of Section 49 Notice' under S.54. In August 2009 it was announced that two people had been prosecuted and convicted for refusing to provide British authorities with their encryption keys, under Part III of the Act. The first of these was sentenced to a term of 9 months' imprisonment. In a 2010 case, Oliver Drage, a 19-year-old takeaway worker being investigated as part of a police investigation into a child exploitation network, was sentenced, at Preston Crown Court, to four months imprisonment. Mr Drage was arrested in May 2009, after investigating officers searched his home near Blackpool. He had been required, under this act, to provide his 50-character encryption key but had not complied. In a further case in 2010 Poole Borough Council was accused of spying unfairly on a family. Although the Council invoked powers under RIPA to establish whether a family fell into a certain school catchment area, when taken before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal it was found guilty of improper use of surveillance powers. Amendments In October 2020 the Government introduced the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill which would permit, in certain circumstances, to authorise security, intelligence and police agencies to participate in criminal conduct during their operations. This Bill would amend the RIPA where required. Investigatory Powers Tribunal The 2000 Act established the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to hear complaints about surveillance by public bodies. The Tribunal replaced the Interception of Communications Tribunal, the Security Service Tribunal, and the Intelligence Services Tribunal with effect from 2 October 2000. Between 2000 and 2009 the tribunal upheld only 4 out of 956 complaints. See also Human Rights Act 1998 Investigatory Powers Act 2016 Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom Phone hacking Rubber-hose cryptanalysis Plausible deniability Interception Modernisation Programme United States v. Boucher, a case in the US courts which determined that a criminal defendant cannot be forced to reveal his encryption passphrase but can be forced to provide a plaintext (decrypted) copy of their encrypted data, if the defendant had previously willingly shown the authorities the drive's contents (i.e., having previously incriminated himself with those contents) References External links Regulation of Investigatory Powers Information Centre (against RIP) Parliament "didn't understand RIP Act" Articles on aspects of RIPA and Surveillance Law BBC News Website (April 2008) – RIPA Spy law 'used in dog fouling war' Computing legislation Cryptography law History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Mass surveillance