Australia’s big encryption-busting laws have done little more than give authorities the power to ask nicely

Nearly six years after law enforcement agencies gained the power to compel social media companies to hand over data, our world-leading legislation appears practically useless

There was much fanfare in late 2018 when Australia passed world-leading legislation to help law enforcement and spy agencies break encryption.

As communications increasingly moved into platforms that are end-to-end encrypted, like Signal, WhatsApp, and Meta’s other apps including Messenger, authorities were losing track of criminals and spies who were “going dark”.

The new bill would provide powers for agencies to first ask tech companies to help them break encryption or, if that failed, use compulsory powers to require them to assist or even to build new capability to do so.

Australian agencies could gain powers such as to send push notifications to criminal suspects, disguised as software updates, that instead installed key-logging software to enable them to see, keystroke by keystroke, what users type into a message.

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