|
REST IN PEACE? - page two June 20th 2000 The second major area of concern is that any person accused of any crime by any Government body can be forced to hand over his/her encryption key. If you refuse - or have forgotten your encryption password - you could face up to five years in prison. All sorts of businesses and individuals use encryption to store their secret data, for exactly the same reason that you lock your car or house. Some things should be kept private, and we should not be punished for wanting them to remain that way. Once handed over to the Police, can we guarantee that the encryption key codes will themselves be stored in encrypted form, away from prying eyes? Of course not - that would cost a fortune in additional security measures. At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest that the Government's moves will reduce serious crime. But by installing monitoring boxes with ISPs and forcing secure encryption codes to be handed over to the Police, we are opening up new routes for crackers and electronic vandals to cause chaos on the Web. It's truly a self-defeating logic. Fortunately this logic still has to make its way through the House of Lords, but be aware that the Lords are not renowned for their technical expertise or awareness of contemporary issues. "We are getting more and yet more pieces of technological verbiage" said Lord Bassam of Brighton in the House last week. "They grow by the hour. Cookies is one of them - and HTTP is another.... As to whether I would wander into a website other than where I might want to be, I am not sure I have the competence. But perhaps that is an admission too far." These are the words of one of the men responsible for deciding whether or not the RIP Bill gets passed. Do you trust him? You may be tempted to sit back and let someone else deal with this. Sure, you think- there's no problem now. Everything will be fine. It's all in the future. But remember that injustices do get done in the name of the law, and more often than we suppose. Think through the following image. Imagine if every letter you received through your door had already been read and copied, without your knowledge. Does that sound like a free society? Or does it sound like a jail sentence? Do something now. This means you. Read more about the RIP bill at www.fipr.org and www.stand.org.uk. Use the online fax-an-MP service at stand.org.uk to let your MP know how you feel about this frightening bill. Fax them again. Tell your local newspaper, tell your friends, tell everyone. Get them all faxing. Get this Bill torn up, so we can all rest in peace. read the Government's side of the story.... comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion 
[about i-drive]
writing index thoughts index dotmusic index musicbank index Problems? Questions? Suggestions? Contact me: mail@tobyslater.com back to top back to home page |
|
back to writing index back to thoughts index dotmusic index musicbank index comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion recommend *or condemn* this site to a friend 
|