You have to look at this from both angles....

So many people use the internet in this day and age, and it's one of the fastest growing mediums for transfering information. As a result of this there are all sorts of things being banded about that really shouldn't be there.... terrorist plots, information on how to produce weapons and explosives, child ponography, etc etc.

We really do need to try and police this sort of thing so that we can go on living the life that we know and love...

But on the other hand, having everyone hand over their encryption key so that the government can read their mail at will is an incredible breach of privacy.

I certianly don't have anything to hide, but the idea that someone could intercept my email and read it at will is very uncomfortable for me. The message was for the recipient and only that person.... Some random person in an office reading it to ensure that I'm not planning on blowing something up or releasing a chemical weapon in a crowded city just makes me feel violated....

Plus there is the whole thing on breach of power... someone could take money to intercept peoples emails for someone... there is so much wrong with this idea.

As Dan Brown said in Digital Fortress, who will watch the watchers?

The biggest problem with this new law is that it won't help at all to catch terrorist. There allready are crytographic methods that store 2 (or more) messages in one file, with 2 (or more) keys. The terrorist simply mixes an innocent message with the real message, and when he is ordered to give up the key he gives the key to the innocent message and the law will be none the wiser.

So privacy is being eroded, while the gain is nothing.

You do realise that unless you allready use encryption on all your email, several people CAN read your email without much trouble as it's stored on the server of your ISP.

If the police had to get a warrant to decrypt something, and the burden was on them to prove you were deliberately stonewalling, I'd be okay with it.

As they don't, and it isn't, I'm not.

Out of interest what's the Dutch law on this sort of thing?

Had to do some digging to be sure. Cryptography is legal and everyone is free to encrypt their files or phone conversations etc (cryptophone isn't illegal). However the police can "force" people to decrypt encrypted files but only if they aren't a suspect themselves. If you don't cooperate this could lead to a maximum of 3 months in prison (and 2 years if the warrant that mandates it is from the General Intelligence and Security Office).

Although the law text allows for "more" in practice this only applies to 3rd parties that have the password or the keys of a suspect and only if its clear that you have these passwords / keys. Otherwise the whole "you have to cooperate with us" thing goes out of the window.

When tapping phones and internet connections your ISP can be forced to remove the encryption if they were the ones to originally add it (so they would have the key). Trusted Third Parties which make a living of securely sending / storing data / keys are excluded as they wouldn't be able to do their jobs otherwise.

So a pretty much similar type of law but with the "safe guards" in place that the suggested law in the UK seems to lack.