Legal Commentary

Does Using PGP Mark You as a Criminal?

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Does encrypting your data with PGP tend to show that you are a member of a criminal organization? That’s what this article, Infoshop News - Repression in Austria over PGP keys, alleges is the view of the Austrian police.

I’d need to know a lot more to form a view of how accurate these claims (by “anonymous” no less) are. Might be nothing to it.

I mention it because it’s an interesting issue, and one that’s sure to come up again elsewhere, in similar guises.

I can see how if parties are communicating by encrypted email (or otherwise) with someone known or suspected to be a member of a gang, then by ordinary principles of traffic analysis, police might decide they were worth knowing more about. The use of encryption on stored data, however, does not by itself suggest people are anything other than prudent.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).