British Teen Jailed Over Encryption Password
An anonymous reader writes "Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool has been convicted of 'failing to disclose an encryption key,' which is an offense under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and as a result has been jailed for 16 weeks. Police seized his computer but could not get past the 50-character encrypted password that he refused to give up. And just to get it out of the way, obligatory XKCD."
Pfft, Britan. Glad my ancestors were smart enough to split that dive and setup someplace safe for me to live....
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
"xkcd", not "XKCD". We really don't need to shout the comic name.
But it's hard to remember all those special characters after they beat you with a wrench. Be sure to choose a password that's easy to remember under bludgeoning to limit the number of times they have to hit you in the head.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
I wonder what he is hiding.
i know this is slashdot, and we dont RTFS, but come on!
DUH. Obviously he's a terrorist.
Deleted
Nope, and even in the US this has been contentious in the courts (not sure on the current status). Basically, the logic goes that the encryption is like a lock when a search warrant is issued. If a search warrant is issued, you have to provide access, and you can potentially get in legal hot water if you don't cooperate with the warrant. It isn't considered self incrimination.
Could he have given them a random password, and then act dumbfounded when it does not work?
Maybe even accuse them of breaking his system?
It is hard to prove that the header of an encrypted disk has not been corrrupted.
Would that work with the current law? Has anyone already tried it?
I wonder if it works the other way around? When they take my un-encrypted system, I'll claim it is in fact encrypted, and all the apparent data on the disk is just random garbage that happens to look like a windows 7 file system full of furry midget porn. I'll provide them with the 'real' encryption key and they'll see that all I was keeping on the disk was random garbage data.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
He would have died eventually in any case though, I suspect.
Wait, I thought the US of A were fighting -for- royalties?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Tranny Midget Porn with Power Tools. I think that I'd gladly do a few months in prison rather than admit to that... not that I am into that.. that is to say, I came up with that at random... yeah.. at random.
"His name was James Damore."
You know you want to.
+1 inciteful
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
wiping the disk is foolish; anyone who would dare try to break a disk would have a bit-image copy of it saved away FIRST. you know, "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/nsa". like that.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I think I'll make my passphrase "I don't remember". That should make for a fun interview.
(like the Great Australian Firewall)
I prefer Great Barrier Router of Australia, personally.
I'm not so sure about this. I seriously doubt many Republicans (male ones anyway) frequent (female) hookers. Male hookers, sure; Republicans seem to have a thing for being gays in denial. But they seem to prefer getting it from strangers in public restrooms, rather than paying for it.
The Democrats are probably much more active in frequenting female hookers. They seem to like to cheat on their wives a lot. But they seem more likely to spend a little money on their sexcapades, instead of looking for free sex from strangers with unknown diseases.
Now, if you're wondering which politicians are mostly honest, and don't cheat on their spouses or partners, I think the answer is none. There's definitely none who are honest about wanting to actually help the country.
I've heard people say that commodore64_love strangles kittens while masturbating.
Don't knock it until you've tried it.