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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

#121

Post by izzydata »

sametmax wrote: post #102
shortly wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's almost as though congressmen undergo some kind of selection process which attempts to find responsible, non-criminal members of society

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.

Being a terrible person isn't against the law.

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

#122

Post by oarsinsync »

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...

> if you encrypted the drive...

Yep, LUKS AES-256. I seem to recall someone demonstrating how to crack LUKS for fun, but I can't remember where I found that article, nor enough keywords to find it again. I might just be failing at Google, mind.

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

#123

Post by vinceguidry »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #106
vinceguidry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But he was saying that a being attracted to children is in itself not doing anything wrong. > The rhino equivilent would be if you wanted to use rhino horn but because you know it would be wrong to, you never do use it. I would argue that both of these things are wrong, though not as wrong as actually acting on the desires. I don't think there should be any legal consequences for the thoughts in your head, but the…

>even if you never act on them, then you are contributing to the denigration and subjugation of people of color. How so? I sometimes think racist (and sexist, and...) thoughts, but I know they are wrong, so I don't act on them. How am I contributing to the oppression of people of the ethnicity I have racist thoughts against? (Incidentally I think "people of color" is a pretty racist term, since it lumps all non-white…

> How so? I sometimes think racist (and sexist, and...) thoughts, but I know they are wrong, so I don't act on them. How am I contributing to the oppression of people of the ethnicity I have racist thoughts against?

So do I. Whenever I do, I work to try to understand where the thought came from, and how, if millions of people also had that same thought, what the consequences for minorities would be. I feel it's my obligation to understand the deeper psychological dynamics at play.

One's thoughts can't be controlled like one's hands can be, but that doesn't mean you can't work on them.

> (Incidentally I think "people of color" is a pretty racist term, since it lumps all non-white ethnicities together.)

More racist or less racist than the n-word? And why would lumping them together be racist? Terms by themselves are not racist, it's how you use them that matters.

> Well I do argue that. Just as homosexual rape is a crime (although often treated as a joke, c.f. prison rape), child rape is a crime. No matter the sexual orientation of the perpetrator.

Still waiting on the argument that we'll one day be as accepting of paedophilic sexuality as we are of homosexuality. Yes rape is a crime, but criminality is not the point of contention here, morals are. You and others seem to be arguing that morality is not useful as a social tool, that one should not feel bad about thoughts that one has that could exacerbate social problems. That we should draw the line at legal consequences for actions and treat the mind as sacrosanct. I very much disagree, racism has taught us that the law can itself be used to perpetuate evils.

> Since when can sexual orientation be changed? According to Wikipedia:

Thanks for the pointer to Wikipedia. (not being snide, I didn't do my research before opening up my mouth this time) It still looks like an active area of research and I'm hopeful that new therapies will emerge in the future.

I do think sexuality is at least somewhat malleable. I could never see myself becoming homosexual, but I can easily see how I could have been or could in the future become bisexual. I would be adding a new sexuality on top of my old one, figuring out a new way to have that experience.

I fail to believe paedophilia is the only mode of sexuality that's open to most or even a significant fraction of paedophiles.

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

#124

Post by danjoc »

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…

I have logs on my site showing many users who enter their passwords from memory regularly only to forget them months later after not using them.

Since the user hasn't been made to recall the password for months, it's plausible that he forgot it. I know I have personally forgotten passwords to accounts after months of disuse.

For instance, I had an old yahoo email account for many years. I didn't use it for about six months before they announced they would start re-purposing accounts that went unused for more than a year. I was unable to remember the password as well as the email account I had associated with that account for password reset. I ended up losing the account.

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

#125

Post by jack9 »

DanBC wrote: post #108
corin_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you are replying to wasn't saying that paedophiles who look at child porn aren't doing anything wrong. If he was, your rhino analogy would be a good one, and is the reason nearly everyone agrees that child porn should be illegal even if you are only viewing it. But he was saying that a being attracted to children is in itself not doing anything wrong. Plenty of paedophiles don't look at child porn, do anyt…

> Plenty of paedophiles Citation needed for that "plenty".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radN3-O91FA

The pigeon makes reference to a child gymnast, then there's the comment about hitting on a teen boy. Humans, generally, first learn about physical desire and sexuality in their adolescence (specifically during and following puberty). Sexual attraction for individuals with the characteristics we initially found attractive, never really leave our psyche. This puts most humans in the category of "paedophiles" in the sense that the attraction is there, albeit small. It's such a culturally understood concept that I'm surprised when it has to be explained.

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

#126

Post by silveira »

Apart from the obvious assault on the presumption of innocence here, is there a cryptographic file-system that stores a secret X and Y that given a key k_x would decrypt the content X and given k_y would decrypt the content Y without revealing to an attacker that there are multiple contents?

If yes, than one could store a real secret X and store a false secret Y, something that looks like a secret enough to be perceived as a secret. Then in case of torture, government persecution, etc, the victim could reveal only Y.

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

#127

Post by tptacek »

danjoc wrote: post #124
tptacek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have logs on my site showing many users who enter their passwords from memory regularly only to forget them months later after not using them. Since the user hasn't been made to recall the password for months, it's plausible that he forgot it. I know I have personally forgotten passwords to accounts after months of disuse. For instance, I had an old yahoo email account for many years. I didn't use it for about six…

My point is just this: the notion that you have or haven't forgotten your password is something that gets argued in court, just like everything else.

Tech people have a bad habit of pretending that the uncertainties that our work generates are the first uncertainties the court system has ever dealt with.

But most of criminal law turns in large part --- mens rea --- over a court making decisions about what's in the head of the accused!

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

#128

Post by akerro »

danjoc wrote: post #124
tptacek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have logs on my site showing many users who enter their passwords from memory regularly only to forget them months later after not using them. Since the user hasn't been made to recall the password for months, it's plausible that he forgot it. I know I have personally forgotten passwords to accounts after months of disuse. For instance, I had an old yahoo email account for many years. I didn't use it for about six…

> I have logs on my site showing many users who enter their passwords from memory regularly only to forget them months later after not using them.

I just had to reset passwords to gitlab root and root on docker image after other admin went on holiday for 3 weeks and forgot both...

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

#129

Post by akerro »

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!

> This is an important constitutional issue! The subject may be deplorable, but the root issue is not.

Guilty unless proven otherwise. That's what constitution says.

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

#130

Post by FLUX-YOU »

Programmatic wrote: post #87
sspiff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't stop the police from keeping him behind bars. "He went through the trouble of encrypting the drive and keeping it clean from prints, but we found it in his car. He's clearly a well organized, determined child porn consumer." Perhaps you have too much faith in law enforcement, or I have grown too cynical by what I perceive as the dawn of a new era of police states.

I am no fan of compelled decryption, and believe it is a violation of 5th amendment rights. That being said, I think the government's argument is stronger than usual having proven that he has accessed files regularly in the encrypted drive by showing logs of regular access to content with suspicious filenames. The police have a fundamentally different argument here than "it happened to be in his possession".

>That being said, I think the government's argument is stronger than usual having proven that he has accessed files regularly in the encrypted drive by showing logs of regular access to content with suspicious filenames.

I'm not sure why the case has to stop while the drive remains encrypted then. If they do get the drive decrypted and find nothing (perhaps he held no files and is protesting against forced decryption or they simply have the wrong drive) that will hurt the prosecution.

To me, the judge has basically said you can be locked up indefinitely for accessing suspicious file names. I'm not going to lie though, 20,000 entries would make me pretty fucking suspicious. I think almost all of us would immediately report that to the cops if we saw that in our networks without verifying what's inside.

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