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Australian Email Service FastMail Says It is Losing Customers and Facing Calls To Move Operations Outside of the Country Over Local Anti-Encryption Laws (itnews.com.au)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Email provider FastMail says it has lost customers and faces "regular" requests to shift its operations outside Australia following the passage of anti-encryption laws. The Victorian company, which offers ad-free email services to users in 150 countries, told a senate committee that the now-passed laws were starting to bite.
"The way in which [the laws] were introduced, debated, and ultimately passed ... creates a perception that Australia has changed - that we are no longer a country which respects the right to privacy," FastMail CEO Bron Gondwana said. "We have already seen an impact on our business caused by this perception. Our particular service is not materially affected as we already respond to warrants under the Telecommunications Act." "Still, we have seen existing customers leave, and potential customers go elsewhere, citing this bill as the reason for their choice. We are [also] regularly being asked by customers if we plan to move."
"The way in which [the laws] were introduced, debated, and ultimately passed ... creates a perception that Australia has changed - that we are no longer a country which respects the right to privacy," FastMail CEO Bron Gondwana said. "We have already seen an impact on our business caused by this perception. Our particular service is not materially affected as we already respond to warrants under the Telecommunications Act." "Still, we have seen existing customers leave, and potential customers go elsewhere, citing this bill as the reason for their choice. We are [also] regularly being asked by customers if we plan to move."
I'm sure their downfall has nothing to do with bad customer service... like closing down someone's account because they haven't used it in a few months- despite paying for a LIFETIME no ad membership over a decade ago.
If I have a paid membership; whether I use the account on a regular basis or not is my business, I paid for it.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The actual data centers arn't in Australia, they are located in the US (New Jersey and Washington) and the Netherlands. This is the same problem that Microsoft faced with data hosted in Ireland when it was served with a request from the US government. It boils down to if the company has control and access. If so, then it doesn't matter where the data is located if the company has presence in the country making the request.
At my company, we partition our data operations. Our EU data centers are operated by an EU subsidiary, nobody else in the parent company has access to the data or operational control. Same with our data centers in the US, Japan, and India.
The truth is, no one reads the bills anymore.
I read it, twice. I wrote two forty page submissions to government about why this Bill was bad. The bill was actually called telecommunication assistance act, and does not ban encryption, and actually has a clause preventing government from ordering any weakness insecurity for anyone other than the one individual in question.
What it does is order is a front door be constructed so that government can access everything.
The encryption laws are totally misunderstood and said wrong in media.
There is no back door or weakness.
Inherently, the bill does not define what a "systemic weakness" is whilst relying on it as a primary concept in the bill.
What the law does ask is that if the government gets a court order for a users information, the company needs to help by logging that particular users encryption key or password, next time they log in for instance.
No it does not. The Bill delegates powers through the Attorney General to the heads of various police department. Except the ones investigating government corruption - they are excluded from accessing these powers in pursuit of a politician.
It specifically criminalizes information technology professionals who do not want to have their skill set used to spy on fellow citizens through Technical Assistance Notices and other legal mechanisms to compel an innocent 3rd party to co-operate.
There is no law banning encryption.
Just by-passes it.
It actually changes nothing because judges can already order you to capture a password or encryption key for you, it just sets up a commission that makes the process faster.
10 years jail and $60,000 in fines for not co-operating hardly qualifies as no change. You need read these laws if you hope to understand why they are so bad.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.