Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by drbw 3491 days ago
> they will have to outlaw inability to decrypt.

The UK's already done that - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 already made it an offence not to divulge encryption keys when asked. [1]

1 https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investig...

1 comments

Yes, that's a step towards it. But at least the person has to be a "suspect" in another crime (however low the bar for that is) and an explicit demand has to be made for the key. Not that it does a lot of good since anybody can become a suspect and the demand for the key is retrospective to when you weren't a suspect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y (Constable Savage)

Suspect of being Muslim, wearing a beard and using an ISP that the public hasn't heard of that isn't price competitive is more than enough for a media hatchet job. How low does the bar have to be?

This should be the preserve of Uganda and N Korea.

I really don't think that having to be a suspect is in ANY way meaningful, since there is absolutely no bar to being a suspect. It is perfectly reasonable to state "we have no idea who did this so every UK resident is a possible suspect".