CANBERRA, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has unveiled new laws that would compel technology companies to disclose encrypted data relating to criminal activity.
Under the new laws, announced by Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Minister Angus Taylor on Tuesday, companies that refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies could face financial sanctions.
Taylor said the new laws were a much-needed update to current legislation which was drafted before smartphones became commonplace.
"We know that more than 90 percent of data lawfully intercepted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) now use some form of encryption," he said in a statement, "This has directly impacted around 200 serious criminal and terrorism-related investigations in the last 12 months alone."
"We must ensure our laws reflect the rapid take-up of secure online communications by those who seek to do us harm," he said.
While the new laws will strengthen law enforcement in Australia they will not grant authorities the right to create a "back door" to access a suspect's devices.
"We believe encryption is absolutely crucial to protecting Australians. So the legalization explicitly excludes the potential for law enforcement to ask industry to create a weakness in their encryption systems," Taylor told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
However, if granted a search warrant to monitor a suspect's phone, law enforcement will be able to remotely access the device, view decrypted messages and search for and delete content.
"Those crimes in the case of a computer access warrant must be serious. It's not any crime, it's got to be a serious crime. So it's three years' imprisonment or higher," Taylor said.
