Richardson made dozens of recommendations for how such a new Act should work, and 203 recommendations in total.
It took an entire year for the government to respond, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic s impact on business, but eventually, in its formal response of December 2020, it agreed that such a reform was needed.
Indeed, the government agreed, or agreed in principle, to the vast majority of Richardson s unclassified recommendations. The central area for reform is a new electronic surveillance Act, which will be a new landmark in Australia s national intelligence legislation, the government wrote. A new electronic surveillance Act will be generational in its impact. This legislation will require careful and detailed consideration, with extensive public consultation, to establish a framework that will support Australia s intelligence collection and law enforcement agencies in the years to come.
Australian Labor Party
Scott Morrison’s dud National Broadband Network is failing to deliver the legally-required minimum broadband speed of 25 megabits per second to nearly a quarter of a million Australian homes and businesses.
Despite Communications Minister Paul Fletcher declaring the NBN “built and fully operational”, an NBNCo report released quietly two days before Christmas says the network is failing to meet the legislated minimum download speeds for downloads for up to 238,000 household and businesses.
It is a requirement of both the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Act 2020 and the NBN Statement of Expectations that all Australians have access to minimum broadband speeds of 25 megabits per second.
Onfokus / Getty Images
Australian privacy, legal, and digital rights organisations have just weeks to comment on proposed federal legislation that would, among other things, let federal investigators take over suspects’ social media accounts as part of investigations into cybercriminal activity on the dark web.
Introduced last month by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, the proposed Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 (I&D Bill) introduces three new warrants designed to help Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) investigators to investigate and disrupt malicious online cybercriminal campaigns.
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