UK holds Microsoft security talks (BBC)

UK holds Microsoft security talks (BBC)

IANAL, so the remainder of this post is pure and wild speculation. Imbibe plenty of sodium chloride when reading.

Although the Government is permitted access to data for national security reasons, under UK law, Microsoft is NOT permitted to install backdoors without the user's knowledge and consent. For the installer or upgrader to add such a backdoor, it would necessarily be conducting unauthorized activity on the user's computer, which would violate the Computer Misuse Act. Any such backdoor would need to be publicly declared and openly agreed to. Under the Data Protection Act, Microsoft would also be barred from holding any information that might associate a backdoor key with the user's personal information. Nor can such information be exported to Microsoft, as the EU bans the trade of personal information to countries that lack privacy laws (such as the US).

Also, backdoors might constitute a picklock. In the ruling of the case involving a hacker breaking into Prince Philip's PRESTEL mailbox, the court ruled that a digital key that existed for a fraction of a second (the hacker used a password guesser, I believe) was not a picklock, so by guessing keys, he was not "breaking and entering". A backdoor is essentially permanent, so that defense would not apply.

Although the UK Government couldn't realistically be touched for requesting such a backdoor, there MAY be ways Microsoft could be legally vulnerable if they supplied one, but even if they were, it would take a genius of a lawyer to pull off a stunt like that.

A different line of attack might be to put pressure on Euro MPs regarding the current Microsoft lawsuits. The more the EU hurts Microsoft now, the less likely Microsoft is to play ball with ANY European state on legal or security requirements. Besides which, they'd be less likely to risk further entanglements with the EU as a whole, no matter what any one member state wanted.