The petition linked against doesn't seem effective against the proposed legislation (The Assistance and Access Bill 2018). By section 317ZG this proposed legislation can't be used to compel a company to build (or prevent fixing) a "systemic" weakness/vulnerability into a form of electronic protection. This provision was likely put in place to show that it doesn't seeks to weaken encryption standards, ban encryption, or require "backdoors". However entities can be compelled to assist access to devices or services, to remove protections where they are capable to do so, and to build capabilities where they are not. It's not clear what systemic is, and there is little external oversight or protections for whistleblowers. Any effective petition against the legislation will specifically address these points. The Conversation article gives a reasonable summary: https://theconversation.com/the-devil-is-in-the-detail-of-government-bill-to... The proposed legislation is still open for comments until September 10th. On 18/08/18 18:34, PuZZleDucK wrote:

Hi all,

It's going to be far too long before our next meetup to save this for the Gnews :/ ... but there is a petition against the Australian governments new "anti encryption" legislation.

"The new bill would give Australian law enforcement and intelligence agencies the power to demand companies build tools that allow law enforcement access to encrypted communications"

Please share and spread the word and help get as many signatures as we can: https://act.openmedia.org/FiveEyesSaveEncryption?src=162824

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