Australia changes vulnerability definitions in encryption laws
The Australian Parliament has adopted the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2019. The Bill replaced the definitions of systemic weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which are now defined only as affecting ‘a whole class of technology’, and don’t include those ‘selectively introduced to one or more target technologies that are connected with a particular person’, thereby possibly creating space for those selectively introduced to be exploited by the law enforcement agencies. In addition, the new section (317ZG) introduces certain limitations to law enforcement measures, by specifying that technical assistance requests and notices, and technical capability notices, cannot have the effect of creating new decryption capabilities or weakening existing authentication or encryption mechanisms, or create a risk that otherwise secure information be compromised by unauthorised third parties.
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