14 DAY TRIAL // A 19-year-old teenager from Liverpool was sentenced on Monday to sixteen weeks in a correctional institution for young offenders after he failed to reveal a password protecting encrypted data.
Oliver Drage used to live in Freckleton, Lancashire, but after he was arrested in May 2009 on suspicion of child sexual exploitation, he moved to Liverpool.
According to the BBC, the police seized his computer, but certain data stored on it was encrypted with a 50-character password.
The teenager was officially asked to surrender the access code and when he failed, he was charged with offenses under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) of 2000.
Drage told the jury at Preston Crown Court that he forgot the password, but he was found guilty nevertheless, the Lancashire Evening Post reports.
"This was a deliberate flouting of a court order compounded by your continual denial of guilt," the judge is quoted as saying when handing out the sixteen-week sentence.
Drage's defender, Janet Ironfield, pointed out that because of the original arrest the teenager's reputation in his community was forever ruined, which prompted him to change homes.
She also said that she doesn't know whether the police tried to recover the password by other means until December 2009, when the RIPA charges were brought against her client.
"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," Detective Sergeant Neil Fowler, of Lancashire police, commented.