Dear Mr Straw,
How the E-commerce Bill could send YOU to jail
Please find at the end of the letter a confession to a crime, which
has been affirmed by Statutory Declaration. The Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police has been informed that you are in possession
of this information.
You will not be able to understand the confession, because the
words have been scrambled using a strong cryptographic key. This
key was created in your name and has been registered on
international public key servers.
The police may come and demand that you supply the key
required to make this message intelligible. If you fail to do so you
would be committing an offence under the E-Commerce Bill
rendering you liable to imprisonment for up to 2 years.
The fact that you don't possess this key won't help you unless you
can prove that you don't have it. I wish you well in proving that it
isn't hidden away on a disk in your secretary's home, or squirrelled
away on the Internet somewhere. We might have sent it to you last week;
but according to the Bill, the police won't have to prove you ever had it at all.
Even if you can prove that you don't have it you would STILL be
liable for imprisonment unless you give information to the police
that enables them to decrypt the key. Unfortunately for you this is
impossible, because we've destroyed all copies of the key in our possession.
If the police ask you keep the demand to hand over the key secret,
telling anyone would render you liable to 5 years in jail. So you
couldn't complain - or explain your predicament - to the PM or
Home Secretary, to the Chief Whip or a journalist, or even to
another policeman.
Happily for all of us, the E-Commerce Bill has not yet been
enacted by Parliament, so we have not in fact set you up for jail
time. The Bill will be introduced in the coming session. I hope this
exercise has demonstrated some of the drafting flaws in the Bill as it stands
- copies of which are available from the DTI.
I hope we have also demonstrated that it is not the perpetrators of
crime who would suffer under these draconian new powers, but
innocent parties who are in receipt of communications from
miscreants. This is why such sober organisations as British
Telecom, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft have publicly criticised
the Bill at each stage of its development.
I trust that when the Bill reaches the House we can rely on your
most careful scrutiny. Further analysis is available on our web site
at:
http://www.stand.org.uk/
or feel free to telephone me on (number supplied to J. Straw)
I am, Sir, Your most obedient servant,
Malcolm Hutty
