Encryption = criminal intent?

A mis-directed court of appeals makes this presumption with no idea of what they are saying, and with the result that what they have stated will attack personal privacy for some time to come unless the judges are enlightened in the near future.

Encryption being mearly a way to ‘lock up’ your data for only those that you give the encryption ‘key’ to.

However, News.com reports that

“A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.“

Also from the article:
“”We find that evidence of appellant’s Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him,” Judge R.A. Randall wrote in an opinion dated May 3.”

Encryption is used today to protect data on computers as a standard course of action in even mildly security concerned businesses, travelling computer users (to help in case of theft) local, state and national agencies across the U.S., etc., etc,, etc..

Microsoft is a major supplier of encryption capabilities as it’s use is enabled in Windows XP.

Businesses and government agencies also use encryption to securely connect remote offices to the main office, for example, from seperate offices within a city to world-wide locations.

The list of criminals this decision makes is quite interesting actually:
FBI
CIA
NSA
Microsoft
etc.

These judges need to be educated.