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UK: Establishment figures throw doubt on argument for holding terrorist suspects for 90 days

01 November 2005

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Two top establishment figures, Lord Brown (the Intelligence Services Commissioner) and the Rt Hon Sir Swinton Thomas (Interception of Communications Commissioner), have both - in their annual reports published last week - thrown doubt on the police and government's argument for holding terrorist suspects for 90 days. One of the main arguments put forward is that people need to be detained for questioning (without charge) for more than 14 days because of the difficulty and complexity of decryption. Extraordinarily both reports use exactly the same words on the question of encryption in Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) which is not yet in force:

"the use of information security and encryption products by terrorist and criminal suspects is not, I understand, as widespread as had been expected when RIPA was approved by Parliament in the year 2000. Equally the Government's investment in the National Technical Assistance Centre - a Home Office managed facility to undertake complex data processing - is enabling law enforcement agencies to understand, as far as is necessary, protected electronic data"

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