Australian Parliament passed a bill on Thursday requiring tech companies to grant access to encrypted messages or data to law enforcement. The move comes shortly after the country’s dueling political parties struck up an agreement earlier this week requiring stricter oversight for data requests and subjecting the legislation to a 12-month parliamentary review.
Other last-minute sticking points included defining the term ‘systemic weakness,’ an action implemented into a form of electronic protection that would render methods of authentication or encryption less effective and cannot be required under the new law. The tweaks appeared specifically designed to nullify the privacy and cybersecurity concerns that have plagued the bill and others like it around the globe, but don’t offer up any answers to lingering doubts about the efficacy of such a law when it comes to combating terrorism.
