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On return to America

On return to America

Posted Jun 17, 2017 8:35 UTC (Sat) by andrey.turkin (guest, #89915)
In reply to: On return to America by linuxrocks123
Parent article: Ryabitsev: Travel (Linux) laptop setup

It's funny how same article phrase:
> you may be asked to decrypt your devices for a search. Failure to do so may result in unpleasantness
applies to USA and UK as well as China, with varied amount of unpleasantness. USA and China are kind of similar here: you might get detained for a while (or deported if you are not a citizen), and your device ceized for an extended period of time or forever. Failure to decrypt your device in UK may result in jail time.


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On return to America

Posted Jun 17, 2017 11:53 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

> Failure to decrypt your device in UK may result in jail time.

However, given that the only time the government tried this in the UK it led to a massive PR disaster, I suspect they'll be very careful about doing so again. (However, Theresa May is such a paranoid control freak that I could well be wrong.)

On return to America

Posted Jun 17, 2017 18:47 UTC (Sat) by andrey.turkin (guest, #89915) [Link] (4 responses)

I just started to wonder if that law even applies to UK customs. If such authority only applies to the police during crime investigation then it is not as wide-reaching as I though; at least in that case it wouldn't apply to a random search on the border (but still more potent than in US where such authority applies to judges only, and somewhat flimsy Fifth Amendment protection).

On return to America

Posted Jun 19, 2017 15:32 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

The problem is that the UK offence is "failure to decrypt" or "failure to provide the key".

The fact that you may not have (and have never had) the key is no defence.

So if I plant an encrypted file on your computer AND YOU CAN PROVE IT, you are still committing an offence for which you can be jailed ...

Cheers,
Wol

On return to America

Posted Jun 19, 2017 15:54 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

That's false - the offence in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act part III, which is the current law governing failure to decrypt, it is a statutory defence to demonstrate that you did not have the key at the point the decrypt order was given to you, and did not come into possession of it after the order was given to you. The exact wording is in section 53 of the Act:
For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if—
(a) sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

While the burden of proof is reversed (it's up to the recipient of the order to prove that they did not have the key), in the situation you describe, the fact that I can prove that you planted the encrypted file on my system, but not the key, is enough to act as a defence; of course, the likely outcome is a new decrypt order focused on you instead of me. I appreciate that, as someone not necessarily resident in the UK, you may be ignorant of our laws, but they are published in full on the National Archives Legislation site, and you can research them before repeating lies you've been told about them.

On return to America

Posted Jun 19, 2017 22:47 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

While the burden of proof is reversed (it's up to the recipient of the order to prove that they did not have the key) […]

I don't think that's actually what this says. “A person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key […] if the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt” means that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person was in possession of a key, or it will be assumed by default that the person wasn't. Alternatively, the person can actively provide “sufficient evidence to raise an issue” with respect to the prosecution's claim that they have a key, which is basically reasonable doubt from the other end.

Proving a negative is always difficult, and here the “person” does not have to prove conclusively that they don't have a key; they just need to poke a sufficiently large hole into the claim that they do.

On return to America

Posted Jun 20, 2017 0:16 UTC (Tue) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

> Alternatively, the person can actively provide “sufficient evidence to raise an issue”

I don't think it's "alternatively". The sentence you're talking about contains an "and," not an "or":

For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if—
(a)sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and
(b)the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

So indeed, your parent is right: the onus is on the defendant to produce sufficient evidence that they are not in possession of a key, and this is _in addition to_ their possession of a key not having been shown beyond reasonable doubt by the prosecution.

On return to America

Posted Jun 19, 2017 19:32 UTC (Mon) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

> Failure to decrypt your device in UK may result in jail time.

It can lead to prison time in the US too: https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/01/man-gets-180-days-in-...


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