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UK anti-encryption law

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Re: UK anti-encryption law

#181

Post by theaeolist »

omh wrote: post #70
theaeolist wrote: post #40

Isn't TrueCrypt's 'hidden volume' feature enough to make this law pointless? Just have two encoded sets of information in the same file. When you are asked to give the key it is up to you the key of which one you give. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability

Or perhaps after giving the key to the main volume the police will insist that you give them the key to the hidden volume. If you deny that there is a hidden volume then they'll just say that you're refusing to decrypt and prosecute you anyway.

Just put a hidden volume inside a hidden volume inside a hidden volume. There.

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#182

Post by qxcv »

mistercow wrote: post #81

>Yes, this is where the hairs rise on our arms: if you have a recorded file with radio noise from the local telescope that you use for generation of random numbers, and the police asks you to produce the decryption key to show them the three documents inside the encrypted container that your radio noise looks like, you will be sent to jail for up to five years for your inability to produce the imagined documents. Of…

Hell, you could say the key is head -c `wc -c secret_file` /dev/urandom and they wouldn't be able to argue. It's turtles all the way down if they ask you to decrypt the result.

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#183

Post by biomechanica »

MRonney wrote: post #118

I was watching 'Garrow's Law' yesterday. He said that "Laws which are passed in times of fear, are rarely removed from the statute books". Terrorists always win, because every time they attempt to strike the Government removes our basic liberties under the guise of protecting us.

Well, Norway is dealing with their attack quite well.

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#184

Post by mjwalshe »

Zak wrote: post #100
mjwalshe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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 or…

No Judges are part of the "establishment" not the "govenment" ask Tony or Dave about the judges who ruled against them over a large number of issues.

I dubt wikipedia edited by a large number of Non UK People woud get the subtle destiction I am making here.

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#185

Post by mjwalshe »

SEMW wrote: post #176
alttab wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America that is a violation of 4th amendment rights. Now clearly this applies to UK, but we didn't fight the UK in a war for nothing.

I'm not very familiar with US law, but a few moments googling suggests that that's nonsense, and the standard the police must reach to conduct a stop and search in the US, for e.g. weapons ("reasonable suspicion", per Terry v Ohio), is essentially identical to that in the UK ("reasonable grounds for suspecting"). Though the UK statute does cover a slightly wider class of items - e.g. stolen property, rather than just…

The ultra fragmented nature of the police forces in the states lends its self to this unfortunately.

What the USA needs to do is to move into the 20th century and for each state to have a single police force with uniform standards - this would save a lot of resource wasted by every city/town having its own police force plus state troopers, sheriffs and what have you

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#186

Post by alan_cx »

freehunter wrote: post #6

I have to wonder if this would ever hold up in court. I don't know much about the UK justice system, but in America it would be pretty rare to be convicted of a crime that they can't actually prove you committed. You could be jailed for refusing to comply with a court order to decrypt the file, but if you can prove it's not actually encrypted, they can't do anything about it.

How do you prove its not encrypted? How do you destroy the basics of logic by proving a negative?

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#187

Post by alan_cx »

Please forgive my technical ignorance, but can an encrypted cookie be dropped in to my browser cache by a web site? Could an encrypted image with hidden information on a web site end up in my cache? If so, millions of people could have terrorist data in their caches and never know, nor have the key to decrypt it. Also, who has that file Wikileaks published as "insurance". Any one got the key? Any one know whats in it?

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#188

Post by simonbrown »

uulbiy wrote: post #142
nathan_long wrote: post #4

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?

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!

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.

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#189

Post by yason »

The difference with programmers/scientists/hackers and politicians/authorities/lawyers is that the former see instantly where seemingly small changes in laws and policies will ultimately lead whereas the latter will dismiss these potential problems by making remarks such as "It will only be used against bad guys", which translates to "We had a few hairy cases where this sort of law would have really helped, so we wrote one to cover similar circumstances in the future and while we don't really know how to think of what else goes out with the bathwater we will need something at our disposal."

Re: UK anti-encryption law

#190

Post by macavity23 »

polymatter wrote: post #156
excuse-me wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but remarkably after 100years of bombings and assassinations by the IRA the response was to carry on as normal, don't give in to them. The only visible sign was removing litter bins from railway stations and some checkpoints on vehicles enter the financial district of London Yet 5 minutes after the 9/11 attacks on America the UK suddenly needed a whole raft of laws to intercept all phone calls, hold people withou…

IRA terrorism was pretty extensive too. They murdered close members of the UK royal family ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Mountbatten,_1st_Earl_Mou... ), major damage to cities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing ) and actual mortar attacks on a sitting Prime Minister and other key high level ministers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack ). Have a look at the list for…

The 'getting them round a table talking' was largely an effect of a massive intelligence and infiltration campaign that reduced the IRA's offensive capability to the point that they figured they'd be better off playing the electoral game. Make no mistake, the IRA was defeated - but it took decades, and involved the kind of subtle work that seems to have been missing in Iraq or Afghanistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeknife is the best example - the guy who was put in charge of finding moles within the IRA had been a British agent for 20 years!

Not that you'd expect any British or Unionist pols to mention this... when they've won, no point in rubbing their opponents' noses in it.

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