[Marticus]

Claiming forgetfulness concerning the key would give you a way out unless they could manage to crack it - at that point you would have dodged the self-incrimination bullet but could not be legally bound to simply "decrypt it."

I agree though - the entire thing is an absurdly mucky business. Apparently however the English law doesn't have much like that in the way of loopholes, or he simply refused to decrypt it outright.

[jrockway]

I believe there is a specific law in the UK that mandates key escrow -- the government must be able to decrypt anything.

This has been floated in the US before, but it has not gotten good PR. As it stands now, it is a Constitutional law issue -- does the fifth amendment mean that you can't be compelled to get up in the witness box and talk, or does it mean that you don't have to assist the prosecution in any way? Right now, the courts seem to be split 50/50, but I feel that practicality dictates that you don't have to give up your key. First they have to accuse you of a crime and bring it to trial, then you have to refuse to decrypt the key, then the first trial has to stop, then the government has to prove that you know the key, then you have to be convicted and sentenced, then you can go back to the original trial after analyzing all of the decrypted "evidence". If encryption becomes widespread, this just isn't practical. It's easy to prove that you sell drugs; someone goes up to you and buys them. It's not easy to prove that you didn't forget your encryption key, because we have no way to observe someone's mind. Laws that prohibit crimes that can't be proved tend not to do well.

[Tyrannosaurs]

I believe the law in the UK allows for a jail sentence of up to two years for not revealing a password or encryption key.

While it's a dubious law in may ways, when you hear a UK politician calling for longer detention without trial and stating needing to break encryption you can at least point to this law and say that their claims about longer detention are nonsense.