Australia has become the first country to propose new laws forcing technology companies, such as Apple and Facebook, to help police decode encrypted messages in criminal or terrorist investigations.
“We need to ensure that the internet is not used as a dark place for bad people to hide their criminal activities from the law,” Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister, said on Friday.
The new law is due to be introduced to parliament later this year and will be modelled on similar legislation passed in the UK, which gives police some of the most extensive surveillance powers in the western world. But the UK authorities do not yet have powers to force companies to break end-to-end encryption of messages.