RIPA Freedom

The RIP Act 2000 has started to be used, and the results are just as bad as expected. Maybe not a Section 49 notice as far as I can tell from the report but still the police and CPS wielding the illiberal nature of this law like a club. The Register has all the details including what purports to be the response of the woman herself in an anonymous posting on Indymedia.

"Now apparently they have found some encrypted files on my computer (which was stolen by police thugs in May this year) which they think they have 'reasonable suspicion' to pry into using the excuse of 'preventing or detecting a crime'," she writes.

"Now I have been 'invited' (how nice, will there be tea and biccies?) to reveal my keys to the police so they can look at these files. If I do not comply and tell them to keep their great big hooters out of my private affairs I could be charged under RIPA."

The woman says that any encrypted data put on the PC must have been put there by somebody else.

"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."

Which as a soap dodging animal rights protestor is perfectly believable, however here is where the pernicious nature of the RIP Act comes in. It does not matter if she put the encrypted data on her machine deliberately or not, to fall foul of this law all you have to do is follow this link, or whether it is the results of a failed attempt to use PGP that she has long since given up on. It could even just be a file that has become corrupted to the point where it now looks like encrypted data. It is up to her to prove that she cannot give them the keys for this alleged encrypted data, because of the way the RIP Act was drafted she is guilty until proven innocent.