07 October,2010 03:00 PM IST | | Agencies
A teenager in Britain has been jailed for four months after he refused to give his computer password to child protection police, a media report said.
Oliver Drage's computer was seized by officers tackling child sexual exploitation. But they could not access the material stored in it as it was protected by a 50-character encryption password, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.
The 19-year-old, who worked in a fast food shop, was originally arrested in May last year. He was then formally requested to disclose the password but failed to do so.
He was convicted after a trial last month for failing to disclose an encryption key, an offence covered by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
On Tuesday, at Preston Crown Court Drage of Freckleton, he was sentenced to 16 weeks in a Young Offenders Institution.
Detective Sergeant 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."
Police are still trying to crack the code on Drage's computer to find out its contents 17 months after they seized it.
