> I'm sure most politicians have already considered the licensing aspects
> of this though, so perhaps I need not worry.  Perhaps the law of
> Australia will now trump the law of International Software Licenses too,
> in much the same way it trumps the laws of mathematics.
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