Twitter alarmed as Australia mulls account takeover warrants

New Delhi, Feb 16 : Facing intense political heat in India, Twitter has raised an alarm at an upcoming surveillance bill in Australia that has proposed a new account takeover warrant which, if passed, will let law enforcement agencies take control of a person’s online account for the purposes of gathering evidence about serious offences.
The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 would hand over three new warrants to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) to deal with online crime on social media platforms.
The Surveillance Bill contains three new types of warrants — Data Disruption Warrants, Network Activity Warrants and Account Takeover Warrants.
Twitter, however, is more concerned about the account takeover warrant and in its reply to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) review into the Surveillance Bill 2020, the micro-blogging platform said the proposed computer warrants are “antithetical” to democratic law.
“Twitter is concerned that the proposed Bill will allow law enforcement direct access to data regardless of the location of the server, without requiring knowledge of such access being provided to the service provider, and in the case of Account Takeover Warrants, absent the agreement of an appropriate consenting official of the relevant foreign country where the warrant would be enforced,” the company elaborated in its reply.
According to the company, the account takeover warrants pose sweeping expansions to surveillance powers and covert activities that “could impact Twitter’s platform and operations inside and outside of Australia”.