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Can Big Brother Read Your Emails?

Recently amended provisions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 could further restrict the rights of organisations and individuals wishing to protect sensitive electronic information, and the Government is already making use of the new powers, warns Ray Crudgington.

Part III of the Act covers the encryption of electronic data and requires holders of encrypted data to provide the means to put the encrypted data into an intelligible form when required to do so by the authorities. Failure to do so can lead to criminal charges, with a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison, or five years in certain cases relating to suspected terrorism.

Many people also choose to use readily available encryption programmes to encrypt their email, files, folders, documents and pictures. These same technologies can also be used by terrorists, paedophiles and others to hide their criminal activities. Recently, 30 animal rights activists have received demands to supply the encryption keys they use when communicating with each other.

If the police or other public agency suspect that data encryption is being used to conceal any kind of criminal activity, then they have the power to serve a notice against the person in control of that data, be it an individual, company director or any other responsible person. The cost of extracting the information for the authorities is described in the press release as 'trivial'.

The Code of Practice governing the use of such powers allows the data owner or controller 'reasonable time' to comply.

"Data users can no longer assume that encrypting data means keeping it secret forever," says Ray. "Data encryption is a powerful tool that can and should be used to protect sensitive data from prying eyes. But it does not mean that public authorities cannot access it if required."

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