Reading the attached, I’d expect the tabloid press to come up with a rant like:
This country needs a law so that criminals who try and hide their activity behind walls of cryptography can be prosecuted for not handing over the key to incriminate themselves!
…but, wait, there already is one.
Does the Government not consider this an excellent opportunity to employ the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act? After all, Casper Bowden of FIPR explains:-
Casper Bowden“The burden of proof is on the suspect to prove that they don’t have the key, and if they fail, they go to prison. But if they can give an explanation for not having the key, then the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are lying,” Bowden said.
Bowden explained that in circumstances when the police suspected someone had encrypted incriminating data, officers could issue an order under Section 49 of the act, ordering the suspect to hand over the key. Failure to do so could lead to a prosecution under Section 53 of the Act.
…and what is described in the attached sounds pretty squarely like the target circumstances: organised crime, crypto, willfulness…
Are they perhaps worried about setting a bad precedent? That RIPA is a bad act, and that a test case in the wrong circumstances might go awry?
Hohum.
Does anyone else want to help me reverse engineer the “400 computers and 12 years” statistic into a target algorithm?
news.com.com.comJailed ID thieves thwart cops with crypto
Three men have been jailed in the U.K. for their part in a massive data theft operation.
One of the accused ringleaders of the gang, Anton Dolgov–also known as Gelonkin–was sentenced to six years at London’s Harrow Crown Court on Wednesday for his part in the theft of millions of dollars from victims in countries including the U.K. and the U.S.
The ID thieves used stolen credit card numbers and created false identities to buy high-end electronics and other goods, which they then resold on eBay, prosecutors said.
The gang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud, obtain services by deception, acquire, use and possess criminal property, and conceal, disguise, convert, transfer or remove criminal property.
One of the gang members, Aleksei Kostap, was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice, and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.
When the gang’s premises were raided by the members of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Kostap was handcuffed with his hands in front of his body. He managed to leap up and flick an electrical switch that wiped databases that could have contained records of the gang’s activities stretching back more than 10 years, SOCA said.
Kostap’s action also triggered intricate layers of encryption on the gang’s computer systems, which SOCA’s experts were unable to crack, the court heard.
SOCA was not prepared to discuss what encryption was used or why it was unable to decrypt it, as such information would enable other criminals to use the same methods.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which confirmed that Kostap had activated the encryption after being arrested, it would take 400 computers 12 years to crack the code.
Because much data was inaccessible to the police, it is not known how much the criminals profited from their operation, but it is believed that they made millions of dollars. Police were able to find evidence of 750,000 pounds ($1.46 million) worth of transactions between 2003 and 2006, but the gang had been operating since the mid-’90s.
“The true scale of the gang’s crimes will probably never be known,” said a representative for the CPS.
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