The ever-perceptive Juha Saarinen gives his commentary <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12175028> on the law recently passed in Australia to compel access to decrypted forms of encrypted communications. Thanks to the new law requiring them to quietly add that backdoor that mustn't be called a backdoor into their code, Aussie developers can no longer be trusted by their international peers. You can't say no when government agencies issue a notice, saying absolutely do not tell your employer about it or you'll cop a hefty punishment. But the law is not supposed to achieve this by introducing “systemic weaknesses” into the encryption. Can you use that as a defence against having to weaken the encryption? Not a chance. The not-so-fine irony is that the Aussie Government is doing the same thing it alleges the Chinese spies would force Huawei to do, and which was considered dangerous enough to ban the telco equipment vendor from national communications networks. This gets pointed out repeatedly about similar discussions in the US, UK etc. But there seems to be a mentality among politicians, law enforcement, spies etc that “we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, therefore what we do cannot be classed in the same league as what they do”. Forgetting that what makes us good is that we don’t act like bad guys. And the kicker: The risk now is that other Five-Eyes countries, including New Zealand, follow Australia into making the same monumental mistake. What are the odds?