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Comment by LilBytes | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised we (Australia) aren't already on more of these lists.

After having this discussion with my manager and colleagues (the conversation with my manager was in my interview process where I bluntly stated if I was asked to comply with anything from this law, I'd immediately resign, my manager also agreed). Everyone I've spoken to agreed we'd immediately resign since it was the only potential option to protect our selves as employees and our employers.

Edit: I'll need to spend a little more time looking into the Assistance and Access Laws. The following article attempts to downplay some of these concerns:

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

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> I'd immediately resign

You are assuming that is actually an option. There is nothing to suggest the current Australian government would not prevent you from resigning until the task had been completed. This is the same government currently attempting to make it illegal to boycott businesses that are damaging to the environment.

They don't have legal authority to prevent you from resigning.

Also, the proposed anti-boycott rules have been widely criticized as unconstitutional, unworkable and ludicrously against the conservatives free speech pronouncements. Unlikely they would get support from Senate cross bench.

They could compel your employer not to accept the resignation before the correct procedures are done and you have completed the task.

Executive powers in Aus aren't that strong - they'd have to pass a law to give themselves that specific power. I don't think there's one to permit this now, though I'm no expert and there are many obscure laws.

That's the good(ish) news - the bad is that restraints on the passing of bad law are generally pretty weak in the absence of a hostile Senate. This is particularly true with the current feeble opposition, and even more so given the general atmosphere of cowering obeisance that the major parties have allowed (or encouraged) to develop around any legislation involving the word 'security'.

There is a good description of the many shortcomings of the legislation at https://stateofit.com/interception/ and https://stateofit.com/interceptionpart2/ -- TCNs (compelled changes) are not the real problem, its the more than willing compliance from companies with TARs -- voluntary technical assistance requests. It is unclear how much (if any) the company is shielded from civil suits for complying with TARs.

The problem is not really that you couldn't resign -- it is that the company would hire replacements that would get the job done. The company executive would be compelled to.

Albanese (and his forgettable deputy Marles) have so far been a disaster for the ALP.

Employers can't refuse to accept your resignation in Australia. Or rather they can refuse as much as they like but your resignation still holds.

As far as I know, employment in Australia isn't typically under the terms of indentured servitude. We haven't been a penal colony for a while now.

Since National Security Letters exist, blocking all employees from the US would also be logical. Same for running anything on third-party hardware.

There needs to be a more effective response than Hari Kiri.

> Since National Security Letters exist, blocking all employees from the US would also be logical.

Sure, it would be, especially for companies located in neutral countries, but since US influence is so strong everywhere almost all over the world that's also practically impossible. "Every animal is equal but some animals are more equal than others"

We haven't seen the implementation details for Gaia-X, but it would not be unreasonable for it to include that priviledged persons (admins, company management) by EU citizens and resident in the EU, or possibly even FR/DE only. Full document below in Deutch.

https://www.bmwi.de/Navigation/EN/Home/home.html https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Digitale-Welt...

China and Russia obviously have their own systems, but many other countries some some element of national control which is less obvious. Japan certainly has a mature native cloud capability, although it would be highly disruptive to move everything to it.

Its like plans to be 'cloud agile', it doesn't work unless you deploy to both every time, and you probably just double your cost and bugs for deployment ops. So the tendency will be towards cloud balkanization. Which could really suck, or it could force a path away from proprietary APIs towards standards, which will suck in a different way.

It's the same in France, and many other western countries.

I think it's just the usual "Australians not realizing they live in a bubble", and kindly warning the rest of the world about laws or practices that have already been in place in our countries for twenty years.

AFAIK there is no law in France where the government can force you to do something you don’t want to do related to your employment. They can however seize your devices.

That is not true. There is no such law in Germany, and the public backlash against it would be enormous. In the east we had a government that would pressure citizens to spy on each other -- any hint of that would be political suicide on all levels...

NSLs apply to companies, not employees. The NSL would have to go to your companies legal office.

NSLs can be issued to any person, natural or juridical.

NSLs only bring back non-content information (eg, a call record, but not a recording of a call) and are issued under the Stored Communications Act. Unless you happen to be the owner of a sole proprietorship that falls under the act, you can't be directly issued an NSL - it's issued to the entity which holds the records (eg AT&T).

That's Hara kiri. If you're going to appropriate an antiquated foreign word out of context I wish you'd at least spell it properly.

(1) it's a non-antiquated English word, etymologically linked to the antiquated foreign word (it entered English a long time ago.)

(2) In English, both hari kari and hara kiri are accepted spellings (the word came into English before modern, maybe even standardized, transliteration, and the source language doesn't natively use the Latin alphabet.)

(3) But, in any case, you are right that it is misspelled.

That's the spelling in my phone's dictionary. If I were writing about ancient Japanese cultural traditions I might have checked. I think Japanese people, being inveterate word-stealers, would understand.

As an Aussie living & working overseas I'm still not sure if it applies to me and makes me a liability? I know they can't enforce it unless I go home but I will someday

It does make you a liability. Australians can be shanghai'ed into working for the Australian intelligence agencies wherever they are on Earth.

I'm also an Australian living overseas, have worked on many sensitive projects that would be of interest to the Australian government and its masters, and I'm quite prepared to give up my nationality over this issue.

Ah okay, yeah I think I'll get citizenship somewhere else

At this point I think its the only thing Australians can do about their country.

Australians will never be afforded an opportunity to overthrow their government, nor will we get the revolutions our demonstrations hope for.

You have obviously never lived through a civil war.

Australia will never have one. Its institutions are designed to ensure that.

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