Inadequate reporting of the Home Affairs Committee

I think it's clear that those guys are attempting to profit from public ignorance of modern cryptography.

The amount that one needs to know to realise these guys are lying is pretty small.

Just as one need not understand the workings of the internal combustion engine to be able to drive a car and know that it needs taking in for fuel every so often, knowledge of modern cryptography algorithms is unnecessary: you just need to know what they can do and how big their limitations are.

So how do we educate the public about this one quickly?

Bombard the BBC with emails saying 'you do know this, this and this, don't you?'. I'll dig up a link.

Perhaps John Denham should read what his Home Affairs Committee 4th Report actually says about Encryption:

• "57. We were also told that encryption was in practice less of a problem than had been feared. For example, Mr Sommer cited Operation Ore, a major paedophile inquiry, in which among 7,200 suspects there had only been 20 instances where encryption had been a serious problem.[64] Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University, told us that:[65]

  "In the case of decryption, there are still a few products around where the act of searching for a key may take time, but this is largely a thing of the past. Encryption products nowadays tend to be either good or useless, and if they are good then you either guess the password or you give up".

Even the Committee's conclusions on this say:

• 63. Encryption of data does not appear, for the time being, to be the problem in practice that had been feared. However analysis of data on computers, both unencrypted and decrypted, is time-consuming and resource-intensive. This will be an increasing problem for all types of investigations.

Appreciate the work this site is doing for freedom of speech, respect and equality. I hope in the future we can have more people like you in a strong Britain. Stay positive folks.

I was astonished they got through the whole of the Today program without mentioning the computer encryption wheeze once. The spin on this goes as follows:

1. Blair decides that the terrorist threat must be extreme in order to give a justifying context to the extreme violence he is causing in Iraq.

2. Prisoners are taken without charge, and harsh new terrorist laws are proposed to prove that the terrorist threat is extreme.

3. The evidence against the prisoners is kept secret because there is no evidence.

4. The prisoners get released because there is no case against them to bring before the courts.

5. The new terrorist laws get passed even though the specific case for each measure is false. Unfortunately Parliament doesn't need a good case to vote something through.

6. More prisoners get taken, but the public forgets that these are different prisoners from the ones they started with.

7. The laws get used for different situations to the ones they were justified for, but the public forgets this, the media doesn't remember it, and John Denham writes articles about how Parliament considered it fully during the debate when they passed them.

Bait and switch and switch and switch and fool and kill.

The situation on encryption is a bit worse for anyone wanting to break codes than the government seems to realise.

With every bit added to a cipher, the number of possible answers grows by a power of two. 128-bit encryption is the current acceptable minimum, 512 bit is becoming common, and 1024 is quite often seen.

Anything above 1024 bit encryption and unless an undiscovered hole exists in the algorhythms, you've completely had it as far as brute-force cracking goes.

All you can do realistically is run a simple dictionary attack and see if you can guess the passphrase, which'd take maybe a few days. If you cannot guess the passphrase, then brute-forcing is going to take thousands of years; literally thousands of years with serious amounts of computing power being applied.

7 days, 28 days, 90 days; it makes no difference; if you cannot guess the passphrase, persuade the suspect to give in, or weasel your way in some other way, you're basically stuffed. At that point your potential terrorist, paedophile or whatever is going to get the RIP Act levelled at him, which is a maximum of 2 years prison, and a very likely free walk on human rights grounds.

The RIP Act will come in really handy for oppressing the innocent, but it won't do a damn thing to the guilty.

"At that point your potential terrorist, paedophile or whatever is going to get the RIP Act levelled at him, which is a maximum of 2 years prison, and a very likely free walk on human rights grounds.2

Even though RIPA Part III which deals with encyptrd data and Government / Police access to encryption keys (with a "tipping off" secrecy provsion) is still not in force after 6 years, it has already been amended. The maximum penalty has been incresed to 5 years in prison for "national security investigations".

Who says whether something involves "national security" or not ?

Given the secrecy, how can you ever disprove a claim that there has been some sort of "national security" aspect to a case ?

The same arguments apply about the 2 year penalty still apply, since the penalties for terrorist offences etc. are mostly far more than 5 years anyway, so there is no effective deterrent.

There is a current Public Consultation on RIPA Part 3 with a deadline for submissions on 30th August.

See: www.spy.org.uk/ripa3

Spinning London Bombing.

Goatchurch wrote: 'The spin on this goes as follows:

1. Blair decides that the terrorist threat must be extreme in order to give a justifying context to the extreme violence he is causing in Iraq. '

And now, the equally indefensible Afghanistan.

Note the number of fake planted stories appearing on the anniversary of the London bombing - starting with 'Al Qaeda Infiltrates MI5'. 7/7 is being exploited as 9/11.

Does anyone believe the chiller diller, commemorative video - with its oh so convenient reference to Forest Gate? Or the BBC's searing analysis, 'Were the bombers linked to Al Qaeda?'

Who makes this stuff up? The BBC's Frank Gardner, who is MI6, widely known by journos as 'Dirty Frank'.

Good point by Goatchurch on the misuse of the resulting anti-terror laws.

They were invoked at the Labour Party conference, when an eighty year old heckler was removed. They were also invoked in case needed to deal with the Lorry Drivers Protest over fuel increases.

Oh - and the Guardian also reports that 'terror suspects' will have their - and their households' - state benefits stopped as of July 1st. Note that you don't have to be actually guilty of anything to be deemed a terror suspect.

It's all vital to our security, of course.