Hacker News Reader

Comment by CiPHPerCoder | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> "This bill is far from perfect and there are likely to be significant outstanding issues, but this compromise will deliver security and enforcement agencies the powers they say they need over the Christmas period, and ensure adequate oversight and safeguards," shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said on Tuesday.

... shadow attorney-general? That sounds rather ominous.

View on HN

In parliamentary systems, parties in opposition commonly appoint members of Parliament as "shadow ministers" who keep track of (and speak on) issues that the parties in government have ministers handling. They can present the opposition's official position on these portfolios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Cabinet

Ah, good to know!

I thought, from first glance, that the next news headline would be "Shadow Council Already Owns Your Secrets [And Your Souls]" if this trend continued.

> but this compromise will deliver security and enforcement agencies the powers they say they need over the Christmas period

"We need this bill to keep you safe over Christmas" is an obscenely cynical justification to rush this bill through, esp since it's obvious no implementation changes based on this bill would be made in time for the holiday.

It's a ludicrous thing to say because the parts of the bill people are concerned with (technical assistance orders, ie: forcing companies to backdoor products) have no possible way to be acted on in the time period they are suggesting. So it is pretty much bald faced lying. And then you have to ask, if they are straight up lying about this, what are the real motivations? If we are lucky it's pure petty politics with a benign obliviousness to the fact they have just breached a major waterline in how far Western democracies are willing to break the internet. Hopefully we are that lucky.

Ha! It does, but it actually just means the opposition party's counterpart to the attorney-general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com