Fri, 22 Jul 2005

British Police Demand Access To Encryption Keys

Bush is right - the War on Terror is being won. But he's wrong in his assertion that we're winning it: free societies are crumbling around the edges under the bombing and terror campaigns of al Qaeda, as this example from the UK shows.

Meanwhile, here in the land of the free, we're doing our part to insure that all citizens are safe from "terrorists", by making certain that no citizen is safe from his government.

And the really sad thing is that I'm not sure there is a good solution. I had always imagined that if our freedoms were doomed to dissipation, it would be in the "Big Bang" of a global thermonuclear war. Now it seems we're frittering them away, one piece at a time, to defend against a bunch of thugs with dynamite.

What a bitter trade-off.

In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, police here in the UK have asked for sweeping new powers they claim will help them counter the threat. Among these is making it a criminal offense for people to refuse disclosing their encryption keys when the police want to access someone's files.

(link) [Slashdot]

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