Letwin wants increased penalties for refusal to decrypt

[Peter Fairbrother]

Owen Lewis wrote:

> Letwin should use a better speechwriter.
> 
> Fashion it thus.
> 
> Plod has (just about) sufficient evidence against X of drug trafficking (or
> whatever gets you 30 years) to get a case before a jury. The enciphered
> contents of X's PC, if disclosed, will turn his 50:50 chance in front of a
> jury into zilch.

A 50:50 chance? So, we aren't talking about justice here, but imperfect
judging.

> Is it reasonable that:

> -    That, under legal process, the contents of one drive on X's PC may be
> searched for evidence but that X shall be permitted the 'human right'
> (ROTFL) to refuse disclosure another drive?

Not sure what you mean, but I think so. There must be a human right to at
least attempt privacy, and a right not to self-incriminate. GAK denies both.
Any sentence for GAK "offences" is immoral (and GAK, like content
protection, won't work anyway for technical reasons).

[...] 
> I think it's a hard issue and requires hard thinking. To allow other than as
> suggested above must reduce much of our law, including the revenue raising
> and trade controlling functions of governments to no more than dead letters.

Eh? How does a right to privacy and a right not to self-incriminate affect
"much of our law"? The "revenue raising and trade controlling functions of
governments" are not part of Law, and are not immutable anyway. Even Income
Tax isn't that old, and the tax code changes every Budget. If governments
can't tax the transfer of money they can always tax something else, eg land,
transfer of goods.

> 
> Hurrah! one might be tempted to shout, until one picks one's way carefully
> through what the full consequences might be.

Yep. Done a lot of hard thinking, posted much of it here, decided GAK was
far more evil than a few hiccups in the law-enforcement process. Your
criminal could defeat conviction by just not writing down the encrypted
information in the first place, or hiding the drive better.

Beyond the violation of rights to privacy and not to self-incriminate there
is no big moral issue here, unless you mean that any and all measures to
detect and prosecute crime should be allowed. Which is the evillest* idea I
can think of.

-- Peter Fairbrother

*but popular with politicians, especially now