Australia’s Prime Minister tends to be pretty pleased with himself, and plenty of other people seem to think of Malcolm Turnbull as the smartest guy in the room. Perhaps he sometimes he is.* Malcolm didn’t appear so smart, however, when presenting Australia’s proposal to require the tech giants to decrypt their customers’ encrypted messages. When ZDnet reporter Asha McLean suggested that “the laws of mathematics [might] trump the laws of Australia”, Malcolm was unfazed:
The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.
And yes, the Government’s plan (for want of a better word) is as clueless as Malcolm makes it sound.
We already knew that Malcolm was a scientific clown, an economic illiterate, a coward, a Luddite, an Orwellian thug and a moral midget. So, maybe it shouldn’t be a great surprise when Malcolm also turns out to be an anti-mathematical git.
* If the other people in the room are Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce.