Their "Actions we are taking" section is almost entirely composed of a political lobbying strategy. Given the outcome of the vote, 44 votes for and only 12 against, their plan doesn't exude much confidence. I would have expected plans to move data and key technologists out of Australia at the very least.
The company I work for uses Fastmail but our CEO has already decided to switch mail providers sometime in 2019. I don't know what other service they'll choose.
The data hasn't ever been stored in Australia. All our data is currently stored in the USA and Netherlands.
Of course the "people are planning to leave us because of the hamhanded way you introduced this legislation" is a major part of all our feedback to legislators.
The AABill happened the way it did in Australia because our politics is particularly broken right now (seriously, we have a minority government which has change leaders twice and lost multiple members to scandals). We call it "wedge politics" and Labor were forced into supporting it because otherwise they'd look soft on terrorism going into the holiday period, and anything at all which happened would be blamed on them not supporting the bill.
>anything at all which happened would be blamed on them not supporting the bill.
Which is idiotic, since the LNP would blame Labor either way, as they do for every single other failure they (the LNP) are responsible for. I wish Labor had some fucking guts once in a while.
Labor had a series of sensible amendments that would have diminished the opportunity for any government to abuse this silly legislation. I think trying to equate both parties is disingenuous and wilfully ignores a mountain of context.
> Labor had a series of sensible amendments that would have diminished the opportunity for any government to abuse this silly legislation. I think trying to equate both parties is disingenuous and wilfully ignores a mountain of context.
A series of amendments that were dropped, despite the political reasons for keeping them (including the Nauru medical bill which didn't pass). Now, there were a series of useful House of Representatives amendments, but a series of useful amendments to an awful idea really isn't much of an improvement.
Feel free to put Labor above the Liberals on your next ballot, but please consider putting a third party (Greens, Science Party, Pirate Party) above them. We have preferential voting for a reason.
> The data hasn't ever been stored in Australia. All our data is currently stored in the USA and Netherlands.
Though of course, since you're in the jurisdiction of our great nation you have to turn over data if requested anyway (this hasn't changed). Actually I'm a bit more concerned that you store data in the US.
> The AABill happened the way it did in Australia because our politics is particularly broken right now (seriously, we have a minority government which has change leaders twice and lost multiple members to scandals). We call it "wedge politics" and Labor were forced into supporting it because otherwise they'd look soft on terrorism going into the holiday period, and anything at all which happened would be blamed on them not supporting the bill.
Our politics has been broken for almost 2 decades. It's not really a recent phenomenon.
> Though of course, since you're in the jurisdiction of our great nation you have to turn over data if requested anyway (this hasn't changed). Actually I'm a bit more concerned that you store data in the US.
Not for European users. Microsoft is fighting this same fight in the US (albeit with surer footing since the European data is stored by Microsoft Ireland). Basically, another country can compel a company to provide EU users their data as much as they want, if the data is stored in the EU and the request is not legal under EU law this data may not be shared and the company will be in extremely deep legal shit if they do.
There are restrictions in the Assistance and Access Act which mean that a defence against the civil penalty for non-compliance is that it would violate the law of a foreign country if the act would be done in a foreign country (see s317ZB(5)).
But my point was that these protections don't extend to Australian data -- the location of the data is irrelevant to jurisdiction if you're talking about Australian data being stored by an Australian company.
This isn't a matter of where data is kept, the location of that data being irrelevant, but a matter of jurisdiction. Companies with a legal presence in Australia have to comply with Australian laws.
The only other possibility is for the company and its employees to leave Australia. That's not doable, people have families, friends and for the business relocation implies costs, you can't just move on a whim.
That's not your problem of course, however the wave of populism has been spreading, in the US, in the UK, the far-right is on the rise in Europe, so moving around isn't the answer, fighting against such laws is.
The opposition had a list of changes that they were requiring for passage of the bill but caved at the last minute to pass the bill before the end of the year and announce that they would be changing it in the first sitting session next year.
Passage of this bill seems to have been all about the government attempting to create short-term political opportunities and the opposition attempting to minimise their short-term political risk. With effective lobbying, it seems reasonable to assume that the ongoing legal part of this mess can be fixed. Hopefully the reputational damage won't be too severe.
44-12 doesn’t really tell you much about the solidity of this position in the Australian parliament.
The Liberal & Labor parties both decided among themselves to support it, and have policies that lead to 100% of MPs following the party line.
(Don’t know if it’s a good idea for Australia, but it’s the game-theoretically correct thing for the parties to do under the rules we have, so...)
No-one ‘crossed the floor’, voting against their party, because it gets you kicked out of your party. [Automatically, if you’re a Labor MP]
They knew they wouldn’t change the outcome here, and they’d be out of the conversation going forward.
In particular, Labor gave the measure 100% of its votes, but it seems like the only way the party got majority support for it is by agreeing to vote to repeal and amend it next session. It was not a solid agreement.
> The company I work for uses Fastmail but our CEO has already decided to switch mail providers sometime in 2019. I don't know what other service they'll choose.
If the reason for switching is because of such laws, your company could look at providers outside the:
* Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States)
* Nine Eyes (Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway)
* and Fourteen Eyes (Nine Eyes plus Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden).
There are very few well known and good providers outside these jurisdictions, in my knowledge.
This. I've been trying to find both web and email hosting outside of the 14 eyes, and it's not easy. It's very frustrating. I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep my user's data safe from these kind of legislations (within reason of course). The site I run isn't even that large, but I'm still concerned about these kinds of things stifling my business.
The company I work for uses Fastmail but our CEO has already decided to switch mail providers sometime in 2019. I don't know what other service they'll choose.