back to article Animal rights activist hit with RIPA key decrypt demand

An animal rights activist has been ordered to hand over her encryption keys to the authorities. Section Three of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) came into force at the start in October 2007, seven years after the original legislation passed through parliament. Intended primarily to deal with terror suspects, …

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  1. Colin Millar
    Go

    Can't we all just get along

    Can we not have one law for the guilty and another law for the not yet guilty

    Can we also have an icon to indicate "This message is in code and anyone who doesn't clear their browser cache immediately is going to prison"

    NB - clearing your browser cache regularly is regarded as suspicious activity and will result in your going to prison

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.

    Or to put it another way: Anyone afraid of persecution should be persecuted.

    -- Creature.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Besides...

    Animal rights activists don't seem to understand that these animals aren't some sort of pet that was stolen away in the night... They are bred and raised for this, at great cost mind you. But hey, if you want to stop animal research, just stop buying the products and using the services that were developed and proven to work through it... So no bypass surgeries, no modern medicines, etc etc. Go ahead, put your lives where your ideals are. (Sorry, PETArds et al really cook my goose)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @ Sillyfellow

    Animal rights terrorists should be guilty until proven innocent!

    Horrible horrible scum who go around making other peoples lives a missery

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    you all seem to be forgetting something very important

    the police *already* had enough of a case to get a warrant to enter this nutball's place to seize her computer! This wasn't some random fishing thing. A judge already reviewed enough of the case to say it was okay for them to physically breach her residence and seize hardware!

    Which means they have enough already to demand and expect decryption keys. The procedure, as established long ago, was followed in the best tradition of balancing suspect's rights with protecting people from criminals.

    Or should we do what you socialist bleeding hearts want and never arrest or search any criminal's home ever?

    And to a few of you morons-America's 5th amendment *DOES NOT APPLY* to the rest of the world! Go back to your caves or sweatshops or wherever you're based out of, RTFA before seeding forums with your propaganda and messages.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    auto-erase??

    What we need is the ability to create a trojan passphrase. Give *THAT* to them, and the program spits out random text, while doing a secure erase on the entire drive. This is probably easier (but not as much fun as) firing a thermite charge to slag the drive.

    Data? What data?? What did you *DO* to my machine???

    Anonymous, for the obvious reasons....

  7. Marty R. Milette
    Black Helicopters

    Maybe you'll be next...

    Perhaps all of you 'anti-animal-rights activist activists' will get the next visit...

    "First, they came for the labor unions but I wasn't a labor unionist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Communists but I wasn't a Communist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Jews but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Catholics but I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up." - Pastor Martin Niemoller

    Get a clue and get the point -- this may be the first government demand for encryption keys, but you can be bloody sure it won't be the last.

    It is like saying, "you can use encryption as much as you want, but if we (the government) decide we want to see something, you'd better fork it over."

    It would be more honest if the government simply outlawed encryption like several other countries -- instead of changing the law on a case-by-case basis.

    Move along now, we have a lot more children to fingerprint and DNA record... Welcome to the UK -- Best Police State outside America -- or maybe better.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    TrueCrypt thrawts RIPA III

    The UK government is going to deprive honest an law-abiding citizens of their liberties while criminals can carry on theirs businesses as usual, with just a little software upgrade.

    Free software like TrueCrypt http://www.truecrypt.org/ can conceal encrypted material in a way that prevent its detection.

    In case the Police forces you to reveal your password, TrueCrypt provides and supports two kinds of "plausible deniability":

    1. Hidden volumes. The principle is that a TrueCrypt volume is created within another TrueCrypt volume (within the free space on the volume). Even when the outer volume is mounted, it is impossible to prove whether there is a hidden volume within it or not, because free space on any TrueCrypt volume is always filled with random data when the volume is created* and no part of the (dismounted) hidden volume can be distinguished from random data. Note that TrueCrypt does not modify the file system (information about free space, etc.) within the outer volume in any way.

    2. It is impossible to identify a TrueCrypt volume. Until decrypted, a TrueCrypt volume appears to consist of nothing more than random data (it does not contain any kind of "signature"). Therefore, it is impossible to prove that a file, a partition or a device is a TrueCrypt volume or that it has been encrypted.

    FreeOTFE http://www.freeotfe.org/ also offers similar features.

    Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging, http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ offers true deniability for instant messaging.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    TrueCrypt's "aleatory" defence against RIPA

    TrueCrypt http://www.truecrypt.org/ provides an "aleatory" defence against RIPA, and, indeed, against any similar legislation. This defence works because TrueCrypt makes encrypted material indistinguishable from pseudo-random data. And before the authorities can insist that you hand over an encryption key, they would first be obliged to prove to the satisfaction of a court that you were in possession of encrypted material. Depending on how TrueCrypt is set up it might be obvious that you have some pseudo-random data in an atypical location on your computer, and you might well be asked how it got there. Now, there are many computer processes that produce pseudo-random data, and you are not obliged by the legislation to account for the origins of every file on your computer that contains such data given the tens of thousands of files on the average PC this would be an impossible task. However, TrueCrypt can also provide you with an excellent and highly plausible reason as to why you possess such a file of pseudo-random data irrespective of where it is found.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Off-the-Record Messaging & deniable encryption

    Off-the-Record Messaging, http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ commonly referred to as OTR, is a cryptographic protocol that provides strong encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR provides perfect forward secrecy and deniable encryption.

    1. Perfect forward secrecy: Messages are only encrypted with temporary per-message AES keys, negotiated using the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. The compromise of any long-lived cryptographic keys does not compromise any previous conversations, even if an attacker is in possession of ciphertexts.

    2. Deniable authentication: Messages in a conversation do not have digital signatures, and after a conversation is complete, anyone is able to forge a message to appear to have come from one of the participants in the conversation, assuring that it is impossible to prove that a specific message came from a specific person.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    What are we going to do

    If we go significantly more towards a 1984 style thing, who's going to revolt? Do we have a plan?

    Just wondering - at the moment it could go either way but at some point the only option may be to take more serious action than protesting, and if that is the case, we should be organised.

    Obviously anon.

  12. matt young
    Gates Horns

    bad news for windows vista readyboost users.....

    directly from the miscosoft readyboost developer page:

    "ReadyBoost also encrypts the content for use only on the PC system where the data was generated"

    so if your readyboost enabled machine gets confiscated do you automatically get 2 years because you can't provide the decryption key for the readyboost cache file?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ha

    But M'Lord, the police have confiscated all my records and my computer, I no longer have access to the material they're requesting and in any case they already have said material.

    Another defence would be to claim legal privalage, making the documents exempt from searches. Although I don't know how well this one holds up anymore, it used to be a pretty powerful way to get things exempted from search and siezure.

    As for people who think this law sucks, it does. It's also beyond the point of debate as it's law now, I suggest double blind encryption and passphrase generation combined with obfuscation to the point of a single message containing many red herring messages, any of which could be the real message.

    Soon enough the thoughts in our ownheads won't be private and wil be subject to intrusive orders.

  14. Tawakalna
    Paris Hilton

    what's going with the Reg these days?

    I love the Reg, I've been reading it for years and it's always my first port of call when I roll into work and log on to the interweb. But when did it become a hate-fest for the right-wingers?

    In just a few weeks we've had:_

    people saying Menezes deserved to die because he was a foreigner and working here illegally, and thus brought it on himself. And that the Police can do no wrong.

    people saying that it's perfectly alright to taser a confused and frightened man to death in full view of the public, that he brought it on himself for being upset, and that the Police can do no wrong.

    and now, that someone you don't know and have never met must automatically be guilty because she believes in animal rights and has some encrypted files on her pc, and because she's a bit of a fruitloop. So what? she's a paranoid fruitloop, but she still has rights. But apparently these days it's ok just to point the finger and watch someone being dragged away to gaol or a possibly violent end because you don't like them or what they believe? There's a word for that, well, several actually. The only thing that the girl doesn't have against her is that she's not a Muslim; if she was she'd probably be dead by now "She behaved in a threatening manner, sarge, she was going for a comb-like weapon" "that's ok PC Dimbleby, have a promotion and we'll cover up for you like we always do"

    Just what is wrong with you people that you assume that anyone the Police accuse or even look at is automatically guilty and don't deserve any rights? Call yourselves British? You should be ashamed, you're being like the cowards in Nazi Germany who denounced people for being jewish/gay/socialists/whatever. Thank heavens I'm heading out of this country in a few years, you deserve to live in a society like that, I don't.

    These appalling comments from supposedly intelligent people are really making me feel ill and I'm seriously thinking of abandoning the Reg. I appreciate that the Reg believes in free speech even if it's not something that agrees with it's editorial line, but some of the things that get said are bang out of order and belong on BBC HYS or similar hate-forums for t@ssers. I've banged on a bit myself on El Reg in the past but now I think it's gone way too far and all political debate should be stopped and we all stick to IT and related subjects - boring as that sounds.

    Paris Hilton is my icon for this post as she's pretty and I like looking at her :)

  15. Brett
    Thumb Up

    @ Tawakalna

    Hear hear. My thoughts exactly.

  16. Matt
    Paris Hilton

    @Brett

    You also like looking at Paris Hilton?

  17. Will
    Go

    Truecrypt is awesome

    I have a truecrypt volume. It is protected via a 24 character password (randomly chosen letters and numbers) and if I ever forget the password, the data is lost. I would definitely forget it if the police decided they wanted to have a look in. It contains nothing illegal but it the only privacy one can exercise. We live in CCTV world having more cameras per square inch (and it can be measured like that in some towns) than any other country.

    So if you ever want to remember what privacy feels like, create a truecrypt volume.

  18. Guy Heatley
    Dead Vulture

    Arbeit macht frei

    Forgot the animal rights angle - these are just details of this individual case.

    The point is that the police can "find" (i.e. deliberately put) an encrypted file on any UK citizen's PC, demand the key, and when they can't cough it up, put them in jail for 2 years.

    Its what the government have always dreamed of: A legitimate way of banging up absolutely anyone they don't happen to like.

    And if you have just been angered by the implications of this, they don't like YOU.

  19. Dave
    Unhappy

    @ Giles Jones & Mad Mike

    Just so you know, my mother died on 22nd October this year of ovarian cancer. She had not smoked a single cigarette in her whole life and hated the smell so much that she rarely went to pubs etc. She had a couple of martinis on a Friday with her friends, but never at any other time. I've been alive nearly 40 years and never seen her even tipsy let alone drunk. she also walked a lot, and did line dancing to keep fit.

    So I ask you how an avid non-smoker, near teetotal (2 drinks a week doesn't even really count as a "social drinker") woman in her late sixties: A) brings this upon herself, and B) shouldn't benefit from advances in medicine, however discovered, that may cure her or prolong her life?

    Perhaps you want to think a bit harder about what you are trying to say before tarring everyone with the same brush.

    Whilst I don't condone cruelty for cruelty's sake, I do believe necessary advances in medicine comes at a price, and I'd rather it was at a rabbit's expense, rather than one of you two "humans".

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