Ah, finally at the beach. The summer has been so busy, I’ve found no time to get out until now. Today we’re checking out Nantasket Beach in Hingham, Massachusetts. It’s easy to forget that the beach is so close. It reminds me a lot of Hampton Beach up in New Hampshire.

The beach was sandy as you’d expect, though we came in at high tide. The waterline receded about a hundred feet over the course of the day. The water itself was a little rocky — grab your sandals, or it’s a little uncomfortable!

Getting some quick fried scallops from the overpriced beachside restaurant wrapped up the day. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

Boing Boing reports on a new guideline for dealing with suspected bombers: shoot them in the head. From the article: “An international group of police chiefs recently expanded its guidelines for use of deadly force, instructing officers to shoot suspected suicide bombers in the head.”

Wow.

If that doesn’t send chills down your spine, then perhaps you didn’t read that correctly. Note the use of the word suspected. So, if they think you might be packing a little TNT under your coat, you could have a permanent lights-out while waiting for the train. No trial, no jury. No “Whoops, sorry, we made a mistake there buddy.” Instant judge, jury, and executioner.

This is a terrifying idea. What if you wore the wrong coat out of the house? What if you happened to carry a laptop or MP3 player in your bag, and the wires were protruding? What if you’re not very sociable, and tend to be nervous around other people? Though they have some ideas of what might make a suspected terrorist, it’s not like being a shifty character is a crime punishable by death.

I can understand why they might decide this: if you can shoot a bomber in the head before he has a chance to detonate it, then you’ll save a lot of lives. Provided they don’t have a dead man switch, that is. In the wake of the London bombings and the ongoing insurgency struggle, people want a way to instantly deal with the threat.

But this is a little draconian, even in the wake of such troubles. The idea of using deadly force on people you just suspect may be a troublemaker is a tough one. In fact, one might say this fills me with terror. As Nietzsche would say, “Those who fight monsters must make sure they don’t become them.”

Update: I sometimes hate it when I’m right.

Tech World recently reported that the UK police want to make it a criminal offense to withhold encryption keys. This is naturally in response to terrorism and other criminal activities which are making increased use of these privacy technologies.

I can understand why they would want such powers. With very little time, money, and effort, the average person can encrypt documents, files, and messages in a manner difficult if not impossible for most anyone to decrypt. This is law enforcement’s nightmare: seize a criminal’s computer, and not be able to extract any evidence from it.

The flip side of this issue is individual privacy. People should have the right to privacy, which is growing to become the most critical personal issue going into the 21st century. In our efforts to fight criminals, we must make sure we aren’t trouncing individual liberties at the same time, because once you start, you find it hard to arbitrarily stop.

But all that aside, I’m just wondering about this from the average computer user’s experience.

The way most encryption keys work is that there is a private key used to decrypt files, as well as a passphrase on that file. These two items are needed in order to decrypt something. If one or the other gets lost, then the file is unrecoverable. (Yes, there’s “conventional encryption” which just uses a passphrase and other forms of encryption, but that’s not what’s at issue here.)

This is all fine and good, but what if you’re the average end user? Have you ever forgotten a password? There’s a reason most sites have a little link marked “Forgot Password” — it’s not for aesthetics. Have you ever lost a file? Ever accidentally deleted one? Had a hard drive crash? Put it on a USB key and lost it? Reformatted your computer, forgetting to grab that file? This happens more often than many might think.

So, it’s very easy to lose both the file as well as the passphrase. It’s human nature. While one would hope that if you took the time and effort to encrypt something, you’d take measures to make sure you wouldn’t lose both, the average computer user tends to play things a little fast and loose.

Now, let’s say that you’ve done just that — played around with encrypting files a little bit, forgot about it, and lost the passphrase, the private key, or both. Entirely plausible; I’ve done both before. Then let’s say that you’re a suspect in an investigation, say, through racial profiling. (If you don’t think racial profiling is going on in this world right now, you’re being incredibly naive.) The police seize your computer, and demand that you hand over your encryption key, which you no longer have, so they charge you. Immediate criminal offense for being a little too lackadaisical. Making poor computer habits a crime is a bad thing. Especially when most computer users don’t have good computer habits.

This is all Big Brotherish, but as the EFF knows, it only takes a little bit to get the ball rolling on taking away civil liberties. One hopes that the UK will consider this as they work to increase policing powers.