[Wolves] Tinkle tinkle little disk...

Stuart Langridge sil at kryogenix.org
Thu Jan 3 19:17:22 GMT 2008


> Regarding the encryption key - under the new RIPA amendments, it could prove
> problematic for Adam if his machine is siezed by the Police and they find
> encrypted material on his drive. His inability to produce the key may be
> interpreted as refusal with all the consequences thereof.

That's debatable, but unlikely in my opinion. You have to demonstrate
that you don't have the key in order to not fall foul of the courts.
We'll ignore the issue of being unable to prove a negative (because
that's not a flaw with this particular situation but instead a flaw
with the whole damned RIP Act), and instead concentrate on this
situation in itself. It's my opinion (not an official legal opinion,
but I have paid relatively close attention to this stuff) that if you
demonstrate to a judge that the encrypted data was stored there by
stuart-backup-system and that stuart-backup-system stores data for
other people, encrypted with their key which you don't know, that the
judge would consider it reasonable that you don't possess that key. Of
course, this does open up the hole that someone could *pretend* to be
using stuart-backup-system in order to conceal their own encrypted
data that they want to keep secret from the Man, but it's a relatively
short step for the courts to prove that they're doing so (I say
"that's not my data, it's Adam's"; they serve Adam with a Section 46
notice to get his key; he either says "I don't use that system, so
Stuart's lying" (and I go to prison) or he hands over the key as
required by the Act and the police determine that the key *doesn't*
decrypt the data (and I go to prison)).

sil

-- 
New Year's Day --
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
   -- Kobayashi Issa



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