Update 2: More stupid UK legislation that will weaken, not strengthen people's security. Now tell me again why we need this legislation, since the only people it can possibly affect are law-abiding citizens like you and me, not law-defying terrorists? Or might they possibly just say 'I've lost the keys', and get sent down for a couple of years instead?

Avast License File.VIR: Virus-Infected File.VPC6: Virtual Machine Package. Certificate Request Response File.VNCLOC: Screen Sharing VNC Internet Location.PSW: Windows Password Reset Disk File. Here are my encryption keys,' and get sent down for the 10, 20, or 30 years they would cop for conspiring to carry out acts of terrorism blah-blah-blah. Eudora Table of Contents.RADIUMKEY2: Radium 2 License File.TSK: TTPod Skin.RTM: LabVIEW Run-Time Menu File. So, let's consider the various possibilities.Įither these terrorists, who tend to show scant regard for human life, let alone human laws, are suddenly going to become law-abiding, and say: 'it's a fair cop, but society is to blame. The 'argument' is that the new powers are needed to 'force' those evil terrorists to hand over the keys so that PC Plod can read all that incriminating evidence, and they can do their well-deserved porridge. The justification - of course - is the tired old one of terrorism (anybody notice how this has become a kind of continuous justification for everything these days? - You don't think people have been reading 1984 for ideas or anything?). As this news item explains, the UK Government is threatening to make this happen, but, as usual, without really thinking it through. I hadn't realised that part of that Act - that deals with disclosure of encryption keys - was not yet in force. So legislation like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is something that I've followed even before it was introduced in 2000.

This makes matters of privacy, and hence encryption, a kind of obverse to openness. There's an interesting tension between openness and privacy: openness is good except when it might infringe on justifiable privacy.

Eudora avast certificate error