Court of Appeal ruling on RIPA Part III section 49 notices and section 53 prosecutions regarding law enforcement access to encryption keys etc.

[Michael Procter]

On Mon, October 13, 2008 9:52 am, Watching Them, Watching Us wrote:
> S & Anor, R. v [2008] EWCA Crim 2177 (09 October 2008)
>
> http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2008/2177.html

Just got round to reading this, and I noticed the following in para 21:

# If however, as for present purposes we are assuming, they contain
# incriminating material, the fact of the appellants' knowledge of the
# keys may itself become an incriminating fact.

Does this point the way to being held liable for files encrypted with your
public key, as you would hold the appropriate key for decryption?

Or does it instead point to a defence of 'anyone could have encrypted that
- it wasn't me guv'?

Of course, the entire judgment is based around symmetric ciphers (as far
as I can see), and maybe I shouldn't read anything else in to it.

Regards,

Michael