[AusNOG] Assistance and Access Bill moves to PJCIS

[Paul Brooks]

On 28/03/2019 5:29 pm, Peter Fern wrote:
> On 28/3/19 12:33 pm, Paul Wilkins wrote:
>> The silence on the Assistance and Access Act since it passed in December has been
>> deafening. It was firmly understood, on representations by the Liberal Government,
>> that the bill passed was passed as an expedient, yet now we have the third report
>> from PJCIS due 3rd April, and yet another round of submissions from corporations
>> large and small, industry luminaries and human rights and legal experts, all saying
>> that basically we're where we were back in September 2018, when Dutton rather
>> disingenuously reported to the House that:
>>
>> "The government has consulted extensively with industry and the public on these
>> measures and has made amendments to reflect the feedback in the legislation now
>> before the parliament."
>>
>> Yet no matter how many submissions are made to how many parliamentary committees,
>> we now seem stuck with a deeply flawed Act, the Liberals are walking backwards on
>> the Labor amendements, while the country's police forces now operate with sweeping
>> interception powers well beyond what's necessary and proportional.
>
>
> Because, of course we are - anyone who thought we'd be anywhere else today was
> living in a fantasy land.  And you can thank Labor for this, on account of being
> completely spineless weasels, almost as much as the Libs for ramrodding this
> disgusting mess through in the first place.  Tech policy in this country is an
> absolute joke.

Looking forward to your submission to the PJCIS, and let us know how your meeting with
your local federal MP goes when you explain all this in words of one syllable to her/him.

This week's event was the commercial tech industry waking up to the huge economic
impact, and the distrust and loss of business from international customers and
prospects that will lead to Australian tech firms moving out of Australia, and not
starting up in Australia in the first place. When companies like Senatas and Atlassian
say they will need to move all their operations out of the country to avoid the
suspicion and mistrust, and Microsoft recently that the #AABill is making them uneasy
about storing customer data in Australia, the momentum is building that even the
relevant Ministers can't ignore.

Yes, it would have been great if the bill hadn't been passed back in December - but
that egg has been scrambled, the exercise now is to get it modified or cancelled.

There is a template letter to your local MP hosted at
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u64wadpyy97sw4f/AACTZ-grqUgUqFClXBmzPk99a?dl=0, put
together by the InnovationAUS crew, to help make it easy to send a message. If they
don't hear the message from the people - and trust me, they aren't reading AusNOG -
they won't change.

Paul.








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