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Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#41

Post by s_q_b »

INTPenis wrote: post #8
coreyp_1 wrote: post #2

This is an important constitutional issue! The subject may be deplorable, but the root issue is not. If it is a "foregone conclusion", then they should have no problem convicting the guy without forcing him to testify against himself. If it is not a "foregone conclusion", then they have been lying and are illegally (unconstitutionally) depriving him of his freedom for months, without even charging him with a crime!

>Investigators say they know child porn is on the drives. His sister saw some of it and the suspect is said to have shown his family an illicit video, too. So that's their basis for this "foregone conclusion" apparently. That at one point in time it was witnessed. That is very dangerous logic. The sadest thing in this is that it took child pornography to make the headlines, not political activism or journalism but th…

It's also totally insignificant. He could have broadcast it all over Times Square. That in no way waives his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.

Also, every prosecutor in history has thought their entire case in chief was a "foregone conclusion." That's totally irrelevant.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#42

Post by jmnicolas »

I'm quite surprised that they can break Freenet but can't break FileVault (I remember reading an article about a Filevault master password that is short and brute-forceable but can't find it atm). I would have bet the other way around.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#43

Post by unlinker »

the-dude wrote: post #18
INTPenis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Investigators say they know child porn is on the drives. His sister saw some of it and the suspect is said to have shown his family an illicit video, too. So that's their basis for this "foregone conclusion" apparently. That at one point in time it was witnessed. That is very dangerous logic. The sadest thing in this is that it took child pornography to make the headlines, not political activism or journalism but th…

Pedophilia is the new red scare

Pedophilia is, sadly, far from being just a scare.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#45

Post by virmundi »

The best part of this whole story is the unintended consequence of attack. Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops. Say you saw him looking at what could be kiddie porn. The guy doesn't know the password. Life in prison. No excuse.

This applies not merely to Bob in Accounting that's a dick, but to everyone: Congress! Start sniping political enemies. A jump drive here. A hard drive there. Soon, you could have 6 or so Congressional individuals going to jail for a child porn ring. The Feds would think it's a great prisoner dilemma. No one's turning on each other. Again, anonymous tip claiming that the right honorable Representative Duggans was watching kiddie porn late at night in his office. The same tipster told the police that while he was jacking it he thanked Representative O'Connel for the present over the phone (make sure to wait for an actual call so their is evidence).

Sure eventually all of this will die down. Until then, for $100 bucks and a few hours you can sit back, eat some popcorn and watch the system implode. Do it right and you'll get years of fun for everyone.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#47

Post by lossolo »

chefkoch wrote: post #33
lossolo wrote: post #31

"USA land of the free..." Really what happened with your country ? In EU you can't imprison someone for not decrypting hard drive if he says it can incriminate him, everyone understand this but not the biggest democracy in the world?

The whole EU? No, a small island has some lunitic laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...

Not all EU, but countries like Poland, Netherlands etc. can't make you decrypt if you are suspect.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#48

Post by lossolo »

s_q_b wrote: post #36
lossolo wrote: post #31

"USA land of the free..." Really what happened with your country ? In EU you can't imprison someone for not decrypting hard drive if he says it can incriminate him, everyone understand this but not the biggest democracy in the world?

Neither British common law or Continental law systems have any mechanism to challenge this type or behavior. At least in the US, there's an absolute right against self-incrimination, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. The higher courts have been pretty clear, going all the way back to combination locks, that coercing a password would constitute requiring a defendant to incriminate him or herself. The actions of the j…

I was referring to other countries in EU like NL or PL etc.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#49

Post by Kristine1975 »

virmundi wrote: post #45

The best part of this whole story is the unintended consequence of attack. Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops. Say you saw him looking at what could be kiddie porn. The guy doesn't know the password. Life in prison. No excuse. This applies not merely to Bob in Accounting that's a dick, but to everyone: Congress! Start sniping political enemies. A jump drive here.…

A zip drive with no fingerprints of the person it supposedly belongs to? Not very convincing.

Also in this case the prosecution apparently has a bit more information that just "he did it":

A subsequent forensic exam of his Mac Pro computer revealed that Doe had installed a virtual machine ... the examiner found one image of what appeared to be a 14-year-old child wearing a bathing suit and posed in a sexually suggestive position. There were also log files that indicated that Doe had visited groups titled: “toddler_cp,” “lolicam,” “hussy,” “child models – girls,” “pedomom,” “tor- childporn,” and “pthc,” terms that are commonly used in child exploitation.

... The exam showed that Doe accessed or attempted to access more than 20,000 files with file names consistent with obvious child pornography... and that he used the external hard drives seized by Delaware County detectives to access and store the images.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#50

Post by Hondor »

unlinker wrote: post #43
the-dude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedophilia is the new red scare

Pedophilia is, sadly, far from being just a scare.

Pedophilia is a sexuality. Some people are just that way inclined. Don't confuse child abuse with sexuality the way people used to do about gays. That's extremely harmful to actual pedophiles who may have done nothing wrong. It's not even classified as a disease unless it causes problems for the person afflicted with it.
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