A proper law

[Brian Beesley]

On Wednesday 05 March 2003 17:04, David Hansen wrote:
>
> These precuations need to include appropriate punishments for
> officials who fail to behave properly. This includes cretins who
> accept telephoned instructions. Five years in prison would be
> suitable for such people.

Why only five years?
>
> I repeat, there is absolutely no need for
> keys to be grabbed. 

True!

> If a communication is really that important
> encryption can be broken by massive computer power.

_Not_ true! The point is that if "intelligence services" _suspect_ a 
communication is really that important then they _should_ be devoting 
substantial effort into finding out what the sender and/or receiver are 
"conspiring" to do by other means.

There was a nugget on the BBC R4 news at 7 am this morning - now we are being 
threatened with intelligence acquired by phone tap being made eligible as 
evidence - apparently the police here in N Ireland want to be able to use 
intercepted phone conversations to convict people of paramilitary activity. 
This power is absolutely unneccessary - if the intellgence services are 
tapping phones already and can understand the conversation (i.e. it's not in 
an unpenetratable dialect or spoken in code words rather than "plain") then 
surely they are in a position to use that intelligence information to 
itercept any planned operation, catching the perpetrators (literally) red 
handed. So why does the phone tap intelligence need to be presented in court, 
let alone be allowed as evidence?

Brian Beesley