The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act contains within it a provision to punish people with upwards of 2 years in prision if they do not hand over decryption keys when the Police demand them. There are protections within the bill of which one is;

(3) For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if—

(a) sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and

(b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

To this end Brass Horn Communications released the S53 project in mid 2015. This was a software/hardware combination which would destroy all data on a protected computer if it detected tampering (or if a panic button was triggered). This was a thought experiment for this defence but some have since argued that a more subtle approach may be needed as “trapdooring” your data or purposefully destroying it via a panic button could violate other laws.

Using RIPACrypt one could store the pass phrase (or a Bitlocker / LUKs keyfile etc) for a given computer in a Crypt with a 3x 1 hour deadline. That computer could then be configured to check-in every hour on the hour, if the computer was seized then RIPACrypt would destroy the data after 3 hours and timestamp when this was done.

You had no direct control over the destruction process as you were no longer in possession of the computer that was authorised to checkin.

When served with a RIPA s.49 notice you could point them to https://RIPACrypt.download/view/YOURCRYPTID/ and see what happens…

#THIS SOFTWARE IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IN DEFEATING BAD LEGISLATION WITH TECHNOLOGY - PLEASE DO NOT RISK A CONVICTION BY RELYING ON IT