Australian Anti-encryption Legislation and Its Impacts on Security and Privacy

Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 gives relevant authorities (e.g. law enforcement, national security agencies and intelligence agencies) significant new powers regarding access to encrypted communications data, and hence extensive public attention have been attracted and opinions expressed concerning general security and privacy of users. This essay will first briefly introduce the key contents of the Assistance and Access Act 2018, then discuss how it will affect security and privacy of users respectively by considering both supporting and opposing arguments, and then further the discussion into a global environment by examining the history of a variety of efforts on similar powers. It concludes that though the Assistance and Access Act 2018 has sophisticated oversight mechanism and takes into consideration the most concerned systemic weaknesses security issue, its definition and guidance are vague and is likely not practical to achieve what the Act is designed for in practice. The potential overreach of the Act not only will impose great threats to system security as a whole, but also will breach the principle of privacy.