Richard Forno, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Ransomware has crippled governments and companies around the world, encrypting data and demanding payment for the decryption key – though that’s no guarantee of recovering the information.
States like California have been at the forefront of privacy innovation in recent decades. A possible federal law could bring their experimentation to a halt, harming consumers.
Trump’s new executive order reflects a fear of sabotage, where an enemy such as China or Russia could turn off critical infrastructure like the internet or communications capability.
Electric utilities have a right to make money on their government-granted monopolies, but customers also have a right to know what cyber-protections they would get if they paid more.
The tightening of the May 18 race, coming after Scott Morrison was seen to out-campaign Bill Shorten at the start of the campaign, will boost Coalition morale as pre-polling begins on Monday.
Scott Morrison has bragged about ‘stopping the boats’, but his government has failed to do anything meaningful to bolster cyber security and stop the malware.
A forum of Australian tech companies this week was told the government’s encryption laws could see Australian jobs moved overseas. Labor’s promised to “fix” the laws, but that could be too late.
Current techniques to protect biometric details, such as face recognition or fingerprints, from hacking are effective, but advances in AI are rendering these protections obsolete.