CANBERRA, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Australia's National Cyber Security Adviser, Alastair MacGibbon, has attacked technology companies for their "absurd" opposition to proposed encryption laws.
Technology giants including Apple, Google and Facebook have condemned the proposed laws, which would grant law enforcement agencies the power to access encrypted messages, as a threat to privacy and security.
Responding to those claims in a newspaper column on Monday, MacGibbon said that the technology companies had been invading the privacy of Australians for their own gain for years.
"Remember, to the companies lining up to criticise this bill, we Australian consumers are already their product," he wrote in The Australian.
He rejected the notion that the laws would introduce "backdoors into systems" for law enforcement or that private data could be accessed without judicial oversight.
"The draft bill explicitly states that technical assistance and technical capability notices must not require providers to implement or build systemic weaknesses in forms of electronic protection, nor can they prevent providers from fixing an identified weakness or vulnerability," he said.
"As a former eSafety Commissioner, I know the bill has the potential to catch more child sex offenders using encrypted devices.
"As the National Cyber Security Adviser, I am confident that this bill will not systemically weaken Australia's cyber security."
The government is racing against the clock to pass the new laws before the end of the year with Monday marking the beginning of Parliament's final sitting fortnight of 2018.
However, the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence must deliver its report on the bill before it can be taken to a vote.
The committee met on Monday and heard submissions from the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Home Affairs Department.
Peter Dutton, the Minister for Home Affairs, wrote a letter to the committee earlier in November demanding that it immediately report its findings and allow the bill to progress to Parliament.
