
Ask HN: Will Apple, Google, Amazon and Others Install Backdoors for Australia? - andrewstuart
New legislation requires companies to secretly install backdoors if the government asks or risk multi million dollar fines.<p>Will Apple, Google, and Amazon install Australian backdoors?<p>Or will they just exit the country?
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marsRoverDev
I think that the best solution here would be for the major players to go dark
together for a day or two. No Google, no Bing, no WhatsApp, no Facebook.

I say this as an Australian developer who relies on these services to
communicate with family back home. The Australian market is so small that
these companies could do it, and I think that it would have the desired
effect. Australia is a country which requires these services, and if every
single citizen was suddenly without these facilities then something would be
done about the problem.

Right now, the average person in Australia is not informed about the changes,
and they do not know the impact it will have on them long term. It needs to be
brought into sharp focus.

That is of course, if these companies actually see it as a threat to them -
which is up in the air.

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shard972
> Right now, the average person in Australia is not informed about the
> changes, and they do not know the impact it will have on them long term. It
> needs to be brought into sharp focus.

I feel like there has been a decent amount of coverage on this topic as it was
a main subject in the final sitting days in the year and you had the labor
opposition ceding their "no" position.

Maybe it's not fully explained technically to everyone, but people generally
understand that encryption is generally ubiquitous on the internet.

I think in the end alot of people actually don't mind the idea that the
government should have some power to snoop on someone they think is doing bad
things. They understand to varying degrees what kind of abuse that will lead
to, but just don't see the inherit dangers ever applying to them or someone
they know.

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draugadrotten
Under the Five Eyes partnership, isn't this just a law passed so that
Australian citizens can be forced to install backdoors on behalf of the US.

The CIA is said to not spy on American citizens domestic activities, but ASIS
and ASD can do that for them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes)

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pleasecalllater
Yes, of course. Censorship for China, backdoors for Australia, espionage for
USA, lies for the rest of the world. Unfortunately the only thing that counts
is money. We are just providers of information they sell.

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acutesoftware
The way the law reads, we won't know if they have installed backdoors for
Australia as they aren't allowed to notify people about it.

Mind you, if they all exited the country - along with Netflix and Facebook
then I'd imagine the bulk of Australia would suddenly take a serious interest
in it and the law would get revoked.

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Insanity
Well, Google wanted to run their software in China until their employees
disagreed :)

So maybe it depends on the employees?

Either way, anything we'd comment would just be speculation.

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jamesholden
They are looking at ways to clamp down on leaks and stuff internally from what
I hear. They will just get better at hiding projects from the employees going
forward.

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acct1771
Compartmentalization has worked for intelligence agencies looking to stop
their agents from putting the whole moral puzzle together.

Why not Google?

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shanghaiaway
Yes, they will install backdoors. We just won't know about it.

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alpaca128
We WILL know about it if their services continue to be available in Australia.

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bufferoverflow
It's an interesting situation. I wonder if Apple will bend over and give up
user's privacy, or will exit Australian markets.

Google and Amazon will definitely sell out the users.

(and I'm not an Apple user)

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Queenie_15
Apple already operate data centres in China without privacy controls -
seemingly happy to provide full government access in exchange for access to a
lucrative market. Google currently have no operations in China.

~~~
londons_explore
Apple's users in China don't have an expectation of privacy. Chinese consumers
have never had a web service offer privacy, and therefore don't expect it.
Apple running a priavcy-less service in China isn't violating the users
expectations, as long as they don't ever claim it's private or secure.

Australian users however _do_ expect privacy. They do expect that their chat
messages will only be read by the recipient and not the government.

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jamesholden
This is a good question. I'm very curious to see the impact this has too.
Personally I am appalled that this legislation went through. Very scary
precedent.

I want to think Australia shot itself in the foot here, if big companies will
be exiting or if Australian developers are looked over for projects because
they don't want to deal with this backdoor BS.

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bigbluedots
They can comply, or they can block Australian users from their services. I
really hope it's the latter, as the Australian public largely doesn't know
about this law and maybe wouldn't care if it did.

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mmjaa
Not just Australia - the UK too, don't forget.

