For serious criminals the solution is simple: just don’t divulge the key. The penalty for that is probably less than for the crime you’ve committed. In fact, if you are a good enough actor to convince a jury that you’ve ‘forgotten’ it then you will get off scott free. Legit businesses will have to use insecure methods that retain confidential keys, which are also easily accessible at a moments notice in case they have RIP served on them. Spot the loser here? And in reality criminal organisations are far better funded and technologically advanced than our police, combined with the security gaffs by even companies should know better (eg BT) have suffered it’s easy to see the potential for disaster. Do the benefits of RIP outweight the risks? On the current evidence I know which way I think it points.

The government is stuck in the old days where it was easy for them to get a phone tap but tricky for your average citizen. They don’t realise that anyone can install a packet sniffer and some cracking software. In the UK we have a good civil service populated by some well-meaning people. But our civil servants have to move every couple of years meaning that we don’t have anyone technically literate consistently occupying a senior position. We do have a very active concerned population (I’m not going to say civil liberties group, as many are merely concerned pragmatic professionals and not what you would call ‘activists’) and the DTI do listen. There is hope but it really is a shame that Labour rammed RIP through on a purely political agenda against the wishes of the DTI.

Phillip.