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Comment by honzzz | Hacker News Reader

Are you not afraid that Australian laws will affect your employability even overseas? I am not sure if Australian citizens can be forced to comply with that anti-encryption legislation when they live outside of Australia but the insecurity itself could motivate some(?) companies to avoid employing Australian citizens. Can you estimate the impact?

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One a person leaves a country, they are not under the jurisdiction of the laws of that country in any meaningful way. If he leaves Oz for, say, Denmark, Australian law has zero effect on him other than those agreed upon diplomatic agreements between said countries. Any tech laws he may have been under in Oz have zero bearing on him in Denmark. The Oz government would be risking a throttling if they tried to get him to act as a "spy" and insert bad code into a product in Denmark. At that point, he could approach the Danish government, ask for asylum, and it would likely be granted.

I left Fastmail over the recent Oz decision with encryption. I was a paying customer since 2002. It pained me horribly to leave, but I had no choice over principle.

Other than diplomatic norms, once a person leaves a country, he is bound by the laws of the receiving country. I base this on common knowledge and also having lived in 5 countries myself.

Australia and New Zealand are rapidly becoming draconian. I have friends in both countries. They are thinking of leaving because of all of this. The entire knee-jerk reaction to guns in NZ is but the latest in a long line of stupidities the Kiwi and Aussie governments have been up to. For example, in NSW, if you have a knife painted green, you can go to jail because it's a "zombie knife". Think I'm joking? Look it up. The last "free" state in Oz is QLD. The rest of them are up to their necks in draconian stupidity.

The problem is that few people can leave a clean slate. If one's parents or other relatives remain in the country, not being able to visit them there is very vexing.

Not in the US and not for the type of company that can afford me.

Why?

If Australians are legally obliged to implement back-doors on behalf of the Australian government and not mention it to their employer, why would any of these tech companies want you?

You'd be a massive security liability to them.

Because Australia is part of the 5 eyes. Any backdoor put in place would have been blessed by some three letter agency from the US already. Any firm that can pay the wages I expect will have a government contract and lawyers on staff who understand how this works.

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