Rubenerd

Last week I commented on the Australian government’s proposed draconian encryption backdoors. The agencies tasked with soliciting industry feedback should return a single comment: break encryption, and you’ll break the economy, to say nothing of civil liberties.

Faced with irritating things like mathematical certainty, facts, and a reluctant opposition party, what is a politician to do? It’s so laughably predictable I feel it’s an insult to your intelligence even quoting it. As Siobhan Kenna reported:

[Finance minster Mathias] Cormann told Sky News on Sunday that Labor is deliberately playing games with the proposed laws, which aim to give Australian security and police agencies the power to access encrypted communications on services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Viber.

Oh, but it gets much better.

“To think that Labor would want terrorists to able to communicate with each other… I think that Labor are using excuses.”

This is gutter politics emblematic of desperation. When you’re terminal in the polls, whip up unjustified fear and anger.