Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697641309044.pdf (Australia)
Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 may choose to compromise their ethics and co-operate to collaborate and conceal spying on against the very communities they built for a cash exchange.

This Bill is designed in a contradiction that to protect our way of life, we must destroy the freedom of expression that it is based upon.
Uncensored expression of ideas that update our culture must never even have the premise of government interference.

This Bill is a complete anathema to free will that mocks democracy with it’s hypocritical blatancy.

Short sighted in nature, this Bill has no vision for unintended consequences and certainly has no provisions for what would happen when Artiﬁcial Intelligence controls these systems and dystopian future that would bring.
No one escapes if you interact with any mass group of people or a customer base that this bill seeks information about if you are a designated communications communications provider or a capable individual.

Whilst it is clear that the designers understand an overview of what this infrastructure is, it is clear they have no idea how it works which has produced a very poor quality legal framework.
As a Technologist I happen to be one of the people capable of making such extrapolations from the uses of these powers.

In my analysis I have addressed my concerns of the Divisions as this Bill attempts to coerce the entire Australian Information Technology industry into becoming an instrument of our intelligence agencies.
I urge the house to reject this Bill completely as it has no industry consultation, no specialist examination for unintended consequences and is being rushed through with very little thought of the economic and democratic consequences.
Schedule 1 Item (2) makes non-compliance a criminal act in accordance with the Criminal Code exposing high level, well educated professionals, with no criminal intent to up to 10 years jail time simply because they have spent the time, money, discipline and dedication developing the expertise and skills to interact with and build these types of systems.

How can the government justify criminalising people with a specialist skill set that the brings enormous economic beneﬁt to Australia?
Especially considering some of exceptional Australian success stories.

The Government seeks instead to limit the possibilities and impose further disadvantages upon the Entrepreneurs who create economic value in Australia.

How can any local business seek foreign investment in their innovations?

What foreign companies would keep their infrastructure in Australia and be subject to those terms?

Only those that have to be here will stay.


The massive “Brain Drain” of professionals seeking to avoid being subject to 2 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 these laws will devastate Information Technology in Australia and business will bare those costs.
Many agencies may make these demand according to 317B Deﬁnitions for any type of media format, including formats that don’t exist yet, placing an extremely loose deﬁnition of the evidence that is sought, that gives access to all evidence and is prone to corruption.

If these agencies seek the data of terrorist and paedophiles, then it should isolate the data formats to those it seeks.
This deﬁnition shows the ridiculous nature of a request that cannot be satisﬁed as any of these parties can simply create a data format that cannot be recognised.

If Australian citizens had the technical skill set to recognise the backhanded insult contained in being subject to this deﬁnition I am certain that the government will be thrown out at the electorates earliest possible opportunity.
This schedule sets the stage for laws with no oversight in the powers or reach and are highly likely to promote corruption.

Action: This Bill should be abandoned for these reasons.

Division 1 Introduction Division 1 items lists the entire OSI stack and the hardware and software stack for compromise.

In computers science, this means everything.

317C Designates telecommunications providers, brokers, re-seller and employees with TCNs and TARs and again subject them to criminal consequences.
It then extends into their infrastructure deﬁning as targets for compliance activities of any component maker, system or telecommunications installer, any corporation providing any operating system of a computer commonly used, any software provider, any website, any software developer, any data centre provider, any equipment manufacturer or supplier, any facilities provider and any software used.
It is commonly known in the role of people who secure this infrastructure that if a systems exists that can be compromised, it will be by criminal elements.

The government is well aware of this as I am sure the agencies who seek to beneﬁt from this Bill have their own segregated infrastructure to protect themselves from intruders.

All of these deﬁnitions should be tightened up to speciﬁc targets.
However it is simply impossible to predict the explosion of counter espionage due to its overwhelming scope and the consideration that the chips that can provide this functionality are as small as a grain of sand.
3 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 So after criminalising myself and my colleagues, threatening our profession with jail time and no oversight or avenue for appeal, the government then seeks to make my work that much harder to perform.

How is such a premise acceptable in any form of democracy by those administering it?
Action: Construct proper oversight, a ombudsman with power to independently control and terminate TCNs and TARs.

317D Targets online services, like Facebook, and demands they remove protections, like encryption, reveal how their software works, including revealing internal proprietary software design techniques that are generally kept secret to protect them from commercial espionage.
How much care can we expect the police and intelligence servers to protect software techniques that have taken years to develop when they have to coerce their creators?

To then install government severs onto their infrastructure, force data formats upon them and allow access to any infrastructure and demand integration assistance.

In terms of actions business will have to comply with if they have eligible activities, every part of their supply chain is covered from creating components to installers.
They can all be issued with a Technical assistance request or Technical Capability Notice.

In the “Listed acts or things” Govt can demand removal of encryption, proprietary design information about your software and how it works, demand you install their servers, force data formats and integration assistance ﬁnally leaving business to maintain their servers.

After that the business is then responsible for maintaining access to intercept equipment whilst hiding it and concealing access.
Action: Reject the bill as these actions are completely onerous and place a massive burden to achieve compliance.

This is extremely damaging to employment opportunities in Australia.

Is the government trying to destroy information technology in Australia.

317F Extends this to all Australian territories.

Summary The end of Division 1 reveals a diabolical and ingenious way to undermine Australia’s economic interests through overt compromise of her information infrastructure.
Why would any foreign company want to do business in Australia 4 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 under those circumstances and the threat of jail time, heavy ﬁnes and exposure to liability for businesses and individuals who don’t co-operate?
For the businesses that are built upon communities, powers of this Bill can be utilised to ﬁne them out of existence and treat their employees like criminals if they take a stand to defend their communities from interference and the machinations of government.

Alternatively the Bill leaves Australians in a position where they can be defrauded and have no recourse to recover the damage due to the anti-liability clauses this bill contains.

From an ethical stand point this is unacceptable.


I chose the career path I did to build more freedom and more free speech, to create and build infrastructure that builds communities and creates economic activity.

I didn’t develop my skill set to spy on people as the thought of it disgusts me akin to asking a doctor to perform an unwanted surgery.

It is governments responsibility to carry the moral burden of their actions not to coerce my profession with jail time if they do not choose to participate.
The government is attempting burden some of the most economically productive citizens in Australia with a moral double bind because they have the expertise to operate information infrastructure.

These are extremely challenging undertakings performed by a very narrow segment of the population in an extremely diﬃcult discipline that combines an understanding of math and technology to apply it to information.
To achieve these mental feats myself and many colleagues I know employ a rigid set of morals that protect the data of many millions of users fully knowing that your actions can aﬀect tens, hundreds and millions of people and their lives.

Their pay, their bank accounts, their ideas, their associations, their memories and their very identity are entrusted to us.
This bill positions my profession where we have to betray that trust after signing commercial agreements with intelligence agencies or be held liable to the ones we protected as the guilty party that was the cause of any collateral damage on top of ﬁnes and jail time.

We built these communities upon the foundations of free speech and privacy for our users out of education.

The constant struggle to protect their interests and ensure they can conduct their business.
It is hard enough to defend them against criminal activities that defraud them without government making this task harder.

Professionally I have longed for users to use encryption technology so they would not suﬀer these, sometimes life destroying events.

We are still waiting for government to join this ﬁght with appropriate, well thought out, consultative and reasoned laws.
The opposite example exists in this bill which forces my entire profession into becoming instruments of Technical Capability Notices and Technical Assistance Requests to create an all seeing all knowing intelligence gathering machine that is unwelcome, unwanted and impractical.

This Bill is not a legal infrastructure that defends Australians, though it purports to be, instead it is an infrastructure of law that asks Australian taxpayers to pay for the very mechanisms that will defraud them.
5 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 Actions Introduce oversight, appeal mechanisms and limits on these powers.

Clearly deﬁne when they end and the process for terminating the use of these powers as they are simply established and never removed.

Establish a sunset clause on these powers.


Division 2 Voluntary technical assistance Division 2 discusses exactly how government will disrupt the businesses who co-operate and the speciﬁc steps that have to executed to comply.

317G Assures limitations to something that technology professionals wouldn’t do in the ﬁrst place: knowingly design a weakness into their hardware or software.

As professionals, we are constantly trying to develop new techniques to stay ahead of cyber-criminals.
From experience in tracking and defending information infras- tructure the Australian government is years behind in terms of understanding the mindset of cyber criminal due to its obsession with sex crime and terrorism.

Placing a easy to ﬁnd target on those businesses that do co-operate means only the good guys are disadvantaged.

The Bill dictates agencies can change the speciﬁcation, the scope and responsibilities of those assigned, demanding assistance and having anti by-pass clauses.
This virtually ensures these systems can be found and compromised.

317H Outlines the ultimate Faustian bargain of how an oral contract can be written up and create terms for access by the agencies referred to in the bill.

No clear method of revocation or judicial authority for those who are coerced into co-operating to seek relief so they can get on with their businesses or life.
Summary What it oﬀers is a taxpayer funded creation of the infrastructure that will eventually be subverted and used against Australians to defraud them and steal the taxpayers information.

6 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 Action: Reject the Bill as it is destructive and corrosive inﬂuence on consumer conﬁdence.
Division 3 Technical assistance notices (TAN) The Technical assistance notice demands those with the skill to subvert the information infrastructure they are paid to protect.

317MA With no idea or rational insight to the amount of disruption this kind of inter- ference produces as even co-operating will be extremely disruptive to normal business activities.

No army of lawyers is going to get the Intelligence agency to cease and desist from their actions.
No avenue exists for relief from the interference in their business.

317R Provides no guidance to how technical assessment is conducted to revoke the TAN based on whether it is technically feasible.

Division 4 - Technical Capability Notices (TCN) 317S For a TCN to function 317S (2) “may require” agreement with a person or body.
How can a Bill “require that agreement must be obtained”, by what means will this request be satisﬁed, considering that (3) does not invalidate a TCN if the Attorney General does not determine procedures.

Item (4)(c)(ii) reinforces (5) and creates legislative instruments out of things that do not yet exist.

What justiﬁcation does the Bill present for seeking powers that can constantly be redeﬁned and both clauses should be removed.
317T Item (6) makes no provisions for privacy, civil rights of Australians, potential for economic damage to a business or the acts of whistle-blowers attempting to highlight corruption.

How are Australians to beneﬁt from such a Bill where the consequences of acting on it is foisted onto ordinary citizens.
7 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 Item (8) set out limits to the capability of message interception built into business infrastructure that (9) business has to maintain.

Yet another onerous requirement from the government placed upon business.

317TA Duration of notices (a) start when issued with a 180 day period or speciﬁed end date that can be renewed indeﬁnitely.
This section must include duration for when a TCN may not be issues after expiration and a mechanism to seek relief from TCNs used to harass business or an individual.

Oversight must be provided.

317U Requires a speciﬁed act to be performed within a speciﬁed time frame, in a speciﬁed manner and way that meets speciﬁed conditions.

No consideration is set out for the reason the business exists in the ﬁrst place.
No consideration for if the subjects of the TCN are volunteers who are simply acting to build community.

This heavy handed clauses simply bulldozers through any objections and converts whatever technology has been deployed to serve a community function into an instrument of intelligence gathering.

How does this clause account for opportunity costs lost or protect from harassment and acts of 21st century cultural vandalism.
317W Item (1) deﬁnes a consultation process where a person must cease working on their own concerns and respond to the Attorney General.

All following clauses becoming legal leverage to get people to “play ball or else” and places management of business to order their staﬀ to override their ethical concerns of being involved in intelligence agencies in any way shape or form.

Negotiations to turn business into an arm of intelligence agencies.
There is no oversight to the Attorney General’s designated powers to coerce business or individuals to co-operate.

317X Item (1) deﬁnes that the speciﬁcation can be changed, (2) the scope varied, (3) responsibilities changed and that (4) scope variations imposed be complied with.
8 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 A fundamental lack of understanding of how information technology project work and progress that it has long been known that these very acts of “Scope Creep” are always signs of projects that never end and have no clear deﬁned goal.

If the requester can’t specify what exactly they need business or individuals to do how can such requests ever be fulﬁlled.
This clause is rife for abuse and also should be completely deleted.

317Y Discussing proposals to scope variations (1) seeks co-operation and consultation on scope variation can be issued without limit and responses sought within a certain time frame or (2) immediately if the Attorney General sees ﬁt.
Without regards for the existing priorities in a persons life (3) demands that the individual divert their attention from activities and either work or be coerced with the threat of jail time if they waive compliance.

Variations can be loosely deﬁned (4) oral arrangements which puts the burden on those who possess the skill set to comply and make written wavier of compliance.

This is yet another example of how repeated variations can be made over and over to harass a business or individual into complying.
317Z Revocation (1) of TCN is at the behest of the Attorney General if that oﬃce is (2) satisﬁed that requirements imposes are not reasonable, proportionate, practical or technically feasible.

The Attorney General’s oﬃce assumes capability to determine what the Informa- tion Technology itself is constantly trying to discover, what it can do.

So if the experts themselves are not fully aware of their capabilities how does this Bill seek to determine that.
Determining an individual’s skills is one of the hardest issues in ﬁnding capable staﬀ for the expansion of any business?

Writ large this is one of the biggest contradictions of this Bill.

There is no provision for oversight, no clauses that determine other channels to revoke TCNs as revocation becomes a matter of opinion.

Summary TCN’s are completely unacceptable.


They are an instrument to coerce Infor- mation Technology Professionals into acting as proxy intelligence apparatus on fellow Australians citizens.

Had these professional chosen to use their skill set that way, that is what they would be doing.
Yet this Bill seeks to convert my 9 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 profession into an intelligence arm of government simply because they cannot access the requisite skill set through oﬀering employment opportunities that attract people with this skill set.
Instead this Bill seeks to override an individuals own moral imperatives, for even if an individual co-operates to avoid being criminalised they carry the burden of carrying the secrets the government has imposed on them.

This is known to cause mental health issues and it is being imposed on the bright- est and most intelligent individuals who have chosen to work in a challenging and inspiring ﬁeld because they are capable.

This sabotages their capability and is completely unacceptable.
This will cause enormous Human Resource issues for Information Technology in Australia, why is the government sabotaging Australia’s place in the 21st century economy of the world.

TCNs are completely toxic, show no understanding for what people who possess these capabilities have to do to even have such a skill set.
The extremely high ethical and moral standards people have to possess to be able to conduct their duties is simply trampled in a quest to utilise the power over the data that these skilled individuals possess.

It is deeply oﬀensive.

Action: Reject TCNs, they are an obscene instrument set to cause massive stress and mental heath issues for individuals exposed to them.
Any individual exposed to performing such an act for intelligence services should be compensated monetarily for the rest of their life for being forced into compliance with a TCN by this bill.

Allow dissent on moral grounds if TCNs are insisted on, with no ramiﬁcations, no penalty for those who have no wish to participate even if they are deemed to be capable.

Division 5 - Compliance and enforcement This entire division essentially says that an “individual may choose to co-operate”.
317ZA Carriers (1) must comply, must answer and (2) persons are subject to anti-bypass clauses where they can be accused of all manner of contravening acts and be subject to civil penalties.

Yet another clause open to abuse where such accusations are completely subjective and a matter of opinion.

Revoke completely.
Revoke completely.

10 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 317ZB Sets out life and business destroying (1) penalties for individuals and business for not complying or (2) being in contravention with this Bill.

Summary This bill has to go to such extents to coerce co-operation from people and businesses that have the misfortune of being deemed capable of providing the Attorney General with the information it seeks.
They attempt to criminalise professionals who have no association with a crime.

This Bill attempts to invent a crime of not allowing government access to a certain skill set.

An individual should always have the freedom to withdraw their labour, what freedom is being protected here?

Certainly not mine.

In my professional activities I have been extremely careful to rid myself of access to particular systems so that I would not be a target for criminal coercion.
Now the very government of the country I love is seeking to coerce me in the exact same way.

The only terrorism I am experiencing is from this Bill, how is this even justiﬁable in Australia.

Is this really the type of nation we want to be?

Action: This section should be rejected.

Why should penalties apply to someone simply because they are skilled enough to achieve the Bills objectives.
These agencies should establish and fund their own skill base if the objectives of this bill are so important instead of attempting to ﬁnd a way to criminalise Information technology Professionals.

This Division doesn’t protect us from terrorism, it creates it and for that reason this entire bill should be rejected.
The potential outcomes of this Bill reveal its intent as the enforcement of compliance of anyone who works in the Information Technology Industry into using their skills and access to the Australian population.

Division 6 - Unauthorised Disclosure Individuals who have been willing or unwilling participants now have to bare the burden of secrets imposed on them within this division.
11 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 317ZF Item (1) spells out that it is an oﬀence for persons to disclose information and (b) is individually and personally responsible because they are an employee with a consequence of 5 years jail if they happen to disclose the information.

The evidential burden then rests with the defendant of proving that the disclosure was authorised.
The person has (3) limited disclosure options and whilst they (e) may discuss it for the purpose of obtaining legal advice there is no provision for them to discuss their case with an ombudsman or any form of overseeing authority, except the Attorney General, to seek relief from corrupt or harassing requests.

Items (4) through (12) that multiple agencies can demand TCNs, TANs and TARs with no recourse for overbearing and overloading request.
The only disclosure a person may make is statistics of how many requests have been made, without speaking to their diﬃcult or any other aspects.

Clauses here should compensate technologists for keeping government secrets until it their disclosure is authorised.

Summary The people being asked to keep secrets aren’t trained on how to keep secrets, nor are they debriefed.

They are simply asked to carry around a disruptive memory of something they are not allowed to talk about under fear of jail time.
What if their employer asks them, what if they are drunk and talkative, what if they need to seek psychological help to deal with the stress and disruption?

Who are they supposed to talk to to relieve their mental burden?

Are their employers to simply tolerate that now a certain employee’s performance is falling of since “all that super secret government stuﬀ happened”.

What if the person witnesses a crime in the course of complying?
There are so many vectors for corruption in this Bill it is completely unworkable.

Action: Delete division 6 entirely.

12 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 Division 7 - Limitations 317ZG The entire section places limits on things that could or would not be performed anyway.

No provision is made for not deliberately installing a component level weakness, only systemic.
317ZH Item (1) sets out that TCNs and TARs should not allow things that require a warrant on the presumption that (2) the activity is conducted on Australian territory.

This limitation is then overridden with (4) on the basis criminal or national security interests that ﬁnally (5)(d) give the eﬀect of a warrant.

Summary These limitations are rife for interpretation and it would seem that TCNs and TARs are simply mechanisms to bypass having to get a warrant by only being answerable to the Attorney General.
Action: Wording to be tightened up to ensure proper warrants are obtained, including warrants for TCNs, TARs and TANs.

Division 8 - General Provisions 317ZJ Immunity (1) for (a) compliance with a (c,d)TAN or TCN leaves no avenue for recourse for people to recover losses as result of these activities but not related to them.

However no such immunity provisions exist for anyone who is not compliance, they are instead exposed to liability and criminalisation.
Item (15) allows the acquisition of property with no provision for the non property damaged done loss of techniques or unrelated parties sharing that infrastructure.

13 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 Summary The only parties who become liable for actions performed and not performed in this Bill are ordinary Australian citizens who are not associated with terrorism, paedophilia, intelligence agencies or policing.
For those with an skill set that is in demand they have the additional burden of a maximum of ten years jail and tens of thousands of dollars worth of ﬁnes.

No provisions for oversight exists and broad ranging powers are assigned to all agencies and can be delegated to an executive level public servant.

Instead of assigning the powers they require, unrelated and unnecessary powers are assigned and dispersed throughout various agencies.
Has anybody considered what happens when the personality disordered suddenly ﬁnd them selves with access to these powers and the ability to cause mass distress?

Where is the over sight and built in protections to prevent abuses of these powers?

Action: More oversight and capacity for shutting down these activities.

Stricter limita- tions on the use of power, increased protections for those subject to them, avenues for protecting whistle blowers and those who witness crime and corruption.
Conclusion In the analysis of the divisions in Schedule 1 there is simply no under emphasising the betrayal of the Australian people this Bill entails.

This Bill simply coerces citizens with the skills to provide access to their fellow citizens, whilst any unexpected ﬁnancial damage to unrelated parties must simply be absorbed by those citizens due to anti liability clauses.
Citizens who are professionals in the Information Technology industry are subject to unreasonable, over-reaching, overbearing control by hijacking their skill set to pursue a dubious agenda of chasing paedophile or terrorists.

Is the government prepared to unleash wide scale loss of consumer conﬁdence, economic loss, reduced overseas investments to pursue these powers?
In reality this Bill seeks to control the professionals in the Information Technology industry and uses policing as an excuse to push forward this agenda.

If this power is sought then government should fund and train their own personnel to perform these tasks.

14 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103 This Bill presents government with powers only seen in police states.

China recently passed similar laws.


As a nation we have to decide if we really are a democratic state who respects its citizens or a state that treats its citizens like criminals simply because they possess an esoteric skill set that intelligence agencies seek to use.

Then to burden ordinary Australians with the liability for these activities.
The government should seek to deploy wide scale encryption for all citizens for interaction with government and construct information infrastructure that serves the goal of protecting Australian citizens from organised crime which prevents corruption.
Government should seek increased consultation from the Information Technology industry instead of rushing to seek control over it so that workable mechanisms to create intelligence outcomes that don’t threaten to create widespread economic, democratic and social damage to Australian citizens.

This Bill and any bill that attempts to emulate it should be rejected and never presented to the house again.
This very presentation of this Bill reveals the importance of why Australia should enact a Bill of Rights for all Australian citizens immediately.

Sincere Regards 15 Review of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018Submission 103