I had the job once of going through the desk of a suicide at the office. He had laid out in detail the reason for his decision. - In simple terms he had an illness that would show up in his next life insurance medical - he was thus worth more dead than alive until then. Amongst his effects were passwords to various email and on-line accounts he had set up.
While financial assets are frozen when you die what happens to the digital one that you may have? For example, pictures, documents, intellectual assets and other stuff you might entrust to Microsoft's Cloud. When you die, or worse degenerate to dribbling, who can access them?
Who do you entrust with log-ons and identifiers? Will you have to wait to some future digital day of judgement when the stuff squirreled away in cyberspace by your nearest and dearest will be revealed?
Or perhaps, the agenda behind HMG's intention to access digital communications will allow it to trawl through the digital detritus and access password to secret accounts which it can raid with impunity. I recently brought a picture from a house clearance store on the back of which was a collection of codes giving access to the late lamented bank and email accounts - I bet the family's still looking for them.
