Reply to post: Time for a spot of code review

Review mass-snoop laws regularly, says RIPA daddy Blunkett

Dr Dan Holdsworth

Time for a spot of code review

The basic problem here is that it is obscenely easy for the government to enact new laws, and rather difficult to obsolete out old, or unused ones. As an earlier comment wisely pointed out, after a couple of thousand years of civilisation in Britain, you'd think we would have the legal structure we need pretty well sussed.

Actually, we do have a fairly well sussed corpus of laws. Most of the law is Common Law (as in what judges have decided in the past) and Contract Law, as in what is and is not fair to agree to, and which rights cannot be signed away. Most of how to handle criminals is also fairly well sussed, which is why laws like RIPA are so damaging; they throw a spanner in the known-working legal structures that already exist and also serve to highlight the fact that our politicians do not understand cryptography, and do not understand what "This is effectively impossible" means.

Thus, we are effectively letting deranged monkeys with sledgehammers loose in a watch factory if we let politicians prat about with fundamental legal principles like this.

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