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 th