Power of police officer to access computer and data.
18. (1) A police officer or any person authorised in writing by the Commissioner of Police shall —
(a) be entitled at any time to —
(i) have access to and inspect and check the operation of
any computer to which this section applies;
(ii) use or cause to be used any such computer to search
any data contained in or available to such computer; or
(iii) have access to any information, code or technology which has the capability of retransforming or unscrambling encrypted data contained or available to such computer into readable and comprehensible format or text for the purpose of investigating any offence under this Act or any other offence which has been disclosed in the course of the lawful exercise of the powers under this section;
(b) be entitled to require —
(i) the person by who or on whose behalf the police officer or investigation officer has reasonable cause to suspect any computer to which this section applies is or has been used; or
(ii) any person having charge of, or otherwise concerned with the operation of, such computer, to provide him with such reasonable technical and other assistance as he may require for the purposes of paragraph (a); or
(c) be entitled to require any person in possession of decryption information to grant him access to such decryption information necessary to decrypt data required for the purpose of investigating any such offence.
(2) This section applies to a computer which a police officer or any person authorised in writing by the Commissioner of Police has reasonable cause to suspect is or has been in use in connection with any offence under this Act or any other offence which has been disclosed in the course of the lawful exercise of the powers under this section.
(3) The powers referred to in subsections (1)(a) (ii) and (iii) and in subsection (1)(c) shall not be exercised except with the consent of the Public Prosecutor.
(4) Any person who obstructs the lawful exercise of the powers under subsection (1)(a) or who fails to comply with a request under subsections (1)(b) or (c) is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10,000, imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years or both.
(5) For the purposes of this section —
“decryption information” means information or technology that enables a person to readily retransform or unscramble encrypted data from its unreadable and incomprehensible format to its plain text version;
“encrypted data” means data which has been transformed or scrambled from its plain text version to an unreadable or incomprehensible format, regardless of the technique utilised for such transformation or scrambling and irrespective of the medium in which such data occurs or can be found for the purposes of protecting the content of such data;
“plain text version” means original data before it has been transformed or scrambled to an unreadable or incomprehensible format.
