Hard to tell about the principles of the law itself.
I don't hold any of the British government departments in high regard, so I will assume malicious power-seeking on their part regardless of anything else.
But for the principal of forced decryption?
Most non-criminal organisations don't know how to secure their communications properly, so while organised criminals that hire decent IT can trivially secure their communications, I don't expect criminals to be generally capable of keeping out of sight of the authorities.
Non-professional criminals will probably all get scooped up easily by a surveillance dragnet.
And the only way past the competent criminals is old-fashioned intel gathering.
But the British government can't actually act on dragnet-scale information anyway:
They've been cutting back on police, court buildings, magistrates, public lawyers, prison buildings, prison staff, and parole boards.
Even if they hadn't, surveys of drug use alone suggest they'd be criminalising a double-digit percentage of the population they can't afford to put through the police let alone the courts. Given what the UK counts as "extreme" porn, I'd guess that's also a double-digit percentage of the population.
I don't hold any of the British government departments in high regard, so I will assume malicious power-seeking on their part regardless of anything else.
But for the principal of forced decryption?
Most non-criminal organisations don't know how to secure their communications properly, so while organised criminals that hire decent IT can trivially secure their communications, I don't expect criminals to be generally capable of keeping out of sight of the authorities.
Non-professional criminals will probably all get scooped up easily by a surveillance dragnet.
And the only way past the competent criminals is old-fashioned intel gathering.
But the British government can't actually act on dragnet-scale information anyway:
They've been cutting back on police, court buildings, magistrates, public lawyers, prison buildings, prison staff, and parole boards.
Even if they hadn't, surveys of drug use alone suggest they'd be criminalising a double-digit percentage of the population they can't afford to put through the police let alone the courts. Given what the UK counts as "extreme" porn, I'd guess that's also a double-digit percentage of the population.