Your privacy is an illusion: UK attacks civil liberties

Last year one of the more troubling provisions of the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) finally came into effect. This piece of legislation made it a criminal offense to refuse to decrypt almost any encrypted data residing within the UK if demanded by authorities as part of a criminal investigation. The penalty for failure to decrypt is up to two years imprisonment for "normal" crime, and up to five years for "terrorism."

As two men accused of "terrorism" discovered last week, the long-standing right to silence does not trump the RIPA powers. The UK's Court of Appeal judged last week that the pair, named only as "S" and "A," could not depend on their right of silence to refuse to provide decryption keys. In the decision, the Court stated that although there was a right to not self-incriminate, this was not absolute, and that the "public interest" can supersede this right in some circumstances.