UK Government Can Demand You Hand Over Encryption Keys

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 2, 2007 @02:06AM from the shh-don't-give-them-ideas dept.

iminplaya writes "The UK government can now demand that citizens hand over their data encryption keys - or face jailtime for obstructing justice. The law only applies to data on UK shores, and doesn't cover information transmitted via UK servers across the internet. 'The law also allows authorities to compel individuals targeted in such investigation to keep silent about their role in decrypting data ... The Home Office has steadfastly proclaimed that the law is aimed at catching terrorists, pedophiles, and hardened criminals--all parties which the UK government contends are rather adept at using encryption to cover up their activities.'"

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Re:Been like this for years by Chrisq · 2007-10-02 02:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

GnuPG has a --show-session-key command, so that when you are asked to reveal the key for an encrypted message you can comply with the law by revealing the session key that was generated for that specific message rather than your secret key. This complies with the letter of the law, so you can ask for a written order for each individual message. Of course if they are really serious at this point they will smile at your request and get out the rubber hoses....