Saying encrypted data increasingly hamper police work, the U.K. H...
Saying encrypted data increasingly hamper police work, the U.K. Home Office Thurs. proposed requiring individuals to put protected electronic data in intelligible form or provide a key with which to make it so. The draft code of practice -…
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- a guidance to police bodies seeking to force disclosure of encrypted data -- appears in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), most of which was adopted in 2000. The code hasn’t been put in place due to slower than anticipated deployment of encryption and other data protection technologies, the govt. said. But the past 2-3 years, personnel probing terrorism and crime have run into the technologies more often, the govt. said. Comments are due Aug. 30 -- encryption@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk. The Home Office also seeks comments on a draft code of practice -- also required under RIPA -- governing acquisition and disclosure of communications traffic data, but not content. The govt. uses the data in criminal and civil matters, but can only collect them for: (1) National security. (2) Detecting or preventing crime. (3) Guarding the U.K.’s economic well- being. (4) Protecting public safety. (5) Guarding public health. (6) Assessing or collecting taxes or levies. (7) Preventing injury or death in an emergency. If adopted, the code will let police and emergency services, revenue and customs agencies and local authorities and other entities access traffic data under certain conditions. Comments due Aug. 30 -- commsdata@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk. Protected data are of particular concern when suspects in grave cases must be set free because data can’t be read in time, Simon Watkin of the Home Office covert investigation policy team said. A draft of the code of practice appeared in 2000 parliamentary debates of RIPA, but the Thurs. version, differs greatly and handles issues raised then, Watkin told us. But the govt. is still “faced with the situation that we are writing a code of practice for a process which doesn’t exist,” he said.