3 ms·

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/part/III https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/part/III The police think Bob has material that they need to

by DanBC 5y ago

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/part/III https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/part/III The police think Bob has material that they need to see. They think that: The key, password, code is in the possession of the person given notice. Disclosure is necessary in preventing or detecting crime. Disclosure is proportionate. The protected material cannot be obtained by other reasonable means. They serve a section 49 notice. Bob can ignore this. But that means he may be guilty of an offence under S53. One of the defences available is to say that he's not in possession of the key. He'd have to persuade the court that either He'd forgotten the key or your encryption was set up in a way that he'd never had the key in a memorable form. > For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if— > (a)sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and > (b)the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. So, to answer your question: yes, a person could be prosecuted, and they'd have to prove they forgot the key. The prosecutors wouldn't have to prove that the key had not been forgotten.

gambiting 5y ago
Absolutely, but that loops back all the way back to my original question - has anyone ever been successfully been prosecuted for actually forgetting their password. Or at least saying "look, my passwords are auto generated and 32 characters long, I think the 5th and 8th characters were a # but I'm not sure". What then? You're not refusing to provide the password, you are just not exactly sure what it was, and if you look into my password manager you can see all my passwords are at least 32 characters long so I'm not making it up.
- DanBC 5y ago
  I don't think anyone has been prosecuted. I'm not arguing with your point - this stuff is messy. It's not clear cut. There's a combination of how the law is written, how courts have interpreted that in the past, whether that would stand up to the supreme court or the EU courts, and what you can persuade the jury and judges to believe. If you're providing part of your password you run the risk that i) you'll be convicted of the S53 RIPA offence (potentially 2 years for most stuff, potentially 5 years for child sexual exploitation or terrorism) and ii) they'll decrypt it somehow and you'll also be convicted of the original offences. Criminals are well aware of the trade-offs of the English courts. Do you plead guilty at the earliest opportunity (and get a reduction in sentence as a result) or do you wait until the day of the trial (because many trials collapse before they get to court).

by DanBC 5y ago

gambiting 5y ago

Absolutely, but that loops back all the way back to my original question - has anyone ever been successfully been prosecuted for actually forgetting their password. Or at least saying "look, my passwords are auto generated and 32 characters long, I think the 5th and 8th characters were a # but I'm not sure". What then? You're not refusing to provide the password, you are just not exactly sure what it was, and if you look into my password manager you can see all my passwords are at least 32 characters long so I'm not making it up.

DanBC 5y ago
I don't think anyone has been prosecuted. I'm not arguing with your point - this stuff is messy. It's not clear cut. There's a combination of how the law is written, how courts have interpreted that in the past, whether that would stand up to the supreme court or the EU courts, and what you can persuade the jury and judges to believe. If you're providing part of your password you run the risk that i) you'll be convicted of the S53 RIPA offence (potentially 2 years for most stuff, potentially 5 years for child sexual exploitation or terrorism) and ii) they'll decrypt it somehow and you'll also be convicted of the original offences. Criminals are well aware of the trade-offs of the English courts. Do you plead guilty at the earliest opportunity (and get a reduction in sentence as a result) or do you wait until the day of the trial (because many trials collapse before they get to court).