Why are you misrepresenting about UK law?
Yes, it can be a criminal offence. But the maximum tariff for this under RIPA 2000 is five years. If it’s not about nation security or CSAM, it’s two.
(Incidentally, the USA is a real outlier in this topic)
Yes, it can be a criminal offence. But the maximum tariff for this under RIPA 2000 is five years. If it’s not about nation security or CSAM, it’s two.
(Incidentally, the USA is a real outlier in this topic)
Doesn't double jeopardy prevent this? Has this actually happened?
Legislators should force future would-be tyrants to flagrantly violate the law, as this is more likely to generate popular resistance.
The point is that these laws aren't badly written. There's already protections in place for what's described above.
A great example is the CFAA. It has been judicially narrowed after court battles, because in its original form it was overbroad and criminalized basic, common things. Prosecutors abused it in order to get political wins until they were finally stopped.
This is unfortunately fairly common. Legislators either push for too much or don’t understand how the law might be applied, and innocent people suffer until someone wins a big expensive set of appeals.
Edit: I realize now you may be talking about the UK in particular, in which case you don’t even get this shoddy level of protection as “Parliament is sovereign” (lol).
But arguing these theoretical untested-because-they-never-happen edge cases isn't exactly pushing forward a good case for this law having been "badly written." There's seemingly no problem with it in practice.
Why the "for crying out loud?" That's an example of the law being well written in a way that covers the knee jerk reactions to "it's too broad, it's badly written!"
> the government's own advisors that are the ones raising concerns with the broad applicability
What's your issue with this? They're advisors, it's their job to raise concerns that lead to the inclusion of exemptions like the one you're "crying out loud" about.
> it wasn't even considered in the original drafting of the bill.
That's why bills go through various stages of drafting and debate, and why parliament seeks out and considers the advice from industry. It's "laughable" to judge the quality of a law by the original draft, just as it would be too judge a piece of software by the initial commit.
Has it happened? Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 has a secrecy requirement built into it, where if you tell anyone that you have been issued a Section 49 you can get an additional 5 years (treated as a separate crime). This, as you can imagine, makes your question difficult to answer.
I'm not even sure how much practical difference there is between 5 and indefinite in practice, 5 years is a long time. I imagine it is pretty life-destroying. Especially for the crime of having something on your phone that you want to keep private.
> If it’s not about nation security or CSAM, it’s two.
I am sure we all get what you mean, but there is a comic interpretation in vaguely-Soviet style here where if someone hasn't done anything wrong they only get 2 years. I'm going to spend some time this weekend making sure my encryption is plausibly deniable where possible.