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.'"
...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
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
I have always thought that the offence of statutory rape should be redefined.
There were some figures in the guardian today showing most girls in the UK lost their virginity at 15/16, whereas for boys it was 6 months - 1 year later. Presumably reflecting delayed sexual development.
if ~ 1/3 of UK girls are losing their virginity at 15 then thats an awful lot of statutory rape.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
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.
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.