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.'"

Comments

Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism?

[Cybert4]

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?

Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism?

[Tackhead]

> Probably the same reason rape often gets the same or more jail time than murder. Even though the first only involves a temporary loss of freedom and some unwanted intrusions that are over in a few minutes, and the other leave you *dead*.

But if you really wanna rack up jail time, try copyright infringement!

Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism?

[plague3106]

Obviously a crime went into the making of the file.

Obviously? What about an image which is 100% computer generated?

Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was in 2002. The PROTECT Act which among others makes obscene drawings of fictional children illegal was passed in 2003.

Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism?

[Reziac]

I'm wondering how this really differs from "thought crime".

Imagine doing a heinous act with a child. Not a crime (yet).

Draw a picture of said heinous act. Now it's a crime, even tho *no actual children were harmed*.

A parallel:

Imagine killing someone, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).

Write in your diary about killing someone, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??

Just a Continuation of McCarthyism Tactics

[mordors9]

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.

Hit the costume store

[Ravenscall]

Guy Fawkes masks in 4...3...2..

Re:Hit the costume store

[42Penguins]

"People shouldn't be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people."

Lord Phillips

[TheGreek]

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.'"

Because when I want somebody's ideas on what comprises a democracy, I ask somebody with a peerage.

Re:Lord Phillips

[Bogtha]

Actually, since the House of Lords don't have to chase after votes all the time, they help chuck out all the stupid knee-jerk laws the House of Commons come up with to make it look like they are doing something important. It's a useful component of a democratic system that mitigates one of the downsides of democracy - that the elected representatives are concerned with appearances more than the well-being of the country.

Re:Lord Phillips

[eipgam]

Absolutely, as ironic as it may seem given I support decomcracy, I'm a huge fan of the House of Lords. It's an important check on Parliament, particularly given that hereditary peers have essentially been phased out and the only new members of the chamber will be those appointed by government - in fact quite a few experts in their particular fields get appointed. The US has the same idea with the Senate v the House of Representatives (although the Senate is elected), with the Senate being the more "measured" of the two.

Lets hope that Parliament doesn't further castrate the House of Lords with its latest reforms of the lower chamber.

Re:Lord Phillips

[Wooster_UK]

Or, given that we're talking the Lords, *snore* "what? oh, hyah, hyah" *snore*.

Re:Lord Phillips

[Triskele]

Because when I want somebody's ideas on what comprises a democracy, I ask somebody with a peerage.

He's a Life Peer not an inherited aristocrat (we've mostly got rid of those, thank you). You can find the details of what lead to his nomination here.

The closest parallel I can think of would be one of your Chief Justices... They provide some oversight on Parliament's legislation, tend to be less bound by party politics and rarely bothered by winning votes.

Personally, given the parlous state of your nation, I'd think twice about throwing jibes around about democracy.

Re:Lord Phillips

[amliebsch]

The US has the same idea with the Senate v the House of Representatives (although the Senate is elected), with the Senate being the more "measured" of the two.

What most people - even Americans - don't know is that in fact the Senate was not originally elected at all. It was filled with the appointees of states legislatures (two from each state), who could fill the appointments however they best saw fit. It wasn't until the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, made during an era of populist progressivism in 1913, that the Senate became filled by direct election.

Personally, I think it is an open question whether this particular reform has been a net positive or negative.

Re:Lord Phillips

[swillden]

Personally, I think it is an open question whether this particular reform has been a net positive or negative.

I don't think it's a question at all. I think it's been very negative because it eliminated the voice that state governments had in the federal government, allowing the federal government to run roughshod over the states. The fact that senators were appointed by (and could be recalled by!) their respective states was another way of setting the components of government in opposition to one another. By making senators popularly elected, we significantly reduced the strength of one of the "checks and balances" built into the system.

jail anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's another thing to be afraid of hunters

[Petskull]

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.

Re:It's another thing to be afraid of hunters

[Petskull]

I forgot to add this from here

3. Because there are lots of little things we do every day that break the rules. These include: j-walking, downloading MP3's, subletting without telling your landlord, recording sporting events without express written concent, undocumented domestic help, recreational drug use, stealing cable, logging on to other people's wireless networks, "leaking" company information to your girlfriend, anything besides the missionary position (in many states), cheating on your wife (in many states), rolling stops on empty streets, u-turns in the middle of empty streets, locking your bicycle to the handrailing, lying about your age to get into movies, lying about your age to get senior citizens discounts, lying about your age to avoid getting senior citizens discounts, telling your company that you're "sick" when you really mean you're "sick and tired of this crappy job," not reporting e-bay sales as taxable income, grabbing an extra newspaper when someone else buys one from the machine, putting chairs in the street to save your parking spot, stealing office supplies, stealing the towels, littering, loitering, the office NCAA pool, etc etc. All of these are necessary for the functioning of our society in some way or another, but are illegal. Yet we would go batshit insane without a few personal pet vices.

And the system has been built with this in mind: nobody wants to stop your weekly 5$ poker match, they wanted to stop the gambling houses where people lost their rent money. Enforce the letter of the law, and the intent of the law gets lost.

Re:It's another thing to be afraid of hunters

[jimicus]

After all, if you can break the rule of law, why not them?

De minimis non curat lex.

"The law does not concern itself with trifles".

IOW, the purpose of the law is put in place to hold society as a whole together by punishing those whose actions threaten the fabric of society, rather than those whose actions which, while technically illegal, are of such little consequence that quite frankly the court has better things to do with its time than listen to them.

Re:Heinous?

[plague3106]

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.

Why would anyone give over?

[jtroutman]

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?

The counter-intuitive nature of British parliament

[Space cowboy]

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.