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thewayneCan't trust them terrorist animal rights activists!
On October 1, a law went into effect in the UK that if the police ask for your encryption keys and you don't provide them, you can face five years in prison. (story) Well, it looks like the first person to be charged with such is an animal rights activist whose laptop was seized in May. (story) So six months later, they're just now claiming that she has encrypted files? Pretty slow processing, good thing it wasn't a terrorist who wasn't going to blow things up in June.
The woman has provided some good quotes: "Funny thing is PGP and I never got on together I confess that I am far too dense for such a complex (well to me anyway) programme. Therefore in a so-called democracy I am being threatened with prison simply because I cannot access encrypted files on my computer."
She argues that even if she had used encryption she'd be disinclined to hand over her pass phrase. "The police are my enemy, I know that they have given information about me to Huntingdon Life Sciences (as well as hospitalising me)," she writes. "Would I really want them to see and then pass around private communications with my solicitors which could be used against me at a later date in the civil courts, medical records, embarrassing poetry which was never meant to be read by anyone else, soppy love letters or indeed personal financial transactions?"
Lovely ol' world, eh?
On October 1, a law went into effect in the UK that if the police ask for your encryption keys and you don't provide them, you can face five years in prison. (story) Well, it looks like the first person to be charged with such is an animal rights activist whose laptop was seized in May. (story) So six months later, they're just now claiming that she has encrypted files? Pretty slow processing, good thing it wasn't a terrorist who wasn't going to blow things up in June.
The woman has provided some good quotes: "Funny thing is PGP and I never got on together I confess that I am far too dense for such a complex (well to me anyway) programme. Therefore in a so-called democracy I am being threatened with prison simply because I cannot access encrypted files on my computer."
She argues that even if she had used encryption she'd be disinclined to hand over her pass phrase. "The police are my enemy, I know that they have given information about me to Huntingdon Life Sciences (as well as hospitalising me)," she writes. "Would I really want them to see and then pass around private communications with my solicitors which could be used against me at a later date in the civil courts, medical records, embarrassing poetry which was never meant to be read by anyone else, soppy love letters or indeed personal financial transactions?"
Lovely ol' world, eh?
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Date: 2007-11-19 06:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
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