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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

#111

Post by johnward »

falcolas wrote: post #72
avar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming up with real fake evidence is a lot harder than just coming up with a random blob that the cops think is evidence the suspect is hiding. E.g. are you really able to carefully craft a filesystem image that you're sure has no metadata that proves the innocence of the suspect?

Eh, not so hard. Proxy their internet for a browsing session, and you put thumbnails of images in their cache. If they have any encrypted drive, or any encrypted blobs (could push those into their cache as well), and they're not going to have a great day. Cached images has been enough to put away more than a few folks - there was also recently a story about using exactly that tactic against a suspected spy.

This also tends to require that you look at CP in some way. I'll pass on that...

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

#113

Post by Shivetya »

sametmax wrote: post #70
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.…

This would work for your average Joe, but not for Congressmen. Unless somebody more powerful than them want them gone, they will have the resources to just deflect the problem. Honestly, how many politicians have you seen going to jail ? Does it match the global % of population in jail ?

leak it to the press. you cannot deflect this type of accusation, at least not easily.

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

#114

Post by jerf »

brianbarker wrote: post #105
sametmax wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a good hypothesis if politicians wouldn't be constantly being caught lying, cheating and breaking promises, starting wars or saving bankrupt industries with people's money. But since they do that, with little consequences, the theory that they are actually good at getting what they want without paying the cost we would pay for something far smaller seems more likely.

Think you missed the sarcasm.

sametmax disagreed with the sarcasm.

So do I. There is a selection process. It is not selecting for non-criminality. It isn't selecting for criminality necessarily either, but it certainly is not strongly selecting against, in the sense intended.

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

#115

Post by tptacek »

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.…

That's not what happened here. Read the DOJ's filing.

* The accused admitted to knowing the password and refused to provide it, on the auspices of not wanting investigators snooping through his files. Only later did they claim to have "forgotten" it.

* Prosecutors entered into evidence multiple factual claims establishing that the accused knew the password; for instance: years of eyewitness testimony demonstrating the accused entering the password from memory.

Whenever you get to an alarming conclusion like "this means forgetting the password to your laptop means life in prison", chances are, you've missed relevant details.

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

#116

Post by sametmax »

Shivetya wrote: post #113
sametmax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would work for your average Joe, but not for Congressmen. Unless somebody more powerful than them want them gone, they will have the resources to just deflect the problem. Honestly, how many politicians have you seen going to jail ? Does it match the global % of population in jail ?

leak it to the press. you cannot deflect this type of accusation, at least not easily.

More likely yes. If you manage to get it to the right people, and not get it confiscated, and get it on display, then yes. It's a lot of if, but the odds are definitly better.

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

#117

Post by besselheim »

mpnordland wrote: post #90
oarsinsync wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile a laptop I didn't access for 3 months has a boot password (that I must not have needed for >3 months ontop of that) is now locked away and without any ability for me to login to. And that was without going to prison

Open it up and remove the CMOS battery for a while then replace it. That will remove a BIOS password. OTOH, if you encrypted the drive...

Unfortunately this won't work on most modern systems where the password hash is held in nonvolatile memory, rather than a battery-backed volatile store.

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

#118

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

mmf wrote: post #32

This effectively makes forgetting one's password a crime with a lifetime jail sentence... Not bad, not bad

No it doesn't. They found evidence on his computer that strongly suggests there is child porn on the encrypted drive, there are witnesses that claim "John Doe" showed them child porn and he admitted to knowing the password initially, it was only later he claimed he forgot.

Prosecutors need sufficient evidence to obtain from a judge warrants, and in this case a decryption order, before they can hold you in contempt of court.

Of course, the evidence required for a warrant is still typically less than what is necessary to convict. The issue here is something to do with fifth amendment rights, which honestly I don't know a lot about because I'm Australian.

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

#119

Post by cpncrunch »

tptacek wrote: post #115
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.…

That's not what happened here. Read the DOJ's filing. * The accused admitted to knowing the password and refused to provide it, on the auspices of not wanting investigators snooping through his files. Only later did they claim to have "forgotten" it. * Prosecutors entered into evidence multiple factual claims establishing that the accused knew the password; for instance: years of eyewitness testimony demonstrating th…

Also, he showed his own family child porn, and they have actually found searches for child porn in a VM on the computer.

>Whenever you get to an alarming conclusion like "this means forgetting the password to your laptop means life in prison", chances are, you've missed relevant details.

Unfortunately responses like the parent comment are predictable on HN. There is the constant narrative that the government is out to get us all. Yet the example given is someone who already has a lot of evidence of child porn, and a frickin police officer no less.

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

#120

Post by StavrosK »

CPLX wrote: post #60
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.…

Or you could just put actual kiddie porn on the planted hard drives and save yourself this entire legal conundrum.

Why go through the trouble to find kiddie porn when you can just cat /dev/urandom?
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