What is the United Kingdom's RIPA legislation ?
How does this affect me ?
Answer: The Regulation of Investagatory Powers Act (RIPA) is
United Kingdom legislation that became law in July, 2000.
This law requires Internet Service Providers to maintain a copy
of all email it's users send and receive by use black boxes that the government itself will
be funding.
It has been shown that the RIP ACt directly contracticts the
UK Human Rights Act which stresses employees have the right to
privacy while they are at work. The RIP Act demands employers log and
track their staff's internet movements.
The scariest part of the RIP Act is this: If you have encrypted
any messages or maintain a public/private keypair then it is a criminal offence
to not hand over your keys if they are demanded of you.
The beauty of UK Citizens using Project SCIM technology is this:
you do not maintain a public/private key pair. Every time you initiate
the Project SCIM software a new key pair is generated and never told to
you. The public key is sent to the server but the private key is not
ever known by any other party.
If the UK government was to demand you hand over your keys,
you are safe, because you never knew what your keys were and never had
access to them.
