Animal rights activist hit with RIPA key demand

Found on The Register on Tuesday, 13 November 2007
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Section Three of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) came into force at the start in October 2007, seven years after the original legislation passed through parliament. Intended primarily to deal with terror suspects, it allows police to demand encryption keys or provide a clear text transcript of encrypted text.

Failure to comply can result in up to two years imprisonment for cases not involving national security, or five years for terrorism offences and the like. Orders can be made to turn over data months or even years old.

But an animal rights activist is one of the first people at the receiving end of a notice to give up encryption keys. Her computer was seized by police in May, and she has been given 12 days to hand over a pass-phrase to unlock encrypted data held on the drive - or face the consequences.

This is exactly going as imagined: first, create a law to fight against terrorists or pedophiles. Then, start to apply this law to other groups which don't have the full support of the public, like animal right extremists. Some people will point out that the law was not intented to be used for that, but many others won't care and let it slip. Continue to use it against other groups before you start to threaten less and less extremist people with it. Now you have your police state and people are used to threats and monitoring.