In light of the pass­ing of the Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Bill, and Ben Bradshaw’s intent to push for gov­ern­ment power to force ISPs to block sites that are “likely” to be used for copy­right infringe­ment, the gov­ern­ment could in a few months’ time demand that ISPs block access to the likes of Wik­ileaks, The Pirate Bay and Rapid­share, all sites that have per­fectly legal uses. And I’m sure it can’t be long before the gov­ern­ment and the IWF together have a go at 4chan.

A few ques­tions for any inter­net lawyer-types out there:

1. Is it legal for a UK cit­i­zen to set up and main­tain a pri­vate, secure proxy server in another country?
2. If ISPs in the UK are instructed to block a site, is it legal or ille­gal for a UK cit­i­zen to access that site via an over­seas proxy?
3. If it is ille­gal, would the fact that the Briton runs and uses an over­seas proxy ‘rea­son­able cause’ for them to be inves­ti­gated in any way?
4. Would the server admin be legally obliged to keep logs for the proxy server in case such an inves­ti­ga­tion took place? (And does this depend on UK law or the law of the coun­try where the server is located?)
5. Can a court or police war­rant require the server admin to dis­close pass­words, encryp­tion keys or logs?

For ref­er­ence, I’m merely inter­ested in the answers to these ques­tions — I’m not nec­es­sar­ily con­sid­er­ing doing this, par­tic­u­larly not if it does turn out to be illegal.