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THE NEW AGE OF UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING 507
Enforcement'. Speaking at the Cabinet Office, he confirmed that
'Key Escrow' was finished, and now emphasised cooperating
closely with the computer industry rather than fighting it. The
government accepted that no single magic technique was likely
to sustain interception in the face of rising use of encryption by
criminals. 59 Instead, it placed its hopes on new legislation called
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, under which
criminals would face serious penalties for refusing to offer up the
keys to encrypted material. 60
In addition, there would be a new dedicated computer unit
called the Govemmem Technical Assistance Centre (GTAC) ,
intended to break the codes that criminals used to encrypt their
emails and computer hard drives. While this was nominally a
Home Office unit, in reality code-breaking and code-making
always meant GCHQ, and offidals joked privately that 'GTAC'
actually stood for 'GCHQ Technical Assistance Centre'. Sure
enough, in July 2000 GCHQ was asked to lend one of its top
experts, Brian Paterson, to the Home Office to establish the unit. 61
Even Paterson called GTAC a 'euphemistic title' for what was in
effect a code-cracking unit at the Home Office. He explained that
modern criminals tended to use the internet in three different
ways. First, as a simple extension of ordinary crimes, such as
fraud, theft and smuggling. Second, there were crimes which had
only developed because of the existence of the internet, such as
hacking and virus attacks. 62 Third, there was the use of the
internet by criminals as a means of communications or storage.
When it came to the third problem, Paterson explained that
domestic interception presented multiple difficulties. It required
warrants literally signed by the Home Secretary, 'even if it means
getting him out of bed'. Moreover, in the era of the internet,
interception was being made 'very much more difficult by new
technology' .63 Surprisingly, GTAC was developed, staffed, and then
little used. Always partly run by GCHQ, it was quietly transferred
to Cheltenham in April 2006. 64
The number of criminals encrypting their emails and computer
files proved to be fairly small. In fact, for a decade both NSA and