destroying PGP private keys (Re: Home Office response on Burden of Proof)

[Ian G Batten]

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Pete writes:
> Which raises a question. Say I get served with a decryption notice for
> messages encrypted with a PGP public key, and I claim that the
> corresponding private key and all its backups have been
> destroyed. Would the authorities have to take my word on the backup
> issue, or would they be entitled to seize all backup tapes to look for
> the key (allowing them to go on a fishing expedition for any other
> file).

I had this conversation with the police dudes at SfS3.  As the
administrator of a couple of Terabytes on a single fileserver, which
contains the entire business of FTEL, suppose I had strong reason to
believe that something really bad were held on `my' disks.  Let's take
something we all agree to be an unalloyed Bad Thing: images of child
abuse taken by an abuser who is close to the person storing the data,
say.

Do I (a) go the police, knowing there's a strong chance they'll sieze my
fileserver, all my dumptapes and bankrupt the company or (b) keep quiet,
allowing something really bad to continue, but keeping 1000 people in
jobs?

ian

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