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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..."
That's the typical British response. The reason England is in the position it's in.
He's getting off easy. In the USA, the cops would get a court order and the judge could order him jailed for contempt of court until he gives up the password.
Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool, was arrested in May 2009 by police tackling child sexual exploitation.
Well, I guess that makes it okay, then. After all, we can't allow people accused of child sexual exploitation to be free, can we?
On a more serious note, this sucks.
Det Sgt Neil Fowler, of Lancashire police, said: "Drage was previously of good character so the immediate custodial sentence handed down by the judge in this case shows just how seriously the courts take this kind of offence.
"Computer systems are constantly advancing and the legislation used here was specifically brought in to deal with those who are using the internet to commit crime.
"It sends a robust message out to those intent on trying to mask their online criminal activities that they will be taken before the courts with the ultimate sanction, as in this case, being a custodial sentence."
I guess insisting on your privacy is taboo now. Even if you're a good kid, if you refuse to let the police into your private files just on principle, you're boned.
Actually, everyone has it everywhere. What varies from place to place is whether the government recognizes the right and refrains from violating it. This is true of all human rights.
Don't you have the right to remain silent, so as to not incriminate yourself? We have it here in the US.
No. That right was removed about 10 years ago.
Now, if you refuse to answer questions during your arrest and questioning, the prosecution are allowed to use that silence as circumstantial evidence against you.
Never start with the head. It just makes the persons memory all fuzzy.
No sig for you!!
Short answer: No. Through some creative legal thinking producing your encryption password is now considered equal to handing over the key to your safe, not to compel information from your mind. It's bullshit but Britain takes 1984 as a role model, not a warning.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Maybe some cops see it that way... but videos such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik would have me believe that it's always a good idea to plead the 5th and refuse to say anything. It's related to the idea that refusing to consent to a search without a warrant shouldn't be allowed as evidence that a warrant is necessary ("If he has nothing to hide, then he wouldn't mind us looking around..."). What's the precedent where pleading the 5th has been considered a crime? I can see how refusing to talk would get cops to find something to charge you with and arrest you, since it's annoying for them, but when has it been used as the actual charge for an arrest?
"Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool, was arrested in May 2009 by police tackling child sexual exploitation"
He was probably suspected of having pictures of his 17-year old naked self on his computer. Quite frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about child porn accusations anymore. If somebody tells me to think of the children, I say "fuck the children" (well, not literally). It's an empty argument, a way of saying "I don't want to discuss this, it's going to happen so shut up." I instinctively assume that anyone who brings up child porn accusations is lying. This is just another instance: They want to read his hard disk, so they accuse him of something unspeakable. The punishment for not remembering a 50 character password after 6 months of not using it is atrocious. These people deserve our deepest disdain. THEY have done wrong and parade their deeds in front of us, while Oliver Drage, for all I know, has not been convicted of anything I would consider a wrong-doing.
Of course, the UK is not unique in much of this. But what makes these examples so sad for me is how the UK was the foundation for much of what one might consider Western freedom. It fought the good fight against totalitarianism (let's not Godwin this). I don't think those who struggled back then would consider all this to be what they were struggling *for*.
Will this constant erosion of freedom ever stop?
No person (...) shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
But is it only 16 weeks, and that's it, or at the end of the 16 weeks do they ask again? If he refuses again do they just put him back for another 16 weeks (or more)?
wha'? where am i?
Or more recently, Alberto "I do not recall" Gonzales.
I am officially gone from
I think you're forgetting the commerce clause. Specifically the part that says "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!".
Even if a judge ruled that wasn't you testifying against yourself, you could still protect yourself if you simply said "I don't recall that password." You may notice that not being able to recall is used a lot when under oath. The reason is that there really isn't any way to challenge it. We forget shit all the time (hell everyone seems to forget their passwords if my job is any indication). You can't prove someone hasn't. So they say "What is the password and the 5th amendment doesn't protect you," you say "Sorry, I can't recall that password."
See this doesn't work in Britain because they made it a crime not to provide the password period. If you fail to provide it, regardless of the reason, that's illegal. It was a specific law made for passwords. So can't remember? You are boned. The US has no such similar law. Thus the only way they could get you is if you said you knew the password, but refused to give it up, and it was ruled that wasn't protected under the 5th.
However if you look in to it you discover that while there's little case law, indeed it HAS been ruled that that the 5th prevents you from having to give up a password. As such that will probably stay, in general courts abide by the rulings of other courts of competent jurisdiction.
The fifth amendment doesn't seem to apply in the courts; to quote his honor, William K. Sessions, Chief District Court Judge in Vermont in United States vs. Boucher:
"Holding that the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination does not require the conclusion that a criminal defendant may elect not to divulge a password for an encrypted hard drive."
It also hasn't stopped judges from using the presence of encryption and unwillingness to give up the keys as evidence of misconduct.
If anything, Britain has stronger protection of individual rights than we have here in the US -- the defendant in this case doesn't risk a dozen years in jail, disenfranchisement and being barred from many occupations for life, like he would over here. I'd take good old Ius Commune over our system.
No this law was written as an ego trip by Jack Straw to prove his power. Among other things it reverses the onus of proof thus taking it outside fundamental principles of British (and US) law. It also goes further an limits the means by which you can prove your innocence, prescribing a few (probably impossible) ways. It also deprives the defendant of the right to a jury trial and gags the defendant from talking about the charge with anyone but his lawyer (and gags the lawyer).
In effect a corrupt government official can send you an encrypted email then demand that you provide the key... As you never had it you can never prove your innocence, so they can lock you up for years after a secret trial.
Add to this another set of laws formed by a radical feminist basically assuming any image of a female that you can't prove is of someone over the age of consent (16) is an image of a child (this includes cached images that may be advertisments that you never intended to view).
So the cops can trawl your computer until they find something you can't prove is legal and lock you up. If you take the precaution of encrypting your PC they can lock you up for that too.
We have now removed these politicians from power however the damage has been done. There are murmurs from some of the politicians about repealing some of the very dangerous laws that were brought in, however they are unlikely to repeal any of the technology based ones. There will be no pressure, the journalists over here consider it a point of pride to not understand technology.
You know it's bad when you need to post as AC just to even speak such 'blasphemy'. The additional effect that has happened is anyone defending an accused 'pedophile', for any reason, is assumed to be a pedophile themselves and attacked accordingly. We may actually be watching the end of the age of reason.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
The reason the courts see it this way is because of the distinction the legal system places on written vs oral evidence. Oral evidence is obvious; the person giving it may or may not be telling the truth. Written evidence however has a more privileged status. Once you've written something down, you can't "take it back". It's out there as physical evidence and can be used against you. This is why even the most gung ho characters will back up if you ask them to put things in writing. The written word is powerful rope with which to hang yourself.
As far as most judges and lawyers are concerned, data on computers is simply another form of the written word, and so anything you've "written" there--encrypted or not--is legitimate evidence waiting to be used against you. In some sense they are in fact right. Personally, I view computer data by its very nature to be more abstract and far more transitory than the traditional written word, and so worthy of less... distinction as evidence in a court. But that said, it is a (quasi-)permanent record of events and that's what courts are interested in.
Bottom line, the old rules still apply. If you don't want to reveal something, never, ever write it down. Encrypting it on your computer is just not good enough. If you don't want people reading it and aren't willing to take a risk, then you either need to delete the data or better yet not write it down in the first place. All that said, encryption is preferable to just leaving your papers lying around, but don't expect encryption alone to magically make your written words disappear.
May the Maths Be with you!
Theoretically it could be something as innoccuous as a photo of his 16 year old girfriend's boobs (not to mention all sorts of other stuff, like diaries, etc)
The Labour party when it was in power and creating laws out its wazoo (including the RIP Act deployed here) made it an offence to have photos of persons under the age of 18 engaged in sexual acts. To put that in context, you can have a gangbang with a 16 year old (assuming that's her thing) and it's perfectly legal. But if you have a photo of the same girl with her boobs out, taken while you weren't there (!) or if you aren't in a government-sanctioned relationship, ie, long-term or stable (I shit you not) you're a dirty sex criminal.
And that means your life could be destroyed: sex offender's register (probably just for 5 years for a photo of the boobs of a legal to fuck, but not photograph girl) and a bar on any career you might want or develop in all sorts of areas to do with children and 'vulnerable adults'. And maybe any chance of decent employment.
Compared to any of that, even 16 months in prison, after which you at least get to rebuild your life, is probably a price well worth paying. Even for something as trivial as legal-to-touch teen boobs. Or a bit of manga. Or a sexualized stick-figure srawing that some prosecutor might say was 15.
Maybe they think that bikini shot of that cute girl is over-sexualized, and she was only 17 when it was taken...
Maybe it's just regular porn. Or you think so. But get this: you own one picture from a series, which you've never seen. That series of photos contains 'extreme pornography'. Even though your photo doesn't, you still may be guilty of an offence! And stuck on the sex offender's register.
You'd have to be an idiot, assuming the most, er, innocent of porn collections to want to take that risk, hand over your password and place your entire life in the hands of the Criminal Prosecution Service.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
In britain there is no presumption of innocence.
Of course there is. The presumption of innocence in English and Scots law comes from common law. The concept itself has been part of British society for thousands of years - Alexander Volokh says that it has been present since Greece and Sparta and Rome, all the way back to the first (Judaic?) legal systems.
Common law is the basis of the British legal system. Your logic is like claiming that "there is no law against murder in Britain" and then going on to claim that this means murder is legal. English Law - "there is no statute making murder illegal. It is a common law crime - so although there is no written Act of Parliament making murder illegal, it is illegal by virtue of the constitutional authority of the courts and their previous decisions."
It after that went on and voted into the statute book several hundred criminal offences which explicitly postulate that you are guilty until proven innocent. The RIPA act, The H&S act, you name them. Half of Blair's legislation (Blair and Co raised the number of criminal offences on the statutes by more than 100% in 10 years) is based around "guilty until proven innocent".
[citationneeded]. Please name these "hundreds of acts that explicitly say British people are guilty until proven innocent.". And are you seriously blaming the Blair government (which came to power in 1997) for the 1974 Health and Safety Act?!? What?!
So the new government has actually promissed to fix this by accepting _ALL_ rights in the convention and repealing most of Blair's handywork as a big block vote including most of the RIPA act.
Right, that would be the same Conservative party that fully supported the RIP Act then? ('Only a pitiful handful of MPs (pictured below) were present to debate the bill, which was fully supported by the "opposition" Conservative party, and passed by 189 votes to 47 keeping the majority of its original clauses intact.')