Double Plus Bad News for Digital Rights in the UK
October 16, 2008
From the when-it-rains-it-pours dept, LinuxWorld, and Slashdot: The Communications Data Bill (2008) will lead to the creation of a single, centralized database containing records of all e-mails sent, websites visited and mobile phones used by UK citizens.
On another front: “Defendants can’t deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled.”
There’s so much woolly thinking here that I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just dive in.
With regards to the news on surveillance, not only is such legislation burdensome to ISPs, but the “monster under the bed“, I mean the terrorists, will easily work around such a feeble minded idea. Either that, or they’ll only catch the stupidest ones, whilst tossing everybody else’s privacy out the window.
With regards to passphrases and encryption keys, claiming that an encryption key is no different from a physical key is stunning leap of logic. While the kind you use to unlock your door can exist as an entity unto itself (separately and apart from its owner), an encryption key only exists in the mind of its user and can only be “discovered” via a communication act.
If that’s the case, how then is revealing your encryption key passphrase not self-incriminating?
And who’s to prove otherwise when you say that you “don’t remember” when asked for it?
