The US authorities wish to extradite Love in connection with alleged hacking of US government computers where he will have to face one of their kangaroo courts and will lock him away in a private prison for a hundred years. In October 2013, Love was arrested by the UK police for alleged offences under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act. His house was searched, and his computers and other digital equipment seized.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) was seeking to create a dangerous precedent that effectively would have allowed the UK police to circumvent the safeguards found in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), the main legislation covering this area.

In February 2014, the UK government tried to use RIPA to force Love to turn over his encryption keys for these devices, but he refused, even though he faced up to two years' imprisonment for doing so. The NCA did not take this RIPA request any further, and Love was not prosecuted for failing to comply.

According to the Courage Foundation-run Free Lauri site, in May 2015 "the NCA returned 25 of the 31 items of Lauri’s property it seized nearly two years earlier; it still holds a desktop computer, two laptops, two external hard drives and a SD card. In November 2015, Lauri launched legal action against the NCA to get the rest of his property back."

However, the NCA allegedly took advantage of Love's civil action to ask the court to issue a direction for Love to hand over his encryption keys, under the threat of contempt of court. In Tuesday's ruling at Westminster Magistrates' Court, a judge told them to go forth and multiply.

Love had been quoted as saying that the NCA wanted a precedent so that coppers can take away your computers and if they are unable to comprehend certain portions of data held on them, then you lose the right to retain them. It’s a presumption of guilt for random data.

Lawyer and commentator David Allen Green said the National Crime Agency were asking the courts to construct a civil law 'backdoor' for obtaining encryption keys (and encrypted data) outside the statutory scheme of RIPA.

That is pretty much what the Judge N Tempia thought too.