Australia just voted to ban working cryptography. No, really.

Remember when Malcolm Turnbull, the goddamned idiot who was briefly Prime Minister of Australia, was told that the laws of mathematics mean that there was no way to make a cryptography system that was weak enough that the cops could use to spy on bad guys, but strong enough that the bad guys couldn't use it to spy on cops, and he said: "Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."

He added: "Im not a cryptographer, but what we are seeking to do is to secure their assistance. They have to face up to their responsibility. They cant just wash their hands of it and say its got nothing to do with them."

Malcolm Turnbull lost his job, though not for saying this goddamned idiotic thing. This goddamned idiotic thing has continued to fester in Australian politics, until today, when the pustule ruptured and Parliament sat down and voted to make the laws of Australia prevail over the laws of mathematics.

Good luck with that.

Under the new rule, cops can get court orders that will require tech companies to backdoor their encryption, serve malware, or do whatever else it takes to decrypt subjects' messages, even if those messages are so well encrypted that it would take more computational cycles than can be wrung out of all the matter in the universe to brute-force the key. Read the rest