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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....
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.
I suppose it makes coding in APL (without documentation) a crime.
Where were you when the voynix came?
...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
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!!!!!
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.
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.
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.
The 1st amendment only applies to free expression and art that middle class Christians approve of!
Um, what? This thread is about a UK law, and thus has nothing to do with the American First amendment.
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.
And how is that different from the police searching your home with a warrant? Suppose they found a murder weapon in your home that you knew of? Is "allowing" them to search thus incriminating yourself as well? No. Self incrimination only refers to speech under oath. Further, you can be compelled to self-incriminating speech (here in the US) upon being subpoenaed and given immunity for prosecution. The fifth amendment article against self-incrimination is not as broad as you believe.
Indeed - I think that Americans most of all should not forget that those in the military services have sworn an oath to, above all else, "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Most of them take that seriously.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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 you imply, a strong military could conceivably intervene on behalf of The People, in the event of a generalized crackdown against our freedoms.
One wonders at what point such "laws of the land" become "illegal orders", which military personnel are *obligated* to disobey.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
and that people suddenly become mature or some almighty supranatural beings hardwired them at 18? this is just bullshit. and how is 18 defined? per randomized controlled trial? by a cohort of 10000 children? or by a society of religious zealots?
if somebody say a child at 12 consent to have sex with him/her, i would be very worrying, but if it's a 15, i'd be a lot less worrying, and at 17 i think him/her would be mature enough. it's not the existence of an age limit that's important, but it's the actual value of age limit that's being stupid here. nowadays on average people lost their virginity at some 16-17 yo and getting more than 70% of people violating a law is stupid.
I think you misunderstood 'this forces you to incriminate yourself'. He wasn't talking about the search, but the requirement you hand over your keys.
And actually it's a pretty good arguement that's been ignored for some bullshit reason.
Let's compare two things:
1. Evidence of a crime in real life (bloody gloves)
2. Evidence of a crime on a computer (documents implimenting me in a fraud)
The police cannot make me tell them where to find 1. The best encryption analogy is, if I have them locked in a unknown safety deposit box, they can't make me tell them which one. This counts as 'incrimination', and I don't have to do it. It doesn't matter than they don't have time to search each one in each bank.
Forcing me to give them 2, by the same logic, must also count as incrimination.
Now, I forget what the UK's rule in that respect is, but I'm pretty certain they can't normally be compelled to testify either. The problem is, that might just be a law, and hence this law could trivially override it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
When has 50+% of the population ever fought in a revolutionary war? That certainly didn't happen during the American Revolution. During the American Revolution, at most 10% of the population fought against the British (see here for the number of men who fought and here for the population figures).
It would take the participation of a lot more civilians to stand even the remotest of chances against a modern military. Remember: they can't just survive (as the Iraqi insurgents have), they have to defeat the sitting government. The latter is a much, much harder task.
For a revolution against a sitting government to succeed, the revolutionaries would have to get a large part of the government's military on their side.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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