Student Jailed For Refusing To Decrypt Data For Investigators

Christopher Wilson is a 22-year-old computer science student with Asperger's syndrome. He's also facing six months in prison for refusing to hand over the encryption keys to police during the course of an investigation.

Wilson first found himself on the wrong side of the long arm of the law in October of 2012. At the time, he was suspected of emailing threats to the vice chancellor of Newcastle University, where he was working towards a master's degree, in which he promised to shoot members of the school's staff. The messages were able to be traced to servers that were connected to Wilson, but the allegations could never be substantiated and the charges were eventually dropped. But not before police confiscated several pieces of computer equipment from his home.