A teenager has been jailed for 16 weeks after he refused to give police the password to his computer.

Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool, was arrested in May 2009 by police tackling child sexual exploitation.

Police seized his computer but could not access material on it as it had a 50-character encryption password.

Drage was convicted of failing to disclose an encryption key in September. He was sentenced at Preston Crown Court on Monday.

Det Sgt 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.

"Computer systems are constantly advancing and the legislation used here was specifically brought in to deal with those who are using the internet to commit crime.

"It sends a robust message out to those intent on trying to mask their online criminal activities that they will be taken before the courts with the ultimate sanction, as in this case, being a custodial sentence."

Presumably they weren't just searching his hard drive because his eyes are too beady and the neighbours think he's weird. So I imagine the BBC isn't telling us what evidence the cops had because it pertains to a prosecution that is yet to materialise.

I hope I would be allowed out of jail when I cried like a girl and offered the key up though (I'm portly, but too pretty for jail).

I might very well get stroppy over revealing passwords, there is some confidential and sensative information on my PC.

Wouldn't go to prison over it though

Am I missing something? If the police really wanted to get to the lads data could they not take out the drive and hook it up to another machine? We've done that here with laptop drives...

Not if it's running something like Truecrypt. That runs at boot - if you don't know the password, you can't boot off the disk and if you try to boot off another disk in the same PC, it looks just like an unformatted drive. It's also (for a decent sized hard drive) not decryptable in anything like worthwhile time.

the cops could create something like folding@home get millions of people to help them brute force paedos passwords. Catholics would probably be banned from participation, but the rest of us would chip in.

*facepalm*
You're advocating a sort of virtual militia then, made up of 'us' and not 'them'?

9.18000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years.

9.18000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years.

As to the alleged "real" crime, it is irrelevant to the story, as he has not been charged, so the press should not say what that alleged crime was, until he is officially booked (I'd prefer to see the anonimity held until after the court decision*).

* We have a weatherman here, who was accused of raping his ex-girlfriend. He had to go into hiding, his career is ruined and he was top story on the news for weeks, now it seems that his ex-girlfriend isn't trustworthy, as a witness, even her mother doesn't believe she was raped! How is he supposed to rebuild his life after that? IF he is aquitted...