Slashdot Mirror
Backlash Against British Encryption Law
gardenermike writes "The BBC is reporting on some backlash against the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that came into force in 2000, which makes it a criminal act to refuse to decrypt files on a computer. Not surprisingly, the bugaboos of child pornography and terrorism, while unquestionably heinous, are being used to justify a law which does little to protect against either.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury is quoted 'You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy by undermining them, that's the road to hell.'"
Does somebody posessing some bits on a computer equal somebody who posses plans to blow me up? Obviously a crime went into the making of the file. But it's quite easy to have stuff on your hard disk that you didn't knowingly download. Should a nasty video that happen to got downloaded with something else make you a criminal? So certain bit patterns make one a felon?
Any time you disagree with the latest reduction of your civil liberties by government, it must be because you are hiding something. If you disagreed with the tactics of Joe McCarthy, it must have been because you were a pinko. If you don't want your phone calls listened to, you must be a terrorist. If you disagree with this law, its because you are a kiddie porn collector.
Guy Fawkes masks in 4...3...2..
You say you want a revolution....
Backslash? I thought the article was under IT? MY BRAIN!
That's why I'm with Captain America!
This is one of the reasons that Stand formed, way back when. I remember writing to my Member of Parliament, trying to argue against the Bill's usefulness. It was forwarded to Charles Clarke, who replied in boilerplate about the risks of terrorism, fraud, child porn, and all the things that are as irrelevant today as they were then.
If they could get the provisions approved in 2000, then it'll be even easier for them in the "post September 11th world".
I guess they don't really have the fifth amendment. Like here.
He wrote The government must be forced to reveal the costs of implementing identity card legislation
Because you are going to decrypt your terrorist documents to avoid a slap on the wrist?
Sine New Labour came to power back in 1997, we have had more laws passed relating to Criminality thane ever before.
It is widely acknoweledged that many of these laws are badly thought out and despite the attempts of the House of Lords to revise them, they are actually inneffectual and sometimes impossible to enforce by both the Police and the Courts.
This is one of those laws.
There was huge amounts of SPIN associated with its passage through parliament. Sort of like "This law will save the world"
Now, just a few years later (in legal terms this is still a new law) we get this ack that it is not all it was cracked up to be.
No, what professions did our beloved leaded follow before he became a politician?
He was a barrister. So is his wfie.
So, I ask you, why can't a TWO lawyer family make sure that they get more appropriate laws passed?
The reason is that bad laws make for lots of money coming the way of lawyers who make the bad laws in the first place.
A self perpetuating circle.
I'm posting this annon as I don't want a knock on the door at 04:00 tomorrow from our esteemed police force.
the bugaboos of child pornography ... while unquestionably heinous ... you're playing right into the hands of the police state. Sure, child pornography is REALLY REALLY EVIL! Certainly, children are not at all sexual and have no sexual thoughts or desires until the day they turn 18! The 1st amendment only applies to free expression and art that middle class Christians approve of! Each and every time somebody looks at a child being given sexual pleasure, that child is directly abused. This right-wing puritanical society makes me sick.
Sure they are, sure they are
Rather than making it a crime to not decrypt encrypted files, they could go the positive incentive route. For example, they could, if Joe Blow unlocks his uncrypted files for them, ensure nothing bad will happen to his kids, such as them being forced to perform sex acts on the chief of police.
--- What?
I suppose it makes coding in APL (without documentation) a crime.
Where were you when the voynix came?
What people need to understand is that the current administrations (both in the U.K. and in the U.S.) are not trying to secure the liberty of their respective countries. They're trying to secure their own power and the power of their paymasters (the big multinational corporations). They're intentionally turning both countries into fascist police states, step by step.
I'd say the U.K. is in the lead on that one, but only by a small margin.
The worst thing about it is that once you lose your liberties in this way, you almost never get them back except through bloody revolution, which is something that can no longer succeed thanks to the technological situation (which concentrates much more killing power in the hands of the government than it did back in the 1700's when most of the democratic revolutions took place). That means the loss is essentially permanent.
Enjoy what freedom you have left. I won't last,
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
...just name your encrypted files random.xx, and claim that they are not encrypted at all? They are just local entropy bits you consume for testing software.
Nerd Rock In Progress
"Joe Blow unlocks his uncrypted files for them, ensure nothing bad will happen to his kids, such as them being forced to perform sex acts on the chief of police."
With such a surname, this might be a problem that everyone in this family might run into.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Maybe it's the history of the British fight against the IRA, but it seems to me that the British people have been a little more tolerant of state intrusion than Americans. What I infer is happening now is that the overboard Orwellianism of the current British government is reaching a tipping point where a lot of Brits are wondering, "How much is too much?".
Unfortunately, in the US, I think we're nowhere close to that tipping point yet... and quite honestly, I'm not sure that a majority of the public is aware of how little freedom[1] they have, nor of how long it will take for that mindset to change.
At any rate, It's good to see that someone is vocally taking a stance (won't happen by a major figure in the US; too much conserative/moderate vote-pandering -- heaven forbid you're 'weak on terra').
[1] Besides the obvious encroachments on our traditional liberties, what about the freedom to elect whom we choose? Corporate sponsorship of candidates, the two-party system; these all contribute to mass disenfranchisement (never mind about vote tabulation fraud and individual disenfranchisements).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Encrypted data is much easier to hide than non-encripted data. Just like terrorists or paedophiles have "wised-up" and started encrypting, they might just as easily develop techniques for hiding their stuff.
A law like this might help them with a couple of cases, but ultimately will become less and less useful against the worst criminals.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Some one needs to mod GPG to include Steganography
One password decrypts to unimportant data, the other provides your true payload.
Then when they demand your password, you give them the first one. You have met the law and have plausible deniability.
It's great, this law gives the police an opportunity to put anyone they want in prison.
(1) Grab someone's computer.
(2) Find a binary file containing more-or-less random data, or pick an image on their machine and claim it has stegonometric data embedded in it.
(3) Demand the password for this "data".
(4) Jail the "miscreant" when he claims he doesn't know.
I would like to know, in what way is this law different from court warrant powers demanding one open up their home or safe to police holding said warrant? To refuse law enforcement means risking contempt of court or possibly obstruction of justice. So the government now gets to demand information locked up in a different way. But in what way are the powers of law enforcement different between searching physical property with a warrant vs. digital files?
In case you do want to crypt your files and when forced by an official of this oppressive regime to decrypt them, you make sure that you use TrueCrypt http://www.truecrypt.org/ From the page: Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password: 1) Hidden volume. 2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data). So with one password you can open a volume that 'appears' to be what you needed to encrypt, but still hides the files that you intended to crypt in the first place. Good free software, perfect for us working with laptops.
As I was saying elsewhere, the UK has a history of passing stupid laws, and then having the rest of the country ignore or bypass them.
For example, we have a law saying that all schools must provide daily worship of a predominantly Christian nature. Over three-quarters of schools in the country are simply breaking the law or finding loopholes. As a result, the law is being relaxed, and will probably be disposed of entirely before long.
If you are approaching this from an American perspective, where bad laws like the DMCA are routinely enforced, then I can see how this might be considered an absolute disaster in terms of liberty. But from a British perspective, it's just another law to be ignored, and if anybody tries to use it, there'll be an uproar. As things stand, it hasn't even been used and there's already a backlash that has reached the House of Lords.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
What about an encryption/compression scheme where the cyphertext decrypts to one, two or more different plaintexts depending on the password provided? The scheme should actually fill the cyphertext with lots of random data, so no clues are given towards the number of encrypted payloads contained.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
I read something here a long time ago, and I think I'll repost it in it's entirety because it's just that important:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:
"If they're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
I just watched Lord of War . . . there's a great scene there where the movie's stand-in for Charles Taylor of Liberia tosses a newspaper in front of Nicholas Cage's character, circa Election 2000, and says more or less that he feels much more secure in power now because our "kangaroo court" has made a mockery of Democracy, and now the United States must "shut up forever" its criticism of his own country's dubious democratic processes. All I could think of was ouch! that hurt.
If there has been one New Labour contribution to our system of justice, it has been to make sure that the burden of proof is as light as possible. One may now be arrested for things that were never arrestable offences... and have to give a DNA sample. Lovely.
But how do TrueCrypt volumes look to a forensic tool with regard to the mere *amount* of data they contain?
If a 16GB volume reveals only ~1mb of racy pics after you meet their decryption demands, you can bet they'll apply some force towards determining the probability of hidden contents being present after the outer container is revealed. How strong is the deniability of having further data present?
Pi Ran Out
How stiff are the penalties for not decrypting the files? If the offense that the criminal has ostensibly committed (terrorism and paedophilia were the two mentioned in the article) carries a hefty jail sentence, wouldn't they be likely to say, "Okay, I'll take the six months for not letting you see my files", rather than the more severe punishment their crime deserves?
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
If such a thing is really constitutional, then it should also be constitutional to demand that anyone accused of murder turn over the body or imprision them forever in contempt of court. You'd just better pray that you actually did commit the murder, or you may never get out.
What you need is a double decryption key. Decrypts your files one way with one key, and into something innocuous when decrypted by a second key.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It is perfectly reasonable for the government to demand a key to obatin evidence upon a reciept of a warrent signed by a judge for a criminal investigation. Where in the world does anyone get the idea that don't have an obligation to comply with a lawful court order?
Does the poster believe thate people have the right to flout thier obligation to hand over evidence demanded by the governmnet or by the orther party in a civil proceeding.
Yes I can image how this line of reasoning would have worked in the Enron case,
Ken Lay> Ohh no, we have to give the prosecutor our finanical records, which will implicate us in a multi billion dollar stock fraud scheme
Lawyer>No you don't, all you have to do is encrypt them and refuse to hand over the keys!!
Ken Lay>Brilliant!!
Whawt kind of freedom is that when you deny victims of crimes and torts access to the information they lawfully demand? Sounds more like tyranny to me.
I for 1 appluad the British for standing up for justice over deranged cries of lost liberty.
It's one of the things that genuinely scares me about people in the US, that they will blindly follow any law no matter how stupid, ill-conceived or intrusive.
Here in the UK, we will follow the law, unless it's inconvenient (speed limits), unpopular (drug laws), badly thought-out (foxhunting ban) or merely obscure (did you know that all men in England are required to practice archery for an afternoon a week? Not required in Scotland, Wales or NI, and possibly repealed in England now).
Where have I seen this post before.... oh right... on Slashdot, by other people.
My server
Here's what the police are saying
At first, I read the title as "Backlash Against British Encryption Law Against British Law". The sad part is, I wasn't surprised.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
As if this isn't confusing enough already, in a few days we'll see a slashdot item: "Backslash: Backlash Against British Encryption Law Against British Law". It might generate some backlash too.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I have only one thing to say to that... TERRORIST!!!
Hopefully you got the joke.
If only the US politicians could understand that.
By encrypting data on your computer that you don't know about or writing a program that does so using windows exploits ?
These days just encrypting is hardly the only option. Files can be hidden in the NTFS data stream where most security analysts won't find them anyway. The new face of encryption is plausable deniability.
Certainly I would expect to get into a good deal of legal trouble as a result.
Now, instead of writing my secrets on paper and storing them in a safe, I write them on disk and encrypt them strongly. When the police arrive with their search warrant, why shouldn't I be obliged to decrypt the contents of my disks, just as much as I would be obliged to open my safe?
There's plenty else in the RIP Act to despise, and the implementation is bad throughout, but the principle isn't quite as appalling as it seems.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
...is necessary for the functioning of our society ... who knew?
The definition of the individual has changed with the concept of the extension of human perception. The computer is a tool, an extension of human experience, like hands and eyes. My computer is a part of me. It permits me to do considerably more than I could without it. Cut off my hands and feet, and I am also more limited. My argument to this law is that my computer and all it contains is a part of my own information system. Forcing me to decrypt or even provide access to my computer is no different than forcibly extracting data from my brain or requireing me to incriminate myself. Just because it is easy to read my hard drive does not make it permissible.
Well, in some cases it seems that the mere presence of trace-hiding or encryption technology has been used to insinuate guilt. That's wrong.
In my case, I'm an amateur photographer. I have some various pictures of women I know, all above the age of consent, and taken (or given to me) with permission. Some are friends, others may have been previous relationships (usually deleted at the termination of the relationship), etc. However, I wouldn't want my friends or especially my current gf to look at them. I personally wouldn't want cops looking at them either, nor would the subject of the picture likely want them to.
Now, as I said I'm just an amateur/hobbyist. There are plenty of other cases where some material may be private, but not illegal. In some of these cases the material may even be professional. Clients would be rather upset if photographer X's collection of pictures were seized and viewed by unwanted persons. Said clients might be even more concerned if they were shown in a courtroom full of people (lawyer displaying photo and asking "are you SUUUUURE that this person is of legal age").
Some things are private, or personal, and there they many reasons to have material protected. Pictures are one case, confidential client/business information, medical records, and others exist. There are cases where even in a courtroom, one might be reticent to have it display unless particular privacy conditions were met, and/or there was time to notify concerned parties. You should be able to prove within reasonable doubt that the files in question are in fact legal, but private material.
And further to that. Let's say you are a photographer in the above situation, maybe an amateur. You do release the key(s) to your various files so that the cops can view them. The find another file which looks suspicious, and demand access. However, that file is actually just swap data, something that you don't have a password to (I download various things that end up password-protected, with the buggers online wanting me to hit their website and click banners to get a key), or just an otherwise nonsense file. Well, now how am I to prove that file X, which police are demanding access to, is in fact something I cannot provide access to, whether or not I am willing?
Digital files are amorphous by nature, and unlike a safe or some other well-defined object there isn't a magical way to strongly determine what they all contain.
Since private domain is ever decreasing these days, it seems that the answer to providing security for your personal data lies less and less with encryption as it does with where your encrypted data physically is. Encrypt the data (providing one LEGAL layer of security) then store THE ONLY COPY/COPIES with entities that provide more LEGAL layers of security ( bank safe deposit / server farm ). Maybe keep a hard drive at a bank's safe deposit box and visit it when you need the data (taking a laptop with you). If you can find a server farm with a robust, enforceable privacy policy, and a good track record, then that may be the way to go. This provides more legal loop holes for others to jump through to get to your information. It would be nice if simply encrypting your information would be enough. But, alas, we must press on and play the legal game.
To get a little philosophical, the sad part is that like every tool/technology mankind is blessed with, it can be used for both good and evil. But, it is NEVER the right answer to attack the tool/technology. The only thing we can do is to correct the problems that cause individuals to use the given tool/technology for evil rather than good.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Just make up some random bullshit and say that that is the decrypted file.
Slight OT, but what does the community here make of rsync.net warrant canary
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
They have a statement, updated weekly, that says that they have never been served a warrant.
Their reasoning is that they can be forced to not inform their userbase that a warrant has been issued, but they believe that they cannot be forced to continue updating the canary page. As such if the page stops updating, we can assume that they either got lazy or were served a warrant.
Because the "Bugaboos" are either a park in British Columbia or a trendy pram.
The people they claim to want to catch don't store incriminating anything on their home computers anymore. They don't even use their home comp. to access anything incriminating. They all do what I do which is use a linux-live cd to access the internet on an old P2 box that they have just laying around that just has a cd drive so nothing the cops can use is ever retained. They also never go online directly so there true IP is never trackable because they don't spend enough time doing anything for patterns to develope. I don't use these tactics to hide any illegal activities, I just want to develope a way to safely excercise my rights without some law as yet unwritten biting me on the ass for something I do now.
This is something that comes up again and again in British politics - it's never the elected representatives who stand up for justice, freedom from tyranny, the common rights of the common man; it's always the unelected, completely privileged members of the house of Lords who cock a snook at the government of the day, and make a stand on these issues.
:-)
:-)
Strange, that it's precisely the people who are voted into power who abuse it, but the "undemocratic" "establishment" figures are the ones who defend it. Sad, really. The lords can do and say what they like because they're not elected (well, some (all?) are, now), and that freedom is worth something to others.
When Tony Blair said he was going to abolish the house of Lords, I thought "there goes democracy in Britain", I've lost count of the number of times the Lords have told the government (and I mean *both* parties here, both Tory and Labour) of the day to re-think something because the effect on the least-fortunate or most-vulnerable in society is too extreme. Partly it comes because they're *not* elected, part because of the social contract inherent in British society, partly because as individuals they *are* partisan, so the {labour} lords will pick apart the {tory} government policies and vice versa. It's a weird typically-British hotch-potch of conflicts, but somehow it all works... You'd never get it past a "government design" planning committe...
The government can always bulldoze a bill through parliament if it gets rejected/resubmitted by the Lords 3 times (I think), but that creates news, and normally when a bill is that bad, news is not what the government want... The Lords act as a counter-balance to over-eager legislation. It *is* weird, but it works quite well
Thank [insert random deity] for the Lords
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
What provision is there for people who genuinely have lost or forgotten their passwords. I live in the U.S. so the U.K. laws would not affect me, but I have a stack of old hard drives from several computers which I have owned over the years. I also have stacks of old back-up tapes, CDs, DVDs and floppy disks. I used the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption program from the late 1990s until about 2002 or so, but no longer know the passphrases.
In addition to running PGP under Windows, I dual boot into Linux and have tried out several different Linux encryption programs over the years. I know some but not all of the pass-phases. Over the years, I have used several different versions of Linux on different partitions on each hard drive so there is gigabytes of abandoned stuff on various ext2, ext3, Reiser, Fat16, Fat32, and NTFS partitions on the various hard drives. I have been planning to try out both the free Windows and Linux versions of GnuPG and hope to remember my pass-phrases this time.
My occasional encrypted files typically contain personal information such as daily blood pressure readings, weight records, medical records, old love letters, investment allocation plans, checkbook balances, and my college transcripts. I also encrpyted some folders and other files just as practice. If I lived in the U.K. I could get in serious trouble for "refusing" to decrypt those files. I could tell them that my lost pass-phrases might be on a piece of paper in my metal storage shed but that rats made a nest in there and chewed up most of the paper.
What are your odds of multiple random crashes with 18 wheel diesel-powered terrorist pedophiles?
Molesting a few children and taking pictures of it is definitely nowhere NEAR as bad as killing hundreds of people (including dozens of children). But crimes against children evoke a far more visceral revulsion in people than just pushing a button that blows some people up. In fact, the difference in how people respond to immoral acts has been studied with interesting results.
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-04/features/who se-life-would-you-save/
Basically it seems to come down to how directly someone is involved in an immoral act. A suicide bomber is somewhat more removed from their crime than someone who's right in there hurting children with their bare hands. Similarly, a politician who initiates military actions that cause tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths (by, say, ordering the firebombing of a city) probably wont be held to even the slightest level of accountability, because he is so incredibly far removed from the acts. He certainly wont be considered as evil as someone who had torched that city in person. And a hypothetical arsonist who burned down a city wouldn't be considered as evil as someone who personally lit even just one or two people on fire -- even though the former caused a vastly greater number of deaths. It's a funny little quirk of how our moral instincts work, and it highlights the importance of applying reasoning to our moral judgements.
Seriously though -- I suggest you ask a rape victim sometime: would it have been equally unpleasant if you had been killed instead? See how many of them take you seriously. Then note how many rape victims have gone on to relatively normal lives. Hint: it's an awful lot of them. Statistics say that 1 in 4 women experiences sexual assault of some kind during her life. Do you see 1 in 4 women wishing she'd been killed instead? Do you see 1 in 4 women spending the rest of their lives hiding in their basement with a baseball bat because they can't go on with life? Are 1 in 4 women effectively dead?
Murder > Rape. Deal with it. That doesn't mean that rape isn't a serious crime worthy of serious punishment. It's just that it's stupid to suggest that they're just as bad as each other.
seems good old england is awash with stupid laws, idiots in the media falling for the spin doctors, and lawyers wanting all the money.
Look what i found Blog takes on lawyers and 2 Scottish newspapers
better be an anonymous coward then, incase I get the knock too.
- Theft
- Willful disregard for laws that ration and coordinate the use of limited public resources
- Not actually crimes
- Crimes that maybe shouldn't be crimes
My responses can be summarized as follows:If we, the people, ever want to be in control of things, we need to start exercising our power again. If you let them keep and pass overly broad (yet constitutional) laws under the assumption that they won't be enforced under a certain set of conditions, what will you do when Sheriff John Brown decides to (or gains the resources to) enforce them?
A court can't, or rather shouldnt be able to, order someone to provide evidence against themselves.
A court can provide authority to search certain places for something, that's about it.
Afaik, a person is not under obligation to provide information they possess through which they may end up incriminating themselves (ie, they have the right to remain silent). For example, would you think it's ok if a court orders someone to tell the location of stolen items and then fine/convict that person if he doesn't say where they are without even convicting the person of stealing the items in the first place. Otoh, if they were able to prove that the items were stolen, yes then obviously they can ask for the items or equivalent restititution.
Am I allowed to own this album (the link is to it's artwork) in the USA then?
n snareshorseandgoat.jpg
http://www.phinnweb.org/links/artists/pic/venetia
Will you be in violation of the law for looking at it?
I'm not British, but I'm sure we American's brought over "contempt of court" from Britain as a ruling a judge can sentence a defendant with. If it's Super-Crime-Boss-John and he has everything encrypted on his computer then says "Gosh, forgot the password, don't know why I would have encrypted it anyway--nothing but email from Mom on the PC," an American judge will charge him with of contempt of court 99 times out of 100 and put him in jail unless and until he wants to change his mind (within reason). Meanwhile (if serious enough, anyway) you can get some dudes to brute force it open and, besides, they can take all the time they want to do it since John is sitting his contemptous ass in jail. I can't imagine it too terribly different in the UK. Perhaps Brits sometimes suffer from the same disease as Yanks wherein they don't use the laws they have and create unnecessary controversy from over-reaching politicians deperate to get recognition.
I am not the only one who has problems properly remembering information about my old records. As you have probably heard, NASA has recently lost the 698 of the original 700 boxes of TV broadcasts from the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. These were of a much higher resolution that what me and millions of other people saw on our TVs back in 1969. The conversion process for the live TV resulted in the much lower quality image that was seen by hudreds of millions of televison viewers. They recently lost 698 of the higher resolution original tapes of the original moon landing before the public ever got to see them.
It's OK if NASA can't remember where they put 698 reels of tape of the original moon landing but is not OK of I can't remember a password to an encrypted file of my blood pressure readings.
Maybe it's the history of the British fight against the IRA, but it seems to me that the British people have been a little more tolerant of state intrusion than Americans. What I infer is happening now is that the overboard Orwellianism of the current British government is reaching a tipping point where a lot of Brits are wondering, "How much is too much?".
Your replies from Brits so far are quite informative in the sense of why Britons have been so tolerant. They have no idea how close Britain is to a totalitarian dictatorship.
This Government has already passed 2 truly totalitarian laws:
1. The Civil Contingencies Act, which is almost exactly the same as Hitler's Enabling Act.
2. The Identity Cards Act, which not only forces passport renewers on to a database, it also connects that database with 4 other significant databases (tax system, police records, ANPR & passports) thus creating the world's most intrusive database. It does not stop there either. There is nothing preventing our medical records, phone records, email & surfing records, credit card records etc being linked to the meta-database.
The Govt is trying to get a 3rd totalitarian law through, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. This, like the Civil Contingencies Act, grants almost unfettered power to a handful of people. While CCA requires an emergency to be declared and cannot abolish elections or amend the European Convention of Human Rights (its only limitations), legislation under LRRB currently requires approval (without debate) by both Houses and likewise cannot amend the ECHR. It's amended version is no less dangerous AFAIK.
There are also 4 anti-terror laws, all worse than your Patriot Act and two of which have been ruled to contravene the ECHR (both for locking people up without trial).
Thanks to people like Lord Phillips, the House of Lords has been doing a reasonable job of standing up to Blair's executive, with the two obvious exceptions above. They have very little power (which they are reluctant to use), merely being able to hold up a Bill for about a year. The Law Lords are not able to overturn laws, but simply rule them incompatible with other laws like the ECHR.
As I implied at the start, the reason we've allowed this is that almost no-one knows. I bet less than 1% of Britons have even heard of the Civil Contingencies Act.
We are not taught to scrutinise our Govt as I understand Americans are. We haven't had to fear our Govt in modern times, and most people who did were left wingers who voted for Blair and have been slow to realise how dangerous he is.
We also don't realise that Britain is an elective dictatorship which has respected freedoms only because of the benign nature of its governments. The Conservative opposition has been remarkably quiet as has the media until the last few months. I kid you not, if Britain survives this attack on our freedoms (and that's a big if) it will be because of blogs, unfunded campaigns, leaks and Blair's mistakes like Iraq & pushing for 90-days detention.
I wrote about Britain's remaining safeguards here.
I seriously doubt that we'll see the massive outpour of rage and fury that absolutely blew the Poll Tax into so many subatomic particles, and I can't see any Union out there pulling a Scargill and shutting the country down for a year plus, and the the events of Runnymeade - where King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, granting civil liberties to all - are merely dusty memories in archaic history books that few read or remember.
(I'm surprised such books aren't banned, now that it's illegal to own terrorist literature in the UK. The barons at Runnymeade, Robin Hood - even if fictional, Queen Bodecca of the Icini, and most definitely Guy Fawkes, were all deemed terrorists at the time and many of the accounts certainly promote such activities, which must surely violate that law.)
I do not like the way things are going in Britain today. It has shown greater civil rights awareness throughout most of the past 10,000 years than it does right now. I do believe that there are many wonderful things about Britain and I do hope that treatment becomes available soon.
I also believe that countries throughout Europe and the Americas should definitely look at the more ancient mechanisms devised in Britain to maintain accountability and integrity to see what they could learn from. Learning is good. Likewise, Britain should most definitely stop with the head in the sand and learn from other countries what mechanisms are neither useful nor desirable.
There have been many terror groups operating in Britain and throughout Europe, throughout all of recorded history. Name a single one that has stopped or been defeated through draconian laws. Now name all those that have stopped of their own accord through mediation, dialogue, mutual recognition and/or mutual respect. I will be willing to bet that the second list is a damn sight longer. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the second list is the ONLY list with any entries on it at all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy by undermining them, that's the road to hell."
;)
Nope its not the road to hell, its the road to becoming the 51st State.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
When a criminal gets caught and evidence is presented before the people usually the people decide what to do with him or her. Similarily in uncovering evidence that is encrypted the people should decide whether its worthwhile persuing the enciphered text. Torture is out of the question, imprisonment of an innocent person because they don't reveal their pass keys may be unjust. So the only choice left is to attempt to crack the cipher. Building large warehouses filled with computer isn't an answer and isn't energy efficient, yet building a distributed network among all citizens to join a distributed crack effort would make sense.
Citizens that want to help their country would install a piece of software which would work much like the seti@home client. I suspect the UK has over 50 million residents and probably just as many computers, that's a lot of processing power. Alternatively, and based on the nature of the crime, the European Union can be invited in on the effort adding another 400 million computers.
Encryption should be strong enough to withhold data from organized crime of million or so members, but should not be able to withhold a nation or union of nations efforts which scales to 500 times as powerful. Perhaps someone will realise where I'm getting at. Let's have everyone get involved to make something good instead of having a small set of governments make everyone uncomfortable. Power to the people (as a whole).
Truly,
EU citizen.
I'm glad someone else thinks this.
The fact that our democratically elected government are the ones trying to bring in all of these laws to erase our civil liberties and it's the priveliged Lords that actually make a stand for personal freedom is, to my mind, one of the strangest things in politics.
No wonder Tony and co. have been trying to castrate the House of Lords for the last decade as an "old fashioned, outdated bastion of the Old School Ties", despite the fact that these aging peers seem to have a clue what the House of Commons are actually trying to do.
I'm as much pro-democracy as the next man, but when the UK has to rely on a (primarily) hereditary system to look out for the gov giving itself infinite power, we should start worrying.
It reminds me a little of Zaphod Beeblebrox - the Lords are not elected, and therefore do not have to strive for votes. The MP's in the House of Commons however actually seek their posts instead of being born into them, and therefore must continually strive to retain their positions. Is this just another case of those who seek to posess power being the least capable of wielding it responsibly?
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Stop it right there. There is no such thing as a social contract, on any country on this planet. Anyone claiming there is deserves to be shot dead and their parents to be hit with a depleted uranium cluebat.
Honnestly, any country claiming to be a democracy would actually dare produce the contract and give people the option of opting out. Me predicts that whole MacCartyist countries would suddenly be left with zillions of ungoverned anarchists.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
As the saying goes: Some call them terrorists, others call them freedom fighters.
So this war on terrorism (or against pedophiles or whatever) just boils down to: we do not like them, we are going to kill them.
In other words, plain old set of survival instincts, prejudice, lies and warfare.
That being said, it would be nice to just avoid politicaly correct talking and say it as it is. But than again, there are also those plain old tactics, intrigues, treachery, ... :|
hany
A while ago on /. I saw a comment where someone suggested a "workaround" to laws like this. The system they proposed (and I can't find the comment now) was to have 2 machines, both with completely encrypted drives. Both machines are network boot servers, and each machine holds the other machine's decryption key, and the boxes boot off each other.
So 1 of the 2 boxes can be rebooted no problem, but if both machines go down at once (ie the state remove the machines, or the user cuts the power) then neither will start again, and the data can't be decrypted because the key is on the other machine's hard drive, encrypted. Of course, during the set up process you'd need the keys on a third machine (or CD or USB stick etc.), and for "safety" you document the destruction of the machine/CD/USB drive.
In reality you probably would want to have copies of the keys elsewhere (but you never tell the state that), but the boxes booting off each other means you could run a completely encrypted system but never actually use the keys yourself apart from during initial set up.
Car analogies break down.
Disclaimer, IANAL
In any court, British or American, your legal counsel would be responsible for arguing that whatever the cops found shouldn't warrant punishment. If only one file was found, it could be argued that it was a fluke--you clicked on a link, suddenly saw a naked kid, and hit the back button in disgust. Likewise, any number of images could be argued against if a computer virus was found on the computer and testimony could be brought that suggests that virus would download illegal images. Likewise, any sort of auto-downloader could be blamed (such as those that download files off of newsgroups). They could also point to other people accessing their computer, or someone planting the images intentionally (this would be an effective defense if any tips were involved to the law enforcement--you could argue that the tip came from someone who wanted to defame you or send you to prison).
These things are sometimes written into the law, sometimes not, but it's generally why most laws have the phrase "with intent to." It gives the defense broad latitude that should cover most mitigating circumstances.
All Hail the Maggott Show
There's no link to the actual wording of the law, and that makes it difficult to really judge it's validity. However, if it does indeed make it a crime simply to refuse to decrypt your files, that's very bad (and would probably never fly in the US--breaks at least two amendments). It makes anyone with encrypted computer files a potential target of police harassment.
If it only applies in cases of probable cause (or reasonable suspicion, as the brits say) of terrorism or child pornography, then it's sort of neutral. It might be abused to some extent, but so long as there is a legal need for some demonstration of cause or suspicion of terrorism/kiddie porn before they can order a decryption, I wouldn't see it as a huge deal. If you've been intercepting packets of naked 8-year-olds going to and from a person's computer for the last 3 months, requiring him to decrypt it as part of a prosecution may well be reasonable (again, in the UK. In the US we have rules against making people incriminate themselves...it has largely to do with the "Hit someone hard enough and they'll confess to whatever you want" concept.)
All Hail the Maggott Show
You do only follow the laws that you like. I guarantee you you have broken at least one law of your home city/state/province/whatever this week. Probably dozens. Many cities that have ordinances about how to keep your lawn trimmed. I'd be willing to guess there's at least one county in the United States in which masturbation is illegal, or letting the faucet run to let it get cold, or driving home after a 14-hour shift at work.
You're making the laws out to be something they're not. They're not the same for everybody. The second you set foot in a different city you're under a slightly different set of laws. Go into another country and you could be under a vastly different set of laws.
Have you ever--at any point in your entire life--changed lanes in your car without signalling for a full three seconds before you began to move into the other lane?
Well then, you've broken the law and are a criminal according to your own logic.
And I sure don't see you giving your daily prayers to Mecca. That's the law too, you know.
The point is that just because something is written in law doesn't make it right, just, or even functional. In fact, the sin you accuse the poster of--placing the rules he likes above the rest--is exactly what the writers of the law do. The only difference is that in a democracy or republic, a group of people make up the laws instead of a single person doing it. They still make them up however they like, according to their own personal preferences, beliefs, and agendas. *coughSTEMCELLRESEARCHcough*
And while you can live without lying, cheating, or stealing, there's laws against a hell of a lot more than that. In fact, you can lie, cheat, and steal without ever breaking the law, if you do it right.
I applaud your ethics, but I think you deserve credit for them, not the law. You obey the law because you think it's the right thing to do.
Other people do the same thing--they follow their own internal moral compass. Sometimes this leads them into conflict with the law. You can't make it a policy to ignore your own judgement on right and wrong for the sake of the law, or your country, or anything else--if you do, you end up with fascist regimes and genocides.
The fact that everyone places their own morality in competition with that of the law is the only reason the law works. To address the example you give of someone deciding they can break your kneecaps: Any police officer is likely to consider this to be immoral. This means their conscience and the law are in agreement and they will arrest the person. On the other hand, if that same police officer sees you making a lane change after having only signalled for two seconds instead of three, he's likely to think that bringing you down for failure to abide by traffic laws would do more harm than good, so his conscience overrides the letter of the law. Were it not for things like that, everyone in the country would be in prison, including that officer (I'm sure he put depleted batteries in with his normal dumpster trash at some point in his life).
The law is not perfect and neither are the people who write it. But the biggest incorrect assumption you make is that there is an absolutism about any of it. The fact that someone is willing to break one law does not mean they are willing to break all the others, or even any of the others. Likewise, the fact that some laws go unenforced does not mean that others will.
And if you really think the rules are the same for everybody, try being an Arab at an airport.
All Hail the Maggott Show
Actually, there are cases where law enforcement does things like that. It's not usually that brazen, of course, but to my knowledge (which is limited to stories I have been told by police and other such indirect sources) "informal" means of justice are not uncommon.
For example, an officer who specialized in sex offences came to speak to a Human Sexuality class that I was attending. He said that they often have reams of evidence against offenders; chances are, if you've got a decent amount of kiddy porn, they know about it. However, most of it is either not solid enough to hold a conviction or is not bad enough for the office to act on it.
He flat out said that if all you do is collect pictures, the worst they'll usually do is send an officer to your house to say "We know what you're doing, you might want to re-think this before it gets out of hand." The reason is that they want to catch the actual rapists and producers, which takes time and focused effort; all that busting a pic collector does is soak up manpower and cut down on the number of leads they have.
It also seemed that most of their leads came from watching internet traffic and chatrooms, and most of the evidence against producers is hardcopy--videotapes and photos of the producer himself with the victim. That's what they state they're looking for when they get a warrant. The other way they catch them is with sting operations, posing as a 15 year old girl in a chatroom, waiting for a would-be rapist to offer to meet them somewhere for sex, then arresting them.
So decryption would, at best, provide additional evidence on top of one of these two; otherwise you wouldn't have much.
(What scared me, though, was that apparently this officer and about a dozen other officers worked exclusively on internet-related sex offenses that took place within a single county--apparently there are just that many of them.)
All Hail the Maggott Show
'You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy by undermining them, that's the road to hell.'"
No m8 - it's the road to freedom. Scares ya' don't it ?
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