Lauri Love is fighting extradition to the United States, where he has been charged with breaking into Federal Reserve computers.
When British police arrested him in 2013, they seized encrypted computers and hard drives from his home in eastern England. Love was not charged in Britain, but the National Crime Agency sought to look through his computers before returning them.
Judge Nina Tempia ruled today that the agency as trying to "circumvent" the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which governs data privacy.