NEWS Release: Home Office climbdown on Internet snooping rebuttal

[Caspar Bowden]

FOUNDATION FOR INFORMATION POLICY RESEARCH
==========================================
News Release - Thursday 1st June 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE USE

Contact: 	Caspar Bowden - Director of FIPR
 		020 7354 2333
 		cb@fipr.org

See RIP Information centre at www.fipr.org/rip
...for references and live links
and Parliamentary coverage http://www.fipr.org/rip/parliament.html

CLIMBDOWN by Home Office Press Office
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RETRACTS quote that RIP requires proof that key "deliberately withheld"
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In a humiliating climb down, the Press Office of the Home Office has been
obliged formally to retract a quote given to a Reuters reporter covering the
UK's intensely controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill.

The Reuters story
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000526/08/net-internet-crime
also syndicated to
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0%2C1283%2C36614%2C00.html

...had quoted an unidentified Home Office spokesman as saying that the "the
police have to prove the encryption key was deliberately withheld".

This simple sentence encapsulates the crucial issue - the government has
insisted repeatedly that the burden is on the DEFENCE to show "on the
balance of probabilities" (http://www.fipr.org/rip/burdenproof.html) that a
key has been lost or forgotten to avoid conviction. A REASONABLE DOUBT WILL
NOT ACQUIT - if the court believes you are lying 51%, you go to jail for two
years. The Government has twice rejected Opposition amendments which WOULD
have required the prosecution to show "mens rea" - a guilty mind - i.e. that
a key HAD been DELIBERATELY withheld
(http://www.fipr.org/rip/ReverseCrux.htm)

The Home Office's statement was therefore the most egregious
misrepresentation imaginable of the actual policy.

FIPR queried the report with Reuters the following day, and the journalist
confirmed that he still had a note of the quotation as a verbatim statement,
and offered to put these objections to the Home Office spokesperson on
FIPR's behalf. The journalist subsequently told FIPR that the spokesman
stood by his statement and wished to alter nothing.

FIPR made other enquiries and confirmed the identity of the spokesman as Tim
Watkinson, the press officer who has dealt with the RIP Bill since it was
published in January. In a telephone conversation on Wednesday 31st,
Mr.Watkinson confirmed to FIPR that he understood the reverse-burden issue
of the RIP Bill perfectly well, but had made no mistake. He could not
recollect whether he had used the words "deliberately withheld" but promised
FIPR he would not be using those words in future. He claimed that the last
conversation with the Reuters journalist had only been to confirm the story
"in general terms".

FIPR checked again with Reuters, who again put the issue to Mr.Watkinson on
Thursday 1st June - this time Mr.Watkinson retracted the "deliberately
withheld" quote, but admitted only to a "slight mis-brief" and "paraphrasing
in order to clarify the issues".

Reuters has agreed to re-write the story.

The Home Office Press Office can be contacted on +44 (020) 7273 4610

Caspar Bowden, director of Internet policy think-tank FIPR commented, "The
Home Office were given ample opportunity to discreetly withdraw an untenable
statement - their refusal smacks of desperation. What confidence can
journalists have in information provided by a Press Office that will peddle
a brazen falsehood, and issues only a grudging retraction after humiliating
exposure?"

Notes for editors
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1. FIPR is an independent non-profit organisation that studies the
interaction between information technology and society, with special
reference to the Internet; we do not (directly or indirectly) represent the
interests of any trade-group. Our goal is to identify technical developments
with significant social impact, commission research into public policy
alternatives, and promote public understanding and dialogue between
technologists and policy-makers in the UK and Europe. The Board of Trustees
and Advisory Council (http://www.fipr.org/trac.html) comprise some of the
leading experts in the UK.