Australia’s Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018, often known as TOLA, has received Royal Assent. It gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies new powers to seek assistance from communications providers.
Key points
- Applies to a broad range of ‘designated communications providers’, including telecoms, messaging, software and device providers with an Australian nexus.
- Introduces technical assistance requests, technical assistance notices and technical capability notices.
- Providers may be required to give assistance, including decryption where they already have the ability.
- Notices cannot require a ‘systemic weakness or vulnerability’ to be built into a product.
- Recipients are subject to strict secrecy obligations.
UK software, cloud and device providers with Australian customers may be in scope. Consider how your products and processes would respond to a notice and how this interacts with customer commitments on encryption.
Need help understanding what this change means for your organisation? Get in touch for a pragmatic, no-obligation conversation.
