What has really changed ...

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 12:23 PM 8/12/1999 +0100, Alistair Kelman wrote:
>> Why should you not simply be required to decrypt them?  A requirement 
>> that
>> you must hand over your keys places this burden on society as a whole 
>> and
>> this means that everyone suffers increased risks in respect of privacy,
>> security and safety as a result.   This does not arise if your 
>> obligation is
>> simply that of decryption.
>
>Provided that you can satisfy the authorities that the plaintext really is 
> decrypted from the cyphertext then fine. I presume that this could be 
>done by encrypting the plaintext using the public key. So let's word this 
>requirement in terms of a requirement to do something positive - decrypt 
>the cyphertext.
>
>I refrained from putting it this way because the law tries to limit 
>specific performance. Requiring a citizen to hand over his key, on the 
>face of it, appears to be a lessor act than requiring the citizen to use 
>his key to decrypt a particular message. 

Surely not to anyone on the ukcrypto mailing list.

>The option for the citizen to 
>perform the decryption without handing over his key should be included in 
>the legislation.
>
>That said I have encountered a whole range of problems in computer 
>evidence cases where the prosecution have refused to allow computer 
>evidence to be produced by an accused "because how can we know he has not 
>tampered or forged it?". So the section in the legislation will have to be 
>very clear.

But it's there already (clause 11):  what's wrong is that the option is the
authorities' option, not the citizen's.

Regards,

Nicholas Bohm

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9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
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5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF