Government calling for more powers. Why?
There is a lot of disquiet about the changes being proposed to the Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) currently going through the British parliament. One article that recently appearing online titled "British Spies collecting phone data for 14 years (www.goo.gl/YnBkOC) would imply that they have all the powers they need, whether covered by law or not (why ask if you can do it anyway). So why does the government need more powers when they don't worry about or use the ones they have today? Watering down encryption One part that I have particularly being hearing about is that it proposes to water down encryption. Some people are saying that the new amendments will require organizations to assist in bypassing encryption and therefore weaken encryption protocols. However, this does not appear to stack up. The act, introduced in 2000 and having gone through four updates, already had the obligation on organizations to hand over decryption keys to law enforcement agencies or f...