<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></parent_chain><comment><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></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></parent_chain><comment><author>jaclaz</author><text>To me it makes little sense.&lt;p&gt;For Police work, time is &amp;quot;relative&amp;quot;, as an example the cop that is held in the US for contempt of the Court for not revealing the password to his drives is suspected of possessing child pornography, whether he is kept in jail because he won&amp;#x27;t reveal them or because as the sheer moment he reveals them he will be proved guilty doesn&amp;#x27;t change things much (there is anyway other evidence against him).&lt;p&gt;Here it is not a &amp;quot;Police&amp;quot; case, but rather a &amp;quot;counter-intelligence&amp;quot; one, in these cases time is everything, a delay of hours, or at the most days in gathering the information is vital.&lt;p&gt;AFAIK Mr.Rabani NEVER revealed the password(s), he refused revealing it&amp;#x2F;them on 20&amp;#x2F;Nov&amp;#x2F;2016, now, almost one year later, he is found guilty of obstructing the search, still there is no evidence that he is or was - even tangentially - connected with terrorism.&lt;p&gt;So, £620+12 months&amp;#x27; conditional discharge seem to me a lot of time&amp;#x2F;a very severe punishment if he was in good faith attempting to protect some sensitive data for his non-governement organization, and &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; if he was in bad faith or however protecting terrorism related info.&lt;p&gt;In any case, whatever the Police expected to find on the device(s) they didn&amp;#x27;t access it&amp;#x2F;them, and much worse than that they didn&amp;#x27;t access it&amp;#x2F;them in a timely fashion (and no charges of terrorism or connections to it were made against Mr.Rabani in almost one year) so - besides seeming more a petty vengeance than anything else - it is not like it helped in ANY way the counter-terrorism.</text></comment>