Backlash Against British Encryption Law 409
gardenermike writes "The BBC is reporting on some backlash against the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that came into force in 2000, which makes it a criminal act to refuse to decrypt files on a computer. Not surprisingly, the bugaboos of child pornography and terrorism, while unquestionably heinous, are being used to justify a law which does little to protect against either.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury is quoted 'You do not secure the liberty of our country and value of our democracy by undermining them, that's the road to hell.'"
Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a Continuation of McCarthyism Tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
rejecting laws repugnant to principles (Score:2, Insightful)
Won't work.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, since the House of Lords don't have to chase after votes all the time, they help chuck out all the stupid knee-jerk laws the House of Commons come up with to make it look like they are doing something important. It's a useful component of a democratic system that mitigates one of the downsides of democracy - that the elected representatives are concerned with appearances more than the well-being of the country.
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:2, Insightful)
Heinous? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure they are, sure they are
Securing power and control, not liberty... (Score:1, Insightful)
What people need to understand is that the current administrations (both in the U.K. and in the U.S.) are not trying to secure the liberty of their respective countries. They're trying to secure their own power and the power of their paymasters (the big multinational corporations). They're intentionally turning both countries into fascist police states, step by step.
I'd say the U.K. is in the lead on that one, but only by a small margin.
The worst thing about it is that once you lose your liberties in this way, you almost never get them back except through bloody revolution, which is something that can no longer succeed thanks to the technological situation (which concentrates much more killing power in the hands of the government than it did back in the 1700's when most of the democratic revolutions took place). That means the loss is essentially permanent.
Enjoy what freedom you have left. I won't last,
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets hope that Parliament doesn't further castrate the House of Lords with its latest reforms of the lower chamber.
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:3, Insightful)
It really better to look at the substance of what people say rather than peg them to a stereotype.
jail anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
(1) Grab someone's computer.
(2) Find a binary file containing more-or-less random data, or pick an image on their machine and claim it has stegonometric data embedded in it.
(3) Demand the password for this "data".
(4) Jail the "miscreant" when he claims he doesn't know.
Re:Just a Continuation of McCarthyism Tactics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just a Continuation of McCarthyism Tactics (Score:3, Insightful)
People fear terrorism, which is what this law was probably meant to address. Unfortunately, with this sort of law in place, people still fear terrorism - and begin to fear their own government.
One of the primary roles of any government is to protect the interests of its citizens on at least the most basic levels. But in pursuing their safety, there are lines that ought not be crossed. There is no way - none - to ensure that people are completely safe. We could encase our citizens in underground cells of concrete, steel and lead shielding, but this is still no bar to someone slipping in the shower.
Just because safety is essentially unattainable doesn't mean that it's a bad goal - it's not - but it ought not be treated as paramount, and permitted to reduce civil liberties.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously? What about an image which is 100% computer generated?
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has the same idea with the Senate v the House of Representatives (although the Senate is elected), with the Senate being the more "measured" of the two.
What most people - even Americans - don't know is that in fact the Senate was not originally elected at all. It was filled with the appointees of states legislatures (two from each state), who could fill the appointments however they best saw fit. It wasn't until the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, made during an era of populist progressivism in 1913, that the Senate became filled by direct election.
Personally, I think it is an open question whether this particular reform has been a net positive or negative.
Re:Simple enough (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's another thing to be afraid of hunters (Score:5, Insightful)
I read something here [slashdot.org] a long time ago, and I think I'll repost it in it's entirety because it's just that important:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:
"If they're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
Re:Hit the costume store (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's another thing to be afraid of hunters (Score:5, Insightful)
I forgot to add this from here [slashdot.org]
3. Because there are lots of little things we do every day that break the rules. These include: j-walking, downloading MP3's, subletting without telling your landlord, recording sporting events without express written concent, undocumented domestic help, recreational drug use, stealing cable, logging on to other people's wireless networks, "leaking" company information to your girlfriend, anything besides the missionary position (in many states), cheating on your wife (in many states), rolling stops on empty streets, u-turns in the middle of empty streets, locking your bicycle to the handrailing, lying about your age to get into movies, lying about your age to get senior citizens discounts, lying about your age to avoid getting senior citizens discounts, telling your company that you're "sick" when you really mean you're "sick and tired of this crappy job," not reporting e-bay sales as taxable income, grabbing an extra newspaper when someone else buys one from the machine, putting chairs in the street to save your parking spot, stealing office supplies, stealing the towels, littering, loitering, the office NCAA pool, etc etc. All of these are necessary for the functioning of our society in some way or another, but are illegal. Yet we would go batshit insane without a few personal pet vices.
And the system has been built with this in mind: nobody wants to stop your weekly 5$ poker match, they wanted to stop the gambling houses where people lost their rent money. Enforce the letter of the law, and the intent of the law gets lost.
Why would anyone give over? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heinous? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think it is an open question whether this particular reform has been a net positive or negative.
I don't think it's a question at all. I think it's been very negative because it eliminated the voice that state governments had in the federal government, allowing the federal government to run roughshod over the states. The fact that senators were appointed by (and could be recalled by!) their respective states was another way of setting the components of government in opposition to one another. By making senators popularly elected, we significantly reduced the strength of one of the "checks and balances" built into the system.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:1, Insightful)
I've never heard of an infant give consent to pictures being taken in the hospital. You better start hunting down all the people with evil baby pictures.
What about mainstream child actors? Isn't that even more exploitative? Most of those people turn out pretty fucked up too.
You have to admit there's a ton of hypocrisy and overreaction when it comes to this. It goes way deeper than dealing with the social harm caused by these acts.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's another thing to be afraid of hunters (Score:2, Insightful)
People on the 'What do you have to hide?' bandwagon always seem to assume that it is GUILTY things I want to keep secret...
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:1, Insightful)
But frankly I don't see how the information itself can be either illegal (I know that technically it is illegal, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense). If I've seen a bit of child porn, perhaps as a result of prosecuting its producers, is it illegal to metally recall that image? If not, how is the memory different than the file on a disk? What if I had a really good memory and drawing skills and repoduced the image faithfully on paper? Possession of information should never constitute a crime; the only sensible crimes are related to the production, distribution, and possibly the use of data, but never to the mere fact that it exists in some reproducable form.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a massive amount of poorly written press when it comes to serious taboo issues like this, however comparing paedophilia to baby pictures is just plain stupid and I can't be bothered to be more polite about it then that.
It's true that some child actors grow up with problems, but if you hadn't noticed some adult actors seem to make up for lost time if they weren't famous as a child and develop their own sets. I think this is a symptom of stardom as much as anything else.
If you were wandering about the difference between baby pics and paedophile photographs, it's to do with intent. work it out.
Re:Is this wrong? (Score:2, Insightful)
And how is that different from the police searching your home with a warrant? Suppose they found a murder weapon in your home that you knew of? Is "allowing" them to search thus incriminating yourself as well? No. Self incrimination only refers to speech under oath. Further, you can be compelled to self-incriminating speech (here in the US) upon being subpoenaed and given immunity for prosecution. The fifth amendment article against self-incrimination is not as broad as you believe.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem between those is that we're recognizing the power of rage to erase reason, but not of lust. That seems... uneven.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering the ease of how most computers are compromised through a Trojan horse, its a nice way to send someone you don't like to jail. I'm surprised it hasn't been used more often.
One would wonder if the defense team could get access to the computer afterwards to prove there was a back door installed or would the prosecution not allow "tampering" with the evidence and not let the defense use it as evidence.
Of course that could lead to a plausible deniability if you were harboring such images and were guilty but left an inactive copy of back orifice on your computer so you could blame a so called "hacker" when you were caught.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine doing a heinous act with a child. Not a crime (yet).
Draw a picture of said heinous act. Now it's a crime, even tho *no actual children were harmed*.
A parallel:
Imagine killing someone, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing someone, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Imagine killing _a fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing _said fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??"
Clearly, premeditating murder of an actual person could be construed as threatening, but premeditating the murder of a fictional character seems somewhat less so.
Re:Hit the costume store (Score:3, Insightful)
It's past time to bail out; but there's no where to bail out to.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:3, Insightful)
==========
Shouldn't that read like this?:
"Imagine killing _a fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Not a crime (yet).
Write in your diary about killing _said fictional character_, and how you'd do it. Is this now a crime, even tho no actual persons were harmed? what is the difference between this and being in possession of wholly-fictional kiddie porn??"
Clearly, premeditating murder of an actual person could be construed as threatening, but premeditating the murder of a fictional character seems somewhat less so.
===========
I still don't think *considering* a murder should be a crime (if it were, there'd be no kids left outside of reform school) but otherwise, that's a more accurate parallel, indeed.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Never spoken to a rape victim I see. I suppose the years of sleepless nights, nightmares, inability to trust others or form a meaningful relationship, and fear of people in general *does* eventually end, but I wouldn't say it's all over in a few minutes.
Re:Lord Phillips (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heinous? (Score:3, Insightful)
if somebody say a child at 12 consent to have sex with him/her, i would be very worrying, but if it's a 15, i'd be a lot less worrying, and at 17 i think him/her would be mature enough. it's not the existence of an age limit that's important, but it's the actual value of age limit that's being stupid here. nowadays on average people lost their virginity at some 16-17 yo and getting more than 70% of people violating a law is stupid.
Re:It's another thing to be afraid of hunters (Score:5, Insightful)
De minimis non curat lex.
"The law does not concern itself with trifles".
IOW, the purpose of the law is put in place to hold society as a whole together by punishing those whose actions threaten the fabric of society, rather than those whose actions which, while technically illegal, are of such little consequence that quite frankly the court has better things to do with its time than listen to them.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it were not illegal to own child porn then the demand for it would go up. I can't prove this, but I can make basic assumptions based on how supply and demand work.
So i meant to suggest 1) that the incidence of creation of child pornography would increase to meet demand because of the legalization of ownership of said pornography and 2) that people who think that they can absolve responsibility from their actions by passing it to a third party by saying that they did not create it, are as bad as the originator of the porn.
Re:Why is child pornography as bad as terrorism? (Score:2, Insightful)
The counter-intuitive nature of British parliament (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange, that it's precisely the people who are voted into power who abuse it, but the "undemocratic" "establishment" figures are the ones who defend it. Sad, really. The lords can do and say what they like because they're not elected (well, some (all?) are, now), and that freedom is worth something to others.
When Tony Blair said he was going to abolish the house of Lords, I thought "there goes democracy in Britain", I've lost count of the number of times the Lords have told the government (and I mean *both* parties here, both Tory and Labour) of the day to re-think something because the effect on the least-fortunate or most-vulnerable in society is too extreme. Partly it comes because they're *not* elected, part because of the social contract inherent in British society, partly because as individuals they *are* partisan, so the {labour} lords will pick apart the {tory} government policies and vice versa. It's a weird typically-British hotch-potch of conflicts, but somehow it all works... You'd never get it past a "government design" planning committe...
The government can always bulldoze a bill through parliament if it gets rejected/resubmitted by the Lords 3 times (I think), but that creates news, and normally when a bill is that bad, news is not what the government want... The Lords act as a counter-balance to over-eager legislation. It *is* weird, but it works quite well
Thank [insert random deity] for the Lords
Simon.
Children (Score:3, Insightful)
Molesting a few children and taking pictures of it is definitely nowhere NEAR as bad as killing hundreds of people (including dozens of children). But crimes against children evoke a far more visceral revulsion in people than just pushing a button that blows some people up. In fact, the difference in how people respond to immoral acts has been studied with interesting results.
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-04/features/who se-life-would-you-save/ [discover.com]
Basically it seems to come down to how directly someone is involved in an immoral act. A suicide bomber is somewhat more removed from their crime than someone who's right in there hurting children with their bare hands. Similarly, a politician who initiates military actions that cause tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths (by, say, ordering the firebombing of a city) probably wont be held to even the slightest level of accountability, because he is so incredibly far removed from the acts. He certainly wont be considered as evil as someone who had torched that city in person. And a hypothetical arsonist who burned down a city wouldn't be considered as evil as someone who personally lit even just one or two people on fire -- even though the former caused a vastly greater number of deaths. It's a funny little quirk of how our moral instincts work, and it highlights the importance of applying reasoning to our moral judgements.