Hacker News Reader

Comment by hresvelgr | Hacker News Reader

To anyone not from Australia or not across this, currently federal law enforcement can hack online accounts, remove, add, or modify data. They still need a warrant but can hack accounts in advance of a warrant, provided they have "reasonable suspicion" that the person they are hacking is committing a crime. There is also no recourse if the warrant is denied and they have already hacked the accounts of the person in suspicion.

Having read The Gulag Archipelago, I am worried what will become of Australia in coming decades. While I am in opposition to how the current government operates, they're only part of the problem because the Identify and Disrupt bill flew through the senate in a day with support from both major parties. Not even taking into account that the suggested amendments to the bill to remove the broad clauses were ignored and the bill was passed anyway.

View on HN

Be careful - they’ve redefined ‘warrant’. For some of the hacking, they no longer need a warrant from a judge, but can get a “warrant” from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (a body which concerns have been raised about it having been fairly heavily stacked with failed Liberal party candidates, Liberal party ex-staffers, etc. with no legal training or experience).

There is even some provision for being able to declare it’s an emergency and just getting an internal “emergency authorisation”. So a lot of it has become (by law) actually warrantless.

Yes, the AAT is what would be described as "regime officials" by the nightly news when it is reporting on a foreign country.

> Having read The Gulag Archipelago, I am worried what will become of Australia in coming decades.

You might be interested in reading "Psychopathology of totalitarianism" by Ariane Bilheran. While she's French I think it applies to most of the western countries.

It's 3 articles, so shorter than a book, maybe 30 min read in total :

https://www.arianebilheran.com/post/psychopathology-of-total...

> currently federal law enforcement can hack online accounts, remove, add, or modify data

Terrifying -- we are trusting officers who are incentivised to make convictions with the power to remove, add and modify data which could be used as evidence in determining the outcome of criminal cases.

Would love for someone to tell me that I am missing something here that makes this acceptable.

Data Disruption powers https://www.itnews.com.au/news/police-get-online-account-tak...

Even tougher powers are coming

"Under Ministerial direction, an operator would be compelled to provide information, take certain actions, or potentially have ASD insert itself into the incident response and provide direct “assistance” to counter the threat."

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/govt-cyber-incident-intervent...

I think a previous law allows them to demand that hardware or software developers (people or companies) modify their products to aid in intercepting communications. Theoretically, this could even be by request of foreign countries with targets in foreign countries.

That would be the "Telecommunication and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018": https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018A00148

Really makes you wonder what the end-goal actually is for these craven politicians.

Intel for re-election for starters.

An occupying hostile force could have a much easier time controlling the local population if they had all this data on everyone. I think that's the real risk.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com