A 22-year-old man has been jailed for six months after refusing to provide passwords to his encrypted hard-drives, the Daily Mail reported. He was imprisoned under a section of RIPA, a UK law that was originally pushed as a counter-terrorism measure, but which has now ballooned to cover many different aspects of crime—something that has got civil liberties groups worried.
Mike Harris, campaign director of open rights group Don’t Spy on Us, told me that RIPA doesn’t just deal with serious crime, and agencies that can use it include HMRC—the part of the UK government that deals with tax and other financial issues. According to the legislation, any of the intelligence services (GCHQ, MI5 and MI6), the police, and the National Crime Agency (the recently introduced UK version of the FBI, essentially) can make requests to suspects to provide passwords.
“It isn’t up to a judge whether someone should hand over their private key. You have to do it if requested [by an agency]. Then if you refuse, you definitely go to court,” Harris told me. Wilson’s case is the latest to show quite how broadly the law can be applied.