RIPA Part III

[Owen Lewis]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Peter
> Fairbrother
> Sent: 16 June 2006 12:25
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Re: RIPA Part III
>
>
> Roland Perry wrote:
>
> > In article <C0B84589.CC79F%zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk>, Peter Fairbrother
> > <zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk> writes
> >>
> >>> The crypto war was still in full swing in 1996 and was only
> finally won
> >>> internationally in 1999 after the Wassenaar restrictions on
> cryptography
> >>> collapsed.
> >>
> >> The crypto war continues to this day - or what do you think
> Part III of RIPA
> >> is all about?
> >
> > Different war.
>
> How so?
>
> The first battle was about using crypto at all, the second about
> escrow, the
> third is now about demands for keys.
>
> From the government point of view, all are about preventing their citizens
> from being able to keep secrets from governments by the use of
> cryptography.
> That hasn't changed. They are still fighting the same old war.
>
> Governments have always wanted to be able to see their citizens' encrypted
> secrets. That doesn't mean we should let them.

That's simply not so, Peter.

	-	There has, in this country, never been a battle over the use of crypto at
all. All have ever been free to design, make and use their own systems with
very few restrictions. The only restrictions that spring to mind are the
restrictive condition in the Amateur Radio Operator's licence.

	-	Concern over some effects of any wide-scale and uncontrolled deployment
of automated systems for the encryption of information (and hence the
proposal of key escrow) is recent to the 1990's. By '97, it was all over bar
the shouting, since controls on the deployment and use of systems in an open
society were simply untenable and probably counter-productive (though it
took a couple more years to convince the French of this and in closely
ordered societies, e.g. Saudi and Russia, some restriction is still applied
in practice if without formal regulation).

	-	There is absolutely no evidence to support the oft-made claim that UKG
'wants to see citizens' secrets', with the implication of 'all secrets' and
'all the time'. What is true that the maintenance of good law and order
requires from time to time selective searches of personally held information
(as well as goods etc.), such searches being conducted in strict accordance
with the legal safeguards that hedge them in.

	It follows that the present consultation re. RIPA Pt III is best construed
as an invitation to consider and develop  such hedging of the powers. I
think that any who chose to treat the consultation as an invitation to the
removal of the powers  are doomed to an absolute failure of an absolutist
position.


Owen