Letwin wants increased penalties for refusal to decrypt

[Peter Sommer]

Richard Clayton writes:

>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.

To be fair, one way in which you might guess the contents of an encrypted 
"container" etc is by looking at the surrounding circumstances - if a 
suspect has had apparent contact with unencrypted indecent images, or if 
you can see log files for zipping, downloading etc with file names 
suggestive of under-age sex.    Reasons for wanting to view the decrypted 
files include:  charging some-one with possession or "making" - and 
building intelligence about other offences and/or positively identifying 
child victims.

But it seems a bit early to be suggesting an increase in penalty when, 
although RIPA is now law, the "compulsory decryption" bit isn't.  I'd have 
thought we could do with a bit of practical experience of how the two-year 
maximum punishment works out for law enforcement and the courts...



Peter Sommer
hcorn@cix.co.uk; P.M.Sommer@lse.ac.uk
Academic URL: http://csrc.lse.ac.uk//Sommer.htm
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