Minister promises that Part III is coming

[Ross Anderson]

James Davis asked:

> Possibly a daft question but I'm new to the list. Has there been a case
> of terrorists using encryption? I can't think of any examples off the
> top of my head, only of terrorists speaking in code.

Yes, one Andrew Rowe recently got sent away for a long time for
possessing a small piece of paper on which were scrawled a few dozen
words, and corresponding codewords. You can inspect this desparately
dangerous cryptographic system for yourself at

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4271368.stm

I was asked to give an expert opinion on its fitness for alleged
purpose, and as list members can imagine I wasn't too impressed

Rowe seemed to his defence team to be a lost soul, a jihad wannabe
who'd bumbled around the edges of various conflicts. But it's not a
crime for a UK citizen to work as a volunteer ambulanceman in Bosnia.
There was no evidence against him that struck me as being of any
substance. Yet he got sent down for a long time, and the safety
elephant crowed about it. Maybe they knew something that we didn't -
say a wiretap showing an actual link with a real bad guy. If so, roll
on the day when such wiretaps can be adduced in evidence. The
conviction did not strike me as at all safe, and we are all less safe
when prosecutors can nail people with a fantastic tale and a few
shreds of dodgy circumstantial evidence

Ross