[YLUG] GPG and the law

[Jan Tobias Muehlberg]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 10:33:33AM +0100, Robert Hulme wrote:
> Essentially the third part of the act says that an 'authorised'
> governmental person can ask you for your encryption keys (the
> private/secret keys) and that if you don't have them over on request
> you go to jail.

I can imagine many cases in which going to jail for "up to two
years" for not revealing secret keys might be preferable...

However, in the name of safety and security we are getting more
and more of these fancy regulations in Europe nowadays. Just as
another example: In a few months the German government will
decide about a law that renders the possession and distribution
of "hacker tools" illegal. Just imagine how many of these tools
are available in every Linux distribution and that most of those
are actually supposed to be used for security analysis.

I think there are a several problems we have to face now. The most
important is that law enforcement shifts away from the actual
prosecution of crime towards crime prevention. Together with
rightist's amazing idiocy and people's amazing ignorance towards
violations of their own privacy we don't need to worry about living
in a 1984-scenario within a few years. It's already here. CCTV cameras
in Middlesbrough curse at you [1] for walking on the wrong side of
the road, cryptography will be crippled by stupid regulations
and tools that made valuable contributions to IT security
possible will be banned because of the chance of abusing them.

Here is another question I already wanted to ask you about a year
ago: All the YLUG website says about who we are is "We're a group
of Linux enthusiasts from York and the surrounding area."
Alright, that's nice. But for what reasons do we gather. Is it
all about Linux or more about Free Software? Is it for ourselves
only or do we want evangelise others as well? Are we providing
free technical support or education?

Sorry for the long mail,
J. Tobias


[1]: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405477&in_page_id=1770
     "It would appear that the offenders are the only ones who
     find the audio cameras intrusive. The vast majority of
     people welcome these cameras."
     
-- 
"It gets worse. I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro."
                                  -- Terry Pratchett in alt.fan.pratchett
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