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His argument is: 1) They can lock you up for refusing to decrypt something. 2) Encrypted data looks exactly like random noise. 3) Encrypted data can be hidden i

His argument is: 1) They can lock you up for refusing to decrypt something. 2) Encrypted data looks exactly like random noise. 3) Encrypted data can be hidden in any file. 4) Therefore, they can allege that nearly anything is encrypted and lock you up on that basis. I'd say that's terrifying. Another thought: doesn't this make it possible to frame someone by writing random data to their hard drive?

mjhall 14y ago
The argument isn't totally correct. The Police can't just make allegations and force you to surrender keys - they have to convince a judge that the allegations are true, and that getting the keys to your random noise will produce evidence. RIPA is objectively flawed legislation, but it definitely doesn't "outlaw encryption" by anything less than a very long stretch of the imagination (as appears in this article).
- nathan_long 14y ago
  >> they have to convince a judge that the allegations are true, and that getting the keys to your random noise will produce evidence You are correct. However, suppose you encrypt some data and forget the key, or you store some radio noise in a file, or whatever. Later, you are accused of a crime. The judge issues a warrant. The data/noise is now evidence against you. You are presumed guilty, and it is impossible to prove your innocence.
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    No it's very easy. You claim the "key" is a one time pad, ie an XOR of the encrypted data - then you simply take the encrypted data and generate a "key" which XORs it into "the home secretary is a wonderful person and i support him"
    - jff 14y ago
      So, perjury.
      - excuse-me 14y ago
        Not sure you can commit perjury if you are the accused !
        Jtsummers 14y ago
        In the US you can, and I'd be surprised if many other jurisdictions saw it differently. In the US you have a right against self incrimination, not a right to lie and misdirect. See Martha Stewart as an example, part of her conviction was making false statements to an investigator.
        CapitalistCartr 14y ago
        Martha "Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigator". The lying to investigators was most of her "crime". If she'd told them to talk to her lawyer and clammed up, she'd have been way ahead. The Feds never did prove securities fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_case_and_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_c...
  - jrmg 14y ago
    Why do you make the jump here to "you are presumed guilty"? Your guilt would have to be proved in a court just like for any other crime. Are you suggesting that the courts would somehow just believe, with no evidence, that it's encrypted data relevant to the case and you're wilfully withholding the keys?
    - try-finally 14y ago
      You are not presumed guilty. But you are found guilty of breaking the new law which comes with a 5 year prison term if you were accused of being involved with terrorism or hiding child porn. Regardless of any evidence.
      - SEMW 14y ago
        > You are not presumed guilty. But you are found guilty of breaking the new law ... Regardless of any evidence. "Being found guilty... regardless of evidence" makes no sense. Part of 'being found guilty of breaking the law' involves the prosecution giving evidence that a jury thinks proves your guilt beyond reasonable doubt (inc. proving that you were in possession of a key, and so that it was actually encrypted data). s.53(3).
- CWuestefeld 14y ago
  Your point is usually true, when the system is working as intended. But it's not all that unusual for the gov't to really "have it in" for someone, but not be able to pin the crime on them, as with Al Capone. In his case, the government didn't think it could pin the true charges on him, so he was actually convicted on tax charges. The tax code is big, obscure, and no expert agrees on the detailed interpretation, so it's not too hard to find some technicality that will convict anyone. This encryption thing could easily be misused the same way: they can't prove you're a bad guy, so they trump up some technicality charges just to get you locked up.
  - mjwalshe 14y ago
    Uk Judges are separate from the govenment. You would ahve to go back to the bad old days of the star chamber to find the UK law system doing anything as doddgy as Al Capone (not exactly the USAs Legal systems finest hour)
    - batista 14y ago
      >Uk Judges are separate from the govenment. And how did that work out for the Guildford four for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Seven#Guildford_Four http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Seve...
      - barking 14y ago
        See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Denning,_Baron_Denning#Illness_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Denning,_Baron_Denning#I...
    - Zak 14y ago
      Uk Judges are separate from the govenment. In the UK, the term "government" refers to the executive branch. Outside that use, it encompasses the legislative, executive and judiciary power of a state. Wikipedia gives the following definition: Government consists of the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and the system by which they are organized. Judges are part of that by definition, even if there's some separation from the other components.
adrianN 14y ago
If you can write data to someone's hard drive it is simpler to just dump some child pornography.
- nathan_long 14y ago
  OK, but suppose you're trying to frame them for bank fraud. Coming up with incriminating data is a lot trickier than just making it look like they have something.
  - mseebach 14y ago
    Refusing to decrypt under this law will be the crime. It's not proof against you in the original charge. So you won't get them for bank fraud anyway, and then it might as well have been child porn (or a stash of stolen credit card number or compromised online banking accounts etc)
- hemancuso 14y ago
  I'm a bit disturbed that you suggest it's easier dump child porn onto somebody's hard drive than it is to dump a random bitstream onto the drive. It implies you've got a huge cache of it hanging around ready to go.
  - nathan_long 14y ago
    Me too. Also, it's not "easier" even if you have it. To dump data, you have to have and transmit data; to dump noise, you just need a tiny script.
  - ihuman 14y ago
    I think he's saying it's easier to dump unencrypted vs encrypted.
    - Blara 14y ago
      The point was that it doesn't have to be real data, just random data.
Zenst 14y ago
Well if you find yourself being asked for the encryption key for /dev/rand then you know things are pretty messed up. Given the technology intellegence of some law makers I do wonder when that day will come about.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  actually when I read /dev/urandom I get a much larger stream of data. I think /dev/random is corrupted becuase it hangs after a bit when I try to read. So please hand over the key for /dev/urandom..... ;-)
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    It hangs because your system entropy pool runs dry.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      Whoosh......
aqme28 14y ago
Yes. From the comments (credit to http://www.ktetch.co.uk/p/about-me.html http://www.ktetch.co.uk/p/about-me.html): "Funny thing about the RIPA act was that in 1999, when the act was first discussed, civil Liberties group Stand decided to show the problem. They sent an email to the Home Secretary (the minister for law and justice) containing a confession (source http://www.zdnet.com/surveillance-straw-petitioned-on-commerce-bill-controversy-3002073974/ http://www.zdnet.com/surveillance-straw-petitioned-on-commer... ). That confession was encrypted. Mr Straw had details to a crime in his posession, in an encypted file, and no way to decrypt it. He was, under the letter of the law, refusing to decrypt information relevent to a crime, and should therefore be charged under RIPA. Guess who wasn’t charged? Yes, the law doesn’t actually apply to you is you’re the Home Secretary. Who knew that those in government consider themselves above the laws they inflict on others."
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  And the reply to that: "This argument is ridiculous, since it’s missing the concept of intent. The Home Secretary clearly had no intent. That’s why he/she wasn’t charged."
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    So a law which you have to prove yourself innocent and can be applied to anyone - but the police get to decide who to apply it to. nope, can't see any problem with that.
  - aqme28 14y ago
    And the reply to that is that there is no criteria requiring intent in this law.
  - ta12121 14y ago
    And the reply to that: The UK law in question does not require intent (mens rea).
  - refurb 14y ago
    It appears that way. Mens rea is a legal concept applied to some of common law (although not always effectively). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#England http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#England EDIT: British common law divides up laws between those requiring intent and those that don't.
einhverfr 14y ago
There have been cases about this though and judges so far have not always bought this argument. There was a case I read about where someoen was using full disk encryption. He said he gave police his password but it didn't work. The judge dismissed the charges because of the difficulty proving that the key produced wasn't correct but that the hard drive was not corrupt, among other things.
- EmmaKay 14y ago
  That's BRILLIANT. "I gave you the correct key, you morons, why have you fucked my hard drive?" I live in the UK. This law, like all other dumb laws, will simply show the police up in court. Judges are smarter than you think - and they HATE crap laws.
- baltcode 14y ago
  Yes, but the chances of proving such nebulous ideas change greatly if you can be demonized in the public eye.
  - mseebach 14y ago
    That situation is really independent of the law. Imagine the law said that nobody could be compelled to decrypt data (using fourth amendment type reasoning), and it was leaked to the press that this person was suspected of traffic child porn, but refused to decrypt his harddrive - even when decrypting the harddrive could prove his innocence, wink wink nudge nudge.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      I think refusing to decrypt a hard drive in the US is dependent on whether it is self-incrimination (5th Amendment) while police activities are more tied to the 4th Amendment. But the point is "I gave you my password. I haven't seen the computer in a month while your forensic team was looking it over. Maybe I got it wrong, or maybe your boys screwed it up." That is not refusing to decrypt it. In fact it is very apparently cooperative.
alberich 14y ago
Here in Brazil is guaranteed by the constitution that no one can be forced to produce any evidence against him/herself. Isn't there something like this in the UK? You know... if someone says that you have ilegal encrypted data, they first would have to prove that it is really encrypted data and then that it is ilegal data.
- mmcnickle 14y ago
  There was a case where that defense was mounted, but failed [1]. The encryption keys were deemed to exist "separate from the will of the subject" i.e. they were deemed to be "physical". You can't use the defense against self-incrimination for physical keys either and the prosecution likened the encryption key to a physical key. What hasn't been tested in court (afaik) is the refusal to hand over a passphrase that protects the encryption key. If the passphrase exists only in your head, it could be argued that it doesn't exist separate to your will. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/14/ripa_self_incrimination_ruling/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/14/ripa_self_incriminat...
  - electromagnetic 14y ago
    Is it illegal to hand over passwords yet if it's self-incriminating? Because encasing the encryption key in a passworded file could get you out. You would be providing the key, but wouldn't be self-incriminating yourself. It would be like handing over an virtually unbreakable safe and saying "open it".
kintamanimatt 14y ago
Encrypted data, at least that encrypted with TrueCrypt, is distinguishable from random data. [1] [1] http://superuser.com/questions/383526/is-a-normal-truecrypt-partition-indistinguishable-from-random-data-does-it-pas http://superuser.com/questions/383526/is-a-normal-truecrypt-...
- Torn 14y ago
  Says down below that it isn't: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4234959 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4234959
  - kintamanimatt 14y ago
    I'm very glad I'm wrong in this case! It would be a horrible weakness in TC.
olliesaunders 14y ago
Isn’t it worse than that? Doesn’t it mean that, so long as you possess a reasonable amount of digital data, you could be hiding something in it and are therefore guilty.
PaulAJ 14y ago
Fortunately its nowhere near that bad. The prosecution needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the file contains encrypted data and that you have the key. So if you did have a file of random noise then the police would not be able to prove these things. And if you had software for using that file as a random number stream then that would be evidence in your defence. Remember, its for the police to prove your guilt, not you to prove your innocence. And the law in question does actually talk about that. If someone wrote random noise to your hard drive then they couldn't prove these things (and in that scenario it would be a lot easier to frame someone by simply writing some child porn). Encrypted files are not usually just cyphertext: there tends to be a header file with the file type, and of course there will be associated decryption software on the disk. Time and date stamps may well coincide (e.g. the decryption program was last run at the same time the suspect file was accessed). All of this would help build a case that the suspect had in fact decrypted the data in the past, and therefore could do so again. As for steganography, they would need some clear evidence that the alleged steganographic data existed. Merely saying "maybe" and a pound will get them a cup of tea.
- alttab 14y ago
  Does innocent until proven guilty and beyond a reasonable doubt apply to UK criminal law?
  - praptak 14y ago
    It is right there in the section linked from the article: (3) 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. ... which makes me sad that misinformation is being used to fight a good cause.
- ianferrel 14y ago
  > (and in that scenario it would be a lot easier to frame someone by simply writing some child porn). Well, you'd have to get some child porn to frame someone that way. Random data is much easier to procure.
uulbiy 14y ago
My dark side is thinking of a virus, let's call it YouGoToJail, that encrypts a file (say with gunpg - 4mb and works on all OSes) with a random very long password. The virus then deletes all traces to itself. You go to jail!
- BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
  It would be nice to see such a virus targeted at everyone in parliament.
- simonbrown 14y ago
  Would the virus actually delete itself by writing over the data? If not, it would be possible to detect that the suspect had the virus.
- btb 14y ago
  And just before it deletes itself it posts threatening messages via your twitter and facebook account, designed to trigger the automated systems presumably watching these, thereby triggering an investigation into your affairs. YouGoToJail indeed.
chris123 14y ago
Would be a valid defense argument for your lawyer to use. Lot of good that will do you in Gitmo (when the US implements this kind of law).
natmaster 14y ago
Guilty until proven innocent.

mjhall 14y ago

The argument isn't totally correct. The Police can't just make allegations and force you to surrender keys - they have to convince a judge that the allegations are true, and that getting the keys to your random noise will produce evidence. RIPA is objectively flawed legislation, but it definitely doesn't "outlaw encryption" by anything less than a very long stretch of the imagination (as appears in this article).

nathan_long 14y ago
>> they have to convince a judge that the allegations are true, and that getting the keys to your random noise will produce evidence You are correct. However, suppose you encrypt some data and forget the key, or you store some radio noise in a file, or whatever. Later, you are accused of a crime. The judge issues a warrant. The data/noise is now evidence against you. You are presumed guilty, and it is impossible to prove your innocence.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  No it's very easy. You claim the "key" is a one time pad, ie an XOR of the encrypted data - then you simply take the encrypted data and generate a "key" which XORs it into "the home secretary is a wonderful person and i support him"
  - jff 14y ago
    So, perjury.
    - excuse-me 14y ago
      Not sure you can commit perjury if you are the accused !
      - Jtsummers 14y ago
        In the US you can, and I'd be surprised if many other jurisdictions saw it differently. In the US you have a right against self incrimination, not a right to lie and misdirect. See Martha Stewart as an example, part of her conviction was making false statements to an investigator.
        CapitalistCartr 14y ago
        Martha "Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigator". The lying to investigators was most of her "crime". If she'd told them to talk to her lawyer and clammed up, she'd have been way ahead. The Feds never did prove securities fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_case_and_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_c...
- jrmg 14y ago
  Why do you make the jump here to "you are presumed guilty"? Your guilt would have to be proved in a court just like for any other crime. Are you suggesting that the courts would somehow just believe, with no evidence, that it's encrypted data relevant to the case and you're wilfully withholding the keys?
  - try-finally 14y ago
    You are not presumed guilty. But you are found guilty of breaking the new law which comes with a 5 year prison term if you were accused of being involved with terrorism or hiding child porn. Regardless of any evidence.
    - SEMW 14y ago
      > You are not presumed guilty. But you are found guilty of breaking the new law ... Regardless of any evidence. "Being found guilty... regardless of evidence" makes no sense. Part of 'being found guilty of breaking the law' involves the prosecution giving evidence that a jury thinks proves your guilt beyond reasonable doubt (inc. proving that you were in possession of a key, and so that it was actually encrypted data). s.53(3).
CWuestefeld 14y ago
Your point is usually true, when the system is working as intended. But it's not all that unusual for the gov't to really "have it in" for someone, but not be able to pin the crime on them, as with Al Capone. In his case, the government didn't think it could pin the true charges on him, so he was actually convicted on tax charges. The tax code is big, obscure, and no expert agrees on the detailed interpretation, so it's not too hard to find some technicality that will convict anyone. This encryption thing could easily be misused the same way: they can't prove you're a bad guy, so they trump up some technicality charges just to get you locked up.
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  Uk Judges are separate from the govenment. You would ahve to go back to the bad old days of the star chamber to find the UK law system doing anything as doddgy as Al Capone (not exactly the USAs Legal systems finest hour)
  - batista 14y ago
    >Uk Judges are separate from the govenment. And how did that work out for the Guildford four for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Seven#Guildford_Four http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_Four_and_Maguire_Seve...
    - barking 14y ago
      See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Denning,_Baron_Denning#Illness_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Denning,_Baron_Denning#I...
  - Zak 14y ago
    Uk Judges are separate from the govenment. In the UK, the term "government" refers to the executive branch. Outside that use, it encompasses the legislative, executive and judiciary power of a state. Wikipedia gives the following definition: Government consists of the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and the system by which they are organized. Judges are part of that by definition, even if there's some separation from the other components.

adrianN 14y ago

If you can write data to someone's hard drive it is simpler to just dump some child pornography.

nathan_long 14y ago
OK, but suppose you're trying to frame them for bank fraud. Coming up with incriminating data is a lot trickier than just making it look like they have something.
- mseebach 14y ago
  Refusing to decrypt under this law will be the crime. It's not proof against you in the original charge. So you won't get them for bank fraud anyway, and then it might as well have been child porn (or a stash of stolen credit card number or compromised online banking accounts etc)
hemancuso 14y ago
I'm a bit disturbed that you suggest it's easier dump child porn onto somebody's hard drive than it is to dump a random bitstream onto the drive. It implies you've got a huge cache of it hanging around ready to go.
- nathan_long 14y ago
  Me too. Also, it's not "easier" even if you have it. To dump data, you have to have and transmit data; to dump noise, you just need a tiny script.
- ihuman 14y ago
  I think he's saying it's easier to dump unencrypted vs encrypted.
  - Blara 14y ago
    The point was that it doesn't have to be real data, just random data.

Zenst 14y ago

Well if you find yourself being asked for the encryption key for /dev/rand then you know things are pretty messed up. Given the technology intellegence of some law makers I do wonder when that day will come about.

einhverfr 14y ago
actually when I read /dev/urandom I get a much larger stream of data. I think /dev/random is corrupted becuase it hangs after a bit when I try to read. So please hand over the key for /dev/urandom..... ;-)
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  It hangs because your system entropy pool runs dry.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Whoosh......

aqme28 14y ago

Yes. From the comments (credit to http://www.ktetch.co.uk/p/about-me.html http://www.ktetch.co.uk/p/about-me.html): "Funny thing about the RIPA act was that in 1999, when the act was first discussed, civil Liberties group Stand decided to show the problem. They sent an email to the Home Secretary (the minister for law and justice) containing a confession (source http://www.zdnet.com/surveillance-straw-petitioned-on-commerce-bill-controversy-3002073974/ http://www.zdnet.com/surveillance-straw-petitioned-on-commer... ). That confession was encrypted. Mr Straw had details to a crime in his posession, in an encypted file, and no way to decrypt it. He was, under the letter of the law, refusing to decrypt information relevent to a crime, and should therefore be charged under RIPA. Guess who wasn’t charged? Yes, the law doesn’t actually apply to you is you’re the Home Secretary. Who knew that those in government consider themselves above the laws they inflict on others."

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
And the reply to that: "This argument is ridiculous, since it’s missing the concept of intent. The Home Secretary clearly had no intent. That’s why he/she wasn’t charged."
- excuse-me 14y ago
  So a law which you have to prove yourself innocent and can be applied to anyone - but the police get to decide who to apply it to. nope, can't see any problem with that.
- aqme28 14y ago
  And the reply to that is that there is no criteria requiring intent in this law.
- ta12121 14y ago
  And the reply to that: The UK law in question does not require intent (mens rea).
- refurb 14y ago
  It appears that way. Mens rea is a legal concept applied to some of common law (although not always effectively). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#England http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#England EDIT: British common law divides up laws between those requiring intent and those that don't.

einhverfr 14y ago

There have been cases about this though and judges so far have not always bought this argument. There was a case I read about where someoen was using full disk encryption. He said he gave police his password but it didn't work. The judge dismissed the charges because of the difficulty proving that the key produced wasn't correct but that the hard drive was not corrupt, among other things.

EmmaKay 14y ago
That's BRILLIANT. "I gave you the correct key, you morons, why have you fucked my hard drive?" I live in the UK. This law, like all other dumb laws, will simply show the police up in court. Judges are smarter than you think - and they HATE crap laws.
baltcode 14y ago
Yes, but the chances of proving such nebulous ideas change greatly if you can be demonized in the public eye.
- mseebach 14y ago
  That situation is really independent of the law. Imagine the law said that nobody could be compelled to decrypt data (using fourth amendment type reasoning), and it was leaked to the press that this person was suspected of traffic child porn, but refused to decrypt his harddrive - even when decrypting the harddrive could prove his innocence, wink wink nudge nudge.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    I think refusing to decrypt a hard drive in the US is dependent on whether it is self-incrimination (5th Amendment) while police activities are more tied to the 4th Amendment. But the point is "I gave you my password. I haven't seen the computer in a month while your forensic team was looking it over. Maybe I got it wrong, or maybe your boys screwed it up." That is not refusing to decrypt it. In fact it is very apparently cooperative.

alberich 14y ago

Here in Brazil is guaranteed by the constitution that no one can be forced to produce any evidence against him/herself. Isn't there something like this in the UK? You know... if someone says that you have ilegal encrypted data, they first would have to prove that it is really encrypted data and then that it is ilegal data.

mmcnickle 14y ago
There was a case where that defense was mounted, but failed [1]. The encryption keys were deemed to exist "separate from the will of the subject" i.e. they were deemed to be "physical". You can't use the defense against self-incrimination for physical keys either and the prosecution likened the encryption key to a physical key. What hasn't been tested in court (afaik) is the refusal to hand over a passphrase that protects the encryption key. If the passphrase exists only in your head, it could be argued that it doesn't exist separate to your will. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/14/ripa_self_incrimination_ruling/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/14/ripa_self_incriminat...
- electromagnetic 14y ago
  Is it illegal to hand over passwords yet if it's self-incriminating? Because encasing the encryption key in a passworded file could get you out. You would be providing the key, but wouldn't be self-incriminating yourself. It would be like handing over an virtually unbreakable safe and saying "open it".

kintamanimatt 14y ago

Encrypted data, at least that encrypted with TrueCrypt, is distinguishable from random data. [1] [1] http://superuser.com/questions/383526/is-a-normal-truecrypt-partition-indistinguishable-from-random-data-does-it-pas http://superuser.com/questions/383526/is-a-normal-truecrypt-...

Torn 14y ago
Says down below that it isn't: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4234959 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4234959
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  I'm very glad I'm wrong in this case! It would be a horrible weakness in TC.

olliesaunders 14y ago

Isn’t it worse than that? Doesn’t it mean that, so long as you possess a reasonable amount of digital data, you could be hiding something in it and are therefore guilty.

PaulAJ 14y ago

Fortunately its nowhere near that bad. The prosecution needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the file contains encrypted data and that you have the key. So if you did have a file of random noise then the police would not be able to prove these things. And if you had software for using that file as a random number stream then that would be evidence in your defence. Remember, its for the police to prove your guilt, not you to prove your innocence. And the law in question does actually talk about that. If someone wrote random noise to your hard drive then they couldn't prove these things (and in that scenario it would be a lot easier to frame someone by simply writing some child porn). Encrypted files are not usually just cyphertext: there tends to be a header file with the file type, and of course there will be associated decryption software on the disk. Time and date stamps may well coincide (e.g. the decryption program was last run at the same time the suspect file was accessed). All of this would help build a case that the suspect had in fact decrypted the data in the past, and therefore could do so again. As for steganography, they would need some clear evidence that the alleged steganographic data existed. Merely saying "maybe" and a pound will get them a cup of tea.

alttab 14y ago
Does innocent until proven guilty and beyond a reasonable doubt apply to UK criminal law?
- praptak 14y ago
  It is right there in the section linked from the article: (3) 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. ... which makes me sad that misinformation is being used to fight a good cause.
ianferrel 14y ago
> (and in that scenario it would be a lot easier to frame someone by simply writing some child porn). Well, you'd have to get some child porn to frame someone that way. Random data is much easier to procure.

uulbiy 14y ago

My dark side is thinking of a virus, let's call it YouGoToJail, that encrypts a file (say with gunpg - 4mb and works on all OSes) with a random very long password. The virus then deletes all traces to itself. You go to jail!

BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
It would be nice to see such a virus targeted at everyone in parliament.
simonbrown 14y ago
Would the virus actually delete itself by writing over the data? If not, it would be possible to detect that the suspect had the virus.
btb 14y ago
And just before it deletes itself it posts threatening messages via your twitter and facebook account, designed to trigger the automated systems presumably watching these, thereby triggering an investigation into your affairs. YouGoToJail indeed.

chris123 14y ago

Would be a valid defense argument for your lawyer to use. Lot of good that will do you in Gitmo (when the US implements this kind of law).

natmaster 14y ago

Guilty until proven innocent.