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British Police Demand Access To Encryption Keys
flip-flop writes "In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, police here in the UK have asked for sweeping new powers they claim will help them counter the threat. Among these is making it a criminal offense for people to refuse disclosing their encryption keys when the police want to access someone's files." From the article: "The most controversial of the police proposals is the demand to be able to hold without charge a terrorist suspect for three months instead of 14 days. An Acpo spokesman said the complexity and scale of counter-terrorist operations means the 14-day maximum is often insufficient."
Worse than that, what happens if your friend is storing the encrypted information on your PC and you *don't have* the decryption key?
Are the police really going to believe "I don't have it, they're not my files"?
The real measure of a free, open and just society is how it behaves in bad times - not in good times. When difficulties arise and the authorities want sweeping powers to 'protect' the citizens, should the citizens give up important civil liberties for what is probably just an illusion of safety? When are you ever safe enough in these times? Maybe the citizens should stop and ask themselves how much they really value their civil liberties - just how far should you go? Maybe the citizens should not crow too loudly about how free, open and just their society is when they look back at how their country has behaved in difficult times..
Among these is making it a criminal offense for people to refuse disclosing their encryption keys when the police want to access someone's files.
I'm not familiar with British law, but I do know American law is based on the same doctorines as the British(from a historical perspective at least).
In the U.S. the court can order you to provide encryption keys and if you do not you will be held in contempt of the court. This usually means the judge puts you in jail until you decide to provide the keys. To me(IANAL) it seems like the above just formalises the practice. Via the wikipedia reference it appears as though the U.S. did this in 1981.
Being held in contempt of the court is a very normal tool for judges to use with uncooperative court subjects, cryptographic keys aren't special or different.
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
And how exactly would you know this?
From the PGP FAQ:
Sure it is unlikely, but unless you have some way of proving what you say, it would be unwise to believe that no one can / will in the near future be able to crack or intercept your encrypted messages.Turn on the TV...look at the situation they were in. The only ones prosperous were the ones in power. That $$ (even the oil for food $$) went straight to Hussein and was not spent on food or upkeep of utilities. And don't do like the rest of the left and leave out all of the facts except the ones that support your case. He ATTACKED A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY. He left the oilfields burning when he realized he couldn't keep it for himself. He murdered so many they may never find all the mass graves. He fired upon allied airplanes in the no-fly zone more times than most people know. The list goes on and on.
If America cared so much about Hussein killing Iraqis, then why did they give him weapons to do it with? The United States never, ever, cared about the livelyhood of Iraqis. That's why they supported Saddam until he got uppity, and then (with the help of the UN) imposed sanctions that strangled the nation.
Don't give me a song and dance about how you helped free the Iraqi people by deposing Hussein. You helped subjugate them in the first place by propping him up.
Why were you propping him up? Because just a little while back, the other murdering dictator you propped up in Iran got overthrown.
Who else were you funding around that time? Oh, right.. your good friend Osama Bin Laden the freedom fighter.
Your country has its dirty, grubby little fingers all over the mess in the middle east. Why is that? Because the middle east has the substance that you need like a crackhead needs crack. You'll do anything to get it. You'll support dictators, you'll support terrorists, and you'll be friends with the country that the terrorists who attacked you came from.
And now I'm sure you'll be prepared with justifications for why it was OK for the US to support Saddam, and why it was OK for the US to support Osama - but then, people who do horrible things always have justifications for the things they do. Osama has a justification for flying planes into buildings full of civilans, and you have yours for supporting mass murderers.
But aside from tube junkies in America, few people in the rest of the world buy your story. You had an opportunity to show you had changed. You had an opportunity to gain the support of the world after 9/11. You blew it.
Have fun fighting your old friends.
-Laxitive
Check out Al Jazeera, if you can find it. Then you might see a sampling of what's really going on over there: shot after shot of dead civilians, including many kids. Many more shots of civilians, barely alive, lying in squalid hospital beds, the remains of their arms and legs wrapped in bandages after being blown off by bombs. Innocent civilians being harassed and humiliated at roadblocks, or worse if they panic and fail to comply with a shouted command they can't understand because it's in English.
You'll see footage of heavily armed US troops kicking in doors of houses, pointing their weapons at civilians, shouting (again in English!) at women and childen cowering in the corners and crying. You'll see picture after picture of abuse of prisoners in US prison camps and hear about people, most of them completely innocent even by admission of the US commanders, who disappear into them for years without charges, without lawyers and without any chance to defend themselves.
Every other day there seems to be yet another suicide bombing in Iraq that kills as many people as the one in London two weeks ago. That attack is still getting saturation coverage on the US networks, but the bombings in Iraq rate, at most, a brief mention each.
Arab culture is quite different from ours, and we can't assume they share our more abstract values like our Bill of Rights (that is, if we actually practiced them ourselves). But they belong to the very same species as we, so it does seem somewhat reasonable to believe that they, no more than we, like being killed or maimed or abused or imprisoned, or having that happen to our friends and families.
Still can't figure out why they hate us? Or are you going to tell me that all that footage is faked somehow?