Letwin wants increased penalties for refusal to decrypt

[Richard Clayton]

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2196734.stm

This is a piece about Oliver Letwin (shadow Home Secretary) calling for
"grooming" (that's what you and I used to call seduction, but it's much
more scary if there's a new word for it) to be made illegal.

However buried away in the middle is the single sentence:

        He also wants increased penalties for paedophiles who refuse to
        unlock encrypted information being stored on the internet.

Since we still don't have Part III of RIP 2000 in force yet I'm unclear
what sort of increase this would be... but presumably the idea is that
you'd get more than the 2 years maximum of s53(5) if the information you
refused to decrypt was said to be illegal images of children.

Quite how anyone knows that they're illegal images of children if you
refuse to decrypt them (or why they need to be decrypted if people know
what they are) is one of those philosophical puzzles that so bedevil
proposals to fiddle around with penalty levels.

Myself, I think he should probably be more interested in what
paedophiles are storing on their hard disks than "on the Internet"; but
I don't suppose it is entirely fair to read too much into a sound-byte.

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

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