Australia-US ‘Cyber Cooperation’ Sounds Ominous For Data Sovereignty

Following the meeting of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and US President Barack Obama, we’re told the two countries are going to increasingly co-operate on cyber issues. That doesn’t sound like great news for data sovereignty (or privacy in general).

Picture: Getty Images

The detail in the statement from the White House is extremely vague:

The United States and Australia are also working to strengthen cooperation on space and cyber issues, including cyber defense and cyber security incident response.

Firstly: in Australia, it’s cyber defence. Secondly, working together on cyber-defence could easily lead to a slippery slope where NSA-style spying activities become the norm. Again, we’d need to see more detail, but I doubt this is going to make people already worried about data sovereignty any happier.


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