alt Hacker News > Tucked away neatly in Australian law is the concept that a phone that is not iPhone or Android is a criminal device, similar to owning lockpicks. Something like GrapheneOS.
My query:
> "is it illegal in australia to have a mobile phone that does not use iphone or android?"
> Owning, buying, and using an encrypted phone is legal in Australia, and so is installing a different operating system on a device you own.
Also, dumb phones are certainly not illegal. Plenty of old folks still use them.
The Dedicated Encrypted Criminal Communication Device Prohibition Orders Bill 2022 introduced law that says it is illegal to posess a modified communication device (ambiguous) that is encrypted (or otherwise impedes law enforcement from snooping). It has some nuance to who it applies to in that you need to already be under suspicion of a serious crime, but there is a great deal of other pretty trivial things that can put you under suspicion. It's ambiguous enough (in my opinion) that it could pretty easily be targeted at a regular joe by an eager enforcer. I did not feel then nor now, that the qualifiers were sufficient enough to protect against abuse.