Re: [Hampshire] [OT]Hand over your crypto key or else

On Thursday 22 November 2007 02:50, john wrote:
> If the key is unavailable because it has been
> deleted and the key is 100 random characters long then the authorities
> cannot expect you to produce something that is impossible to give them.
>
> It is up to you to show the judge and a jury how a password was produced.
>  It is up to you to show a judge and jury that the passwords that your
> program uses is impossible to remember. If the password produced
> demonstrates to a jury that it is something impossible to remember then you
> are halfway there.
>
> The law deals with intent.  The law is required to show that you
> deliberately deleted your password file.

As I understand it, this law makes the failure to hand over your key, or else
supply a "translation", an absolute offence. In other words, "they" have to
show merely that you did it. Intent does not come into it. Mitigating
circumstances do not come into it.

Could you perhaps quote the passage from the law that should be interpreted as
you say? I.e. that the prosecution has to supply evidence of intent? I
can't, I'm afraid, because I have not got a copy of the statute. But, as I
said above, I understand from what I have read that this is an absolute
offence. That is the appalling thing about it.

And,of course, IANAL. But I have spent several years :-( in the English High
Court as a litigant in person, and I do know that what the authorities can
reasonably expect is not relevant. All that is relevant is the letter of the
law as interpreted by the courts.

Lisi