Signal app could get blocked in Australia due to 'Assistance and Access' bill

Australia’s Assistance and Access bill, which was passed by the country’s parliament last week, allows the nation’s law enforcement agencies to force organizations to hand over information related to encrypted communications.

The bill lets law enforcement to directly get in touch with an engineer or IT admin (instead of the company itself) to get access to such information. Non-cooperation can result in a fine of AUD 7.3 million, or even jail term to those who refuse to pay the fine.

There’s already a lot of back clash over this bill especially from encryption and privacy advocates.

And now the team behind Signal, the encrypted chat app which NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden once publicly endorsed, have openly denounced the bill, saying it’s not possible for them to include a backdoor in the app in order to cater to government requests.

Understandably, they are now fearing their services could be blocked or the app could be make inaccessible in Australia altogether. Following are some key takeaways:

Like many others, we have been following the latest developments in Australia related to the “Assistance and Access” bill with a growing sense of frustration

Attempting to roll back the clock on security improvements which have massively benefited Australia and the entire global community is a disappointing development

Everyone benefits from these design decisions – including Australian politicians. For instance, it has been widely reported that Malcolm Turnbull, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, is a Signal user. He isn’t alone. Members of government everywhere use Signal

Although we can’t include a backdoor in Signal, the Australian government could attempt to block the service or restrict access to the app itself

The company says circumventing a ban – if at all that happens – isn’t that difficult, and has been done in the past.

If a country decided to apply pressure on Apple or Google to remove certain apps from their stores, switching to a different region is extremely trivial on both Android and iOS. Popular apps are widely mirrored across the internet. Some of them can even be downloaded directly from their official website

Read the complete blog post here.

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