National Crime Agency legal bid to access Lauri Love's passwords denied

Judge rules that the NCA should have used the legal mechanisms in RIPA

Westminster Magistrates' Court in London has denied a bid by the National Crime Agency (NCA) to compel an alleged hacker to hand over passwords guarding encrypted files on the accused's computers.

The case concerns Lauri Love, who was arrested in 2013 as part of an investigation called OpResort into a range of virtual break-ins. It was reported in April that the NCA was still nibbling at the case and was trying and failing to get past passwords to encrypted files in order to build its case.

The NCA claims that Love has a number of stolen US documents encrypted on his PCs. It took its case to the Magistrates' Court in London and asked for a legal right to access the data, bypassing the mechanisms established under 2000's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Love, meanwhile, challenged the NCA's efforts to access his computers.

"The NCA is trying to establish a precedent so that an executive body, such as the police, can take away your computers and if they are unable to comprehend certain portions of data held on them, you lose the right to retain them. It's a presumption of guilt for random data," he told whistleblower news site The Intercept.

The BBC reported that district judge Nina Tempia ruled that the NCA's demand to compel Love to hand over the passwords should be denied.

"I'm not granting the application because to obtain the information sought the correct procedure to use, as the NCA did two and a half years ago, is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the inherent safeguards incorporated thereafter," she said.

Computing has asked the NCA for comment, but haven't had a response yet.

Love was represented in the case by Karen Todner, of law firm Kaim Todner, who also represented Gary McKinnon. "The case raised important issues of principle in relation to the right to respect for private life and right to enjoyment of property and the use of the court's case management powers," she told The Guardian.

"A decision in the NCA's favour would have set a worrying precedent for future investigations of this nature and the protection of these important human rights."