<story><title>Man convicted after preventing counter-terrorism police search</title><url>http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-convicted-after-preventing-counter-terrorism-police-search-262829</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mfoy_</author><text>&amp;gt;possessing encrypted data (while being unwilling or unable to decrypt&lt;p&gt;How does this work with things like DRM? What if you have media on your phone from something like Spotify or Netflix that&amp;#x27;s presumably encrypted or protected in some way, that you cannot decrypt if your subscription expires...</text></item><item><author>confounded</author><text>The Guardian have more context: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;uk-news&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;25&amp;#x2F;campaign-group-director-in-court-for-refusing-to-divulge-passwords&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;uk-news&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;25&amp;#x2F;campaign-gro...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was very clearly politically motivated to hamper the efforts of CAGE; a UK based group which lobbies of behalf of young Muslim men who have been detained without charge it gitmo, harassed by the security services etc.&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether readers like CAGE&amp;#x27;s politics (which are considered inflammatory by the government), this raises a worrying precedent.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also worth noting that given the UK&amp;#x27;s recent authoritarian laws, he got off lightly --- this could easily have been spun to possessing encrypted data (while being unwilling or unable to decrypt upon command), which carries a two year sentence, IIRC five if the magic word &amp;quot;terrorism&amp;quot; is conjured.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BearGoesChirp</author><text>The idea is to create crimes that they can apply to anyone.  Technically they apply to everyone, but they can then use selective enforcement based on criteria that the general public would never have openly tolerated as a law.</text></comment>
<story><title>Man convicted after preventing counter-terrorism police search</title><url>http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-convicted-after-preventing-counter-terrorism-police-search-262829</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mfoy_</author><text>&amp;gt;possessing encrypted data (while being unwilling or unable to decrypt&lt;p&gt;How does this work with things like DRM? What if you have media on your phone from something like Spotify or Netflix that&amp;#x27;s presumably encrypted or protected in some way, that you cannot decrypt if your subscription expires...</text></item><item><author>confounded</author><text>The Guardian have more context: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;uk-news&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;25&amp;#x2F;campaign-group-director-in-court-for-refusing-to-divulge-passwords&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;uk-news&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;sep&amp;#x2F;25&amp;#x2F;campaign-gro...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was very clearly politically motivated to hamper the efforts of CAGE; a UK based group which lobbies of behalf of young Muslim men who have been detained without charge it gitmo, harassed by the security services etc.&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether readers like CAGE&amp;#x27;s politics (which are considered inflammatory by the government), this raises a worrying precedent.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also worth noting that given the UK&amp;#x27;s recent authoritarian laws, he got off lightly --- this could easily have been spun to possessing encrypted data (while being unwilling or unable to decrypt upon command), which carries a two year sentence, IIRC five if the magic word &amp;quot;terrorism&amp;quot; is conjured.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dingaling</author><text>Back when the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill was being circulated, to much outcry from technical folk, someone encrypted a file with a provocative name and sent it to the Home Secretary for exactly that reason, as a form of demonstation-cum-protest.&lt;p&gt;Suddenly the Minister[0] possessed a file which he couldn&amp;#x27;t decrypt on demand.  Would he consider amending the Bill to remove penalties for such eventualities?  Of course not, nothing was changed.&lt;p&gt;If you possess the bytes you&amp;#x27;ll do the time.  Delete everything that is unnecessary as soon as its usefulness has expired - big corps learned that lesson, for other reasons, in the early 2000s.&lt;p&gt;[0] well one of his staff</text></comment>