But that hasn’t stopped the tech industry, as well as tech activists from around the world, from weighing in, ignoring the political reality facing all democracies. What’s missing from a debate long shaped by encryption is that democracy functions on sensible compromises. And the many encryption advocates, whether they recognise it or not, tend toward an absolutist stand. This is perhaps because the libertarian concepts around tech were first popularised years ago, when such technology, including the internet, was a niche activity that didn’t require such geopolitical considerations. Today those who oppose basic, fundamental, democratic compromise between Western states and the tech industry are often ignorant of the politics of our time. It’s not simply a battle between the individual and the law-based state. Rather, it’s a battle between the rules-based states and the authoritarians. And the authoritarians have shown technological competency that would stun Western technologists of yore who could only see their own governments as threats to their personal freedom.

One can’t simply engineer their way out of this impasse between tech and Western government, either. The West simply needs a new kind of culture around technology and politics, and it should reflect the world as we find it, not as we wish it. This new tech culture should recognise that the fight has changed. It’s no longer the individual against the government. Rather, our governments need to uphold our rights in the face of authoritarian influence across all platforms of technology. China has the capacity to build a technological reality that rivals, and even dominates, our own. But it's not just China. Russia is a factor, too, when you consider how it reverse engineered social media to serve authoritarian ends rather than those of its native democracy.

Maybe it's time for those in the tech industry and activists to accept that the very system of law they use to defend themselves is now under threat, and with it all expectations that they have for a lawful world in which the individual is not coerced by the state. If they find Western government laws onerous, they should have a look at China’s or Russia’s. This doesn’t mean the Assistance and Access Bill can’t be improved. It doesn’t mean the oversight shouldn’t be robust. What it does mean, however, is that governments like Australia’s aren’t the only ones to be wary of.