All Your Confidentiality Are Belong To Us

The proof that commercial and open source encryption has surpassed the technologies to police it, or the idea that privacy and business growth as top priorities would ruin the whole initiative?

"The Government has launched a public consultation into a draft code of practice for a controversial UK law that critics have said could alienate big business and IT professionals. Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) will, as it stands, give police the authority to force organisations and individuals to disclose encryption keys. The Government issued the public consultation on the code of practice for Part III, which will regulate how police and the courts use powers under the legislation, on Wednesday."

It would be interesting to see how they would initiate the response from individuals, without raising the the eyebrows on the majority of civil liberties watch dogs out there and, of course, businessess. That's of course, assuming they use encryption at the first place. Could be much more "wiser" to take advantage of covert practices to obtain the necessary information, instead of "forcing" this measure -- detecting encrypted/covert communication channels is another topic. Moreover, compared to the Australian police whose capabilities of obtaining information on criminals include the use of spyware is a bit contraversial, but adaptave approach.

If national infrastructure security matters, have individuals and enterprises personally take care of their security and encryption keys, promote data encryption, instead of dictating the vibrations by slowing down the basics through such laws.