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."

Comments

Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away

[SeanTobin]

Innocent until proven guilty. Although that statement is ignored just as often in the US as it is in England, laws that we pass try to at least give the impression that we respect it. So, here is how things go if this passes...

GoodGuy has a friend who is in some domestic trouble and is hiding some of his assets in off-shore accounts. He keeps his friends account information in an encrypted folder on his computer because his friend doesn't want to lose it and trusts him.

EvilAgentMan thinks GoodGuy is a terrorist planning on taking over the world, due to his recent purchase of a salt water aquarium, baby sharks, laser pointers and duct tape. He charges GoodGuy as being a EvilDoer(TM) and puts him in jail. While looking for evidence, he notices an encrypted folder on GoodGuy's computer. He tells GoodGuy that he must hand over his encryption keys or be charged with the crime of not handing over his encryption keys. He must decide on going to jail for something he is completely innocent of, or releasing potentially incriminating evidence on his friend. ...Time to get pricing on high speed internet access on the moon I guess. This planet's done for.

Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away

[Spad]

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"?

Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away

[Laxitive]

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

Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away

[Phil Karn]

Turn on the TV? Which channel? Fox News, our very own version of Pravda, with red, white and blue text banners and pundits foaming at the mouth about how it's treason to disagree with our Leader in time of war, a war which conveniently will never end? If that's all you watch, I can see why your view of the world is so screwed up.

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?

Encryption key

[bigwavejas]

Sure, you can have my encryption key. Here it is:
01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110

Re:Encryption key

[randm.ca]

That's amazing, I've got the same combination on my luggage!

Encryption Keys?

[Taevin]

Fortunately we have things like StegFS. But I really shouldn't be disclosing such information, some people in the govA*$%#)D$@#$NO CARRIER

Already an offense?

[moderators_are_w*nke]

I was pretty sure that the regulation of investigatory powers act (1998?) already made it an offense to refuse to disclose an encryption key?

Where are civil liberties truly valued?

[dd]

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..

demand encryption keys ? *yawn*

[dwbryson]

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.

DeCSS

[Henry V .009]

I use CSS encryption for all my privacy needs. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that it would be illegal for me to provide you the software code that breaks it.

Won't be long now

[Slightly Askew]

Uniting the Kingdom by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism

The Right to Prevent Self-Incrimination

[westcoaster004]

What is the difference between the right to prevent self-incrimination (i.e. the right to silence) and the right to not say your password?

In England and Wales, "a defendant cannot be convicted solely due to their silence" yet this is saying precisely the opposite.

Re:This is a major point

[symbolic]

They want encryption keys, but I dare say that not ONE of the investigators (or government officials) can point to a single connection between the recent stuff in London and encrypted information. They keep demanding solutions to problems that don't exist - that's why this stuff keeps happening. If they'd try to solve the problems that DO exist, they might get somehwere- WITHOUT becoming a police state.

Re:pfft

[Albanach]

not even NSA can decrypt them.

And how exactly would you know this?

From the PGP FAQ:

Q: Can the NSA crack PGP (or RSA, DSS, IDEA, 3DES,...)?

A: This question has been asked many times. If the NSA were able to crack RSA or any of the other well known cryptographic algorithms, you would probably never hear about it from them. Now that RSA and the other algorithms are very widely used, it would be a very closely guarded secret.

The best defense against this is the fact the algorithms are known worldwide. There are many competent mathematicians and cryptographers outside the NSA and there is much research being done in the field right now. If any of them were to discover a hole in one of the algorithms, I'm sure that we would hear about it from them via a paper in one of the cryptography conferences.

For this reason, when you read messages saying that "someone told them" that the NSA is able to break PGP, take it with a grain of salt and ask for some documentation on exactly where the information is coming from. In particular, the story called NSA Can Break PGP Encryption is a joke.

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.