Ross Anderson, perpetual provider of embarrassing truths, has argued that Charles Clark made bogus arguments based on encryption to justify detention for 90 days without trial.
Clark argued that quasi internment was needed to allow police to break the encryption of terrorist suspects files. Those of us geeky enough to know the details of modern encryption found this both implausible and worrying. Many of the client files on Geeklawyer’s laptop are encrypted using AES. If these were vulnerable to agents of the state he’d be very worried. Most AES, and other crypto, package implementations are reasonably solid. Sufficiently so that, catastrophic bugs aside, breaking them in 90 days would imply some near magic capability within GCHQ/NSA. Doubtful.
Geeklawyer always thought it to be chocolate coated bollocks. Anderson has relieved his concerns.
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