No, you may NOT have my encryption keys
Another in a series of my “Dragons” posts, this time about more invasion of my rights. This Guardian Unlimited article talks about the police wanting to make it illegal to withold encryption keys when asked for them.
“They also want to make it a criminal offence for suspects to refuse to cooperate in giving the police full access to computer files by refusing to disclose their encryption keys.”
Let me just publically reply to that with one word: NO.
My encryption keys are put there to keep YOU out, permanently. If you do not have the right to see the information, data or other bits encrypted by my (exceptionally-strong) keys, you simply won’t get access to it.
Threaten me with jail, throw me in jail, do what you think will work to get me to turn over my keys… it will not work. I would rather spend a lifetime in jail protecting my data, than give you the irrevokable right to invade my privacy and freedoms and the freedoms of others who would come after me.
The persuit of freedom and upholding those freedoms is worth more than my life or the lives of any of my friends or family. They don’t have my keys and torturing them will not get me to give them up. I have an incredible tolerance to pain, some would say inhuman in some cases (I’ve had doctors tell me this several times, as I’ve undergone several medical procedures without any numbing agent).
Shipping me off to some other country that allows torture to try to extract my encryption keys will result in one of two things:
- A frustrated torturer, who is unable to extract my keys
- A dead suspect, after enduring hundreds of different torture methods, unsuccessfully
Either way, you don’t get my keys, or my data, or anything I don’t elect to give you. Pain, medications, whatever you think will work, will not. My willpower and tolerance is stronger than anything you have.
Let me reiterate, you will not get my encryption keys, under pain of threat, physical pain, medication or otherwise. Either I will be dead, or you will give up. Either way, you have nothing.
Are we clear? Good.