Government to force handover of encryption keys

Found on ZD Net on Thursday, 18 May 2006
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The UK Government is preparing to give the police the authority to force organisations and individuals to disclose encryption keys, a move which has outraged some security and civil rights experts.

Some security experts are concerned that the plan could criminalise innocent people and drive businesses out of the UK. But the Home Office, which has just launched a consultation process, says the powers contained in Part 3 are needed to combat an increased use of encryption by criminals, paedophiles, and terrorists.

"The use of encryption is... proliferating," Liam Byrne, Home Office minister of state told Parliament last week. "Encryption products are more widely available and are integrated as security features in standard operating systems, so the Government has concluded that it is now right to implement the provisions of Part 3 of RIPA... which is not presently in force."

"It is, as ever, almost impossible to prove 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that some random-looking data is in fact ciphertext, and then prove that the accused actually has the key for it, and that he has refused a proper order to divulge it," pointed out encryption expert Peter Fairbrother on ukcrypto, a public email discussion list.

Same old reasons over and over again. I'm getting sick of hearing those as a justification for snooping around. If you do highly illegal things, you would probably end up in jail for more than 2 or 5 years, so it's still safer to refuse to hand the key over. Besides, as Peter Fairbrother pointed out already, it's not possible to prove that something is in fact encrypted data instead of random binary garbage. Plus, you can always forget your key.