Weep for England!

The following is from a report in The Guardian, linked here:

A teenager has been jailed for four months for refusing to give police the password to his computer.

Oliver Drage, 19, of Freckleton, Lancs, had originally been arrested in May last year by a team of officers from Blackpool tackling child sexual exploitation. His computer was seized but officers could not access material stored on it as it was protected by a sophisticated 50-character encryption password.

Drage, who worked in a fast food shop, was then formally requested to disclose the password but failed to do so. He was convicted after a trial last month of failing to disclose an encryption key, an offence covered by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Yesterday at Preston crown court he was sentenced to 16 weeks in a young offenders institution.

Det Sergeant Neil Fowler, of Lancashire Police, said: "Drage was previously of good character so the immediate custodial sentence handed down by the judge in this case shows just how seriously the courts take this kind of offence." (Blog editor's emphasis). So let us be clear about this situation, the police suspect this youth may have underage obscene images on his computer but cannot prove it, but he is nevertheless jailed for not providing them with access. In years gone by if he had been suspected of burying such possibly incriminating evidence could he then have been jailed for not disclosing the location of the burial site? Is it me or has the world gone crazy? The police then seem to be using his previous good character to somehow exagerate the supposed seriousness of his non-proven offence!