Re:In the UK, You Will Go to Jail Not Just for Encryption, b...
by SEMW on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @06:14AM
(#12844500)
> But how would you even prove or disprove that someone has the key?
The same way you 'prove' anything in criminal law: by adducing evidence that convinces a jury beyond reasonable doubt. If they don't have any evidence, the accused has no case to answer.
> If they arrest someone with a laptop encrypted with ransomware, will they force this person to pay?
Which provision are you thinking they could do that under? s.49 and 53 aren't relevant, they're only if someone is in possession of the key. With ransomware, some third party bad actor is in possession of the key.
If they know that you have the key, they could simply confiscate it from you to decrypt it. But how would you even prove or disprove that someone has the key?
If they arrest someone with a laptop encrypted with ransomware, will they force this person to pay? Let's say he pays or the police and gov authorities pay and the outcome would be that it's not decrypted, would it prove that this person encrypted it themselves or could it be that ransomware decryption didn't work. Does it really matter if we would be jailing potentially innocent person, I mean the terrorists and pedophiles are rampant right!?