The UK government has recently introduced legislation that any citizen is required to provide decryption keys for any privately encrypted data, or face a 2 year jail term.
The excuse is that they need to "fight terrorism". This all sounds very Orwellian, where in George Orwell's book "1984", even a thought is a crime, and an invisible enemy is concocted in order to make the population more submissive. Sound familiar?
Encryption is a technology that is out of the bag. The authorities are technically powerless to break strong encryption schemes, although they do have some very large computers to try to crack encryption keys. The numbers are always on the side of the individual however - no matter how large a computer the police have, you can use a key that is too large for them.
The fundamental question is whether I should even be allowed to have secrets that aren't in my head? Is possession of information in itself a crime? Again, George Orwell's thoughtcrime. I personally think that all information should be free, though I can see the drawbacks of that. So what if someone has a deviant sexual fetish? - an image does no harm, and better to use images than to actually force yourself upon a child. As it happens, I would be quite interested in reading about cracking encryption schemes or bomb making - but purely out of intellectual curiosity! That should not be a crime. Expressing an "illegal opinion" (e.g. this religion is a load of nonsense, or yes, China really did invade Tibet) should never be a crime. There is a world of difference between learning, thinking and doing. Thought, and therefore information, should never be a crime.
Encryption is liberating, but unfortunately it is often used for shady purposes. There are many legitimate reasons for privacy, such as company secrets, medical, legal or financial information, data theft or identity theft, so the argument "you must have something to hide" doesn't hold water.
There are a number of other ways to get around this law. You could store your data off-shore, where the police have no powers over it. You could also plausibly claim that the data is "random bits", and the police couldn't prove it is data at all. You could claim to have forgotten your password (which in my case is quite likely.)
Ultimately this law is just an excuse to detain suspects without charge (any real charge, that is), whilst gathering evidence. The reason is because foreign terrorists are likely to flee the country.
I can see that fighting terrorism is important, but not at any cost. The problem is that I don't want to live in a police state where the police have excessive powers. Yes, you could invent lots of laws that would make the police's job a lot easier, including torture, detention without trial, drugging you, random strip searches, restrictions on movement etcetera.
I have nothing to hide, but I shouldn't need to prove that, and I have the right to remain silent. If I was required to hand over decryption keys for some data, I might seriously consider civil disobediance in order to highlight the flaw in this type of law. We are supposedly a free society, but that died a long time ago. Thanks Bush, thanks Blair.
The excuse is that they need to "fight terrorism". This all sounds very Orwellian, where in George Orwell's book "1984", even a thought is a crime, and an invisible enemy is concocted in order to make the population more submissive. Sound familiar?
Encryption is a technology that is out of the bag. The authorities are technically powerless to break strong encryption schemes, although they do have some very large computers to try to crack encryption keys. The numbers are always on the side of the individual however - no matter how large a computer the police have, you can use a key that is too large for them.
The fundamental question is whether I should even be allowed to have secrets that aren't in my head? Is possession of information in itself a crime? Again, George Orwell's thoughtcrime. I personally think that all information should be free, though I can see the drawbacks of that. So what if someone has a deviant sexual fetish? - an image does no harm, and better to use images than to actually force yourself upon a child. As it happens, I would be quite interested in reading about cracking encryption schemes or bomb making - but purely out of intellectual curiosity! That should not be a crime. Expressing an "illegal opinion" (e.g. this religion is a load of nonsense, or yes, China really did invade Tibet) should never be a crime. There is a world of difference between learning, thinking and doing. Thought, and therefore information, should never be a crime.
Encryption is liberating, but unfortunately it is often used for shady purposes. There are many legitimate reasons for privacy, such as company secrets, medical, legal or financial information, data theft or identity theft, so the argument "you must have something to hide" doesn't hold water.
There are a number of other ways to get around this law. You could store your data off-shore, where the police have no powers over it. You could also plausibly claim that the data is "random bits", and the police couldn't prove it is data at all. You could claim to have forgotten your password (which in my case is quite likely.)
Ultimately this law is just an excuse to detain suspects without charge (any real charge, that is), whilst gathering evidence. The reason is because foreign terrorists are likely to flee the country.
I can see that fighting terrorism is important, but not at any cost. The problem is that I don't want to live in a police state where the police have excessive powers. Yes, you could invent lots of laws that would make the police's job a lot easier, including torture, detention without trial, drugging you, random strip searches, restrictions on movement etcetera.
I have nothing to hide, but I shouldn't need to prove that, and I have the right to remain silent. If I was required to hand over decryption keys for some data, I might seriously consider civil disobediance in order to highlight the flaw in this type of law. We are supposedly a free society, but that died a long time ago. Thanks Bush, thanks Blair.
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