ABSTRACT

In August 2021, the Commonwealth government passed the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act 2021 (Cth), authorising warrants that enable government hacking for investigation of past or future crimes. This article analyses the Act to understand the potential intrusions of data disruption warrants on the privacy of individuals. Taking the importance of privacy as extending beyond the individual to the collective political health of the community, it assesses whether the intrusions on privacy by data disruption warrants are limited to what is necessary to address problems that are demonstrated by the government, and whether its use is limited to what is proportionate to achieve these legitimate aims. The analysis reveals there has been some attempt by the government to ensure necessity and proportionality. However, there are significant shortcomings to these safeguards that must be ameliorated. Further, the analysis demonstrates that the government justified these new powers with disproportionate reference to the need to curb online child sexual exploitation. The Act offers a compelling case study of securitisation of online child sexual exploitation to legitimate wide-ranging changes to digital surveillance powers. Recommendations are made for the urgent improvement of the Act.

摘要

2021 年 8 月，联邦政府通过了《2021 年监视立法修正案（识别和破坏）法》(Cth)，授权授权令，使政府能够对过去或未来的犯罪进行黑客攻击。本文分析该法案，以了解数据中断权证对个人隐私的潜在侵犯。考虑到隐私的重要性超越个人，延伸到社区的集体政治健康，它评估了数据破坏权对隐私的侵犯是否仅限于解决政府证明的问题所必需的，以及它的使用是否仅限于与实现这些合法目标相称的程度。分析表明，政府已尝试确保必要性和相称性。然而，这些保障措施存在重大缺陷，必须加以改进。更远，分析表明，政府通过不成比例地提到需要遏制在线儿童性剥削来证明这些新权力是正当的。该法案提供了一个令人信服的案例研究，将在线儿童性剥削的证券化到合法的数字监控权力的广泛变化。建议紧急改进该法案。