Australia Moves Toward New Restrictions On Technology Export and Publication

An anonymous reader writes Australia is starting a public consultation process for new legislation that further restricts the publication and export of technology on national security grounds. The public consultation starts now (a few days before Christmas) and it is due by Jan 30th while a lot of Australians are on holidays. I don't have the legal expertise to dissect the proposed legislation, but I'd like some more public scrutiny on it. I find particularly disturbing the phrase "The Bill includes defences that reverse the onus of proof which limit the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty" contained in this document, also available on the consultation web site.

Comments

The right to be presumed innocent?

[NewtonsLaw]

Are you kidding... we lost the right to be presumed innocent years ago.

The police can set up a road-block and demand that drivers provide a breath test and proof of their license at any time. Isn't that a presumption of guilt rather than innocence?

The taxman can deliver an assessment that says you owe $xxxxx in taxes and you are presumed to be guilty unless you can prove you don't owe that much in tax. Where's the presumption of innocence there?

Citizens of the USA have given away most of their constitutional rights after being duped by a government that says that those rights must be surrendered to avoid massive terror attacks and Australia (plus NZ) have becom little more than lap-dogs to the US government.

Here in NZ, Kim Dotcom (love him or hate him) has had his assets seized and was incarcerated at the US government's whim -- even though he has not been convicted of any of the charges laid against him. Where's his right to be presumed innocent?

I'm afraid that the world in 2014 is a very sad place where most Western governments consider all their citizens to be enemies of the state unless they can prove otherwise.

The terrorists have won this war completely -- they have done what the Germans could not do in WW1 and WW2 -- they have taken our freedoms from us and we have surrendered them without a fight.

As Midnight Oil so wisely said: It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees -- what a shame our politicians don't get it.

Overblown concern by the anonymous submitter

[bruce_the_loon]

Firstly, this isn't a general law, it's an amendment to the law governing foreign sales of military technology. It only applies if a specific technology is classified as solely defense or strategic. Yes that classification can be manipulated, but a court would have to be convinced that the classification is valid.

Secondly, the bill isn't doing away with the presumption of innocence globally. It is saying that if a person selling the regulated technology relies on the exceptions and regulations to decide whether it is safe to supply technology, that they have documented that reliance properly. Basically they want people to do their homework before handing classified military information over to a foreign actor. Seems fair enough.

Re:Overblown concern by the anonymous submitter

[Anonymous Coward]

" It only applies if a specific technology is classified as solely defense or strategic"

Really ? Have you seen the list before talking ?

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2013C00051

Is ridiculously broad, including things like "FPGA with more than 200 pins or 230,000 gates".
Basically ANYTHING could be construed as "defense or strategic" if the government wishes too.
This is the new legal trend : keep the law broad and vague so that, if someone annoys you, you can charge them of something, anything.

Also, doesn't the "consultation period" EXACTLY coinciding with Australian holidays tells you anything ?
It's the oldest trick in the book : "consult" durting the holidays and then say "but we had a consultation"
Do you realize that they do not even have the dates set for the public consultation in the major cities, just to make it more difficult to
plan around holidays ?

Re:Innovative sheepdips

[MrKaos]

They did not, because the people who invented the relevant bits of Wi-Fi and brought them to the IEEE invented them before CSIRO did.

From my understanding CSIRO solved the key problems for microwave echo cancellation and invented the IC's that encapsulated the fast fourier transforms. Here is an article with a video if it is too long to read.

Certainly Australia probably doesn't have the innovative capacity of larger countries like the US/UK and Canada but for a country of 25 million but we do make significant contributions for a country whose conservative party is constantly ripping apart research and development funding and forcing us to be more dependent on other countries. 5 Billion dollars a year was taken from the IT sector alone way back in the nineties so any criticism of Australia's capacity to innovate is not indicative of our past performance, current capacity or future ability but the performance of our politicians whose vision for Australia is to be the worlds coal mine.

It wouldn't be the first time we've been made to wait for everyone at the finish line and wave them all past. In the meantime those of us who care will be forced to read this bill to understand what restrictions will be place on the capacity to innovate in the business sector now.