Where Do The Major Australian Political Parties Stand On Privacy And Encryption This Election?

Lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has called on all political parties to support encryption and privacy technologies, as it was revealed where a selection of the major parties stand on surveillance, encryption, copyright issues and censorship.

Attempts to undermine encryption and other privacy technologies represent a fundamental threat to the safety and privacy of all users of digital technologies, the EFA says, warning the risk that any such ‘backdoors’ will become available to unfriendly governments, organised criminal syndicates and other malicious actors is extremely high.

EFA believes that any moves to undermine encryption in the name of ‘national security’ are fundamentally misguided and in fact represent serious threats to national security in their own right, as well as threatening human rights and the enormous economic and social benefits that the digital revolution has brought for people across the globe.

Here’s where a handful of the major parties stand on the issue (green means “supports EFA’s policies”), further detailed on the EFA’s Election Policy Questionnaire page.

Questions asked of the political parties in the survey covered open government partnership, encryption, telecommunications data retention, intelligence oversight, NBN, preferential trade agreements, copyright reform and enforcement, censorship, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, mandatory data breach notification, the privacy right of action, census data and health records.

Detailed responses from The Pirate Party, The Greens, The Science Party, Glen Lazurus Team and The Liberal Democratic Party are available to view.


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