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

arstechnica.co.uk

141–150 of 224 posts

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

#141
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Then he should be sentenced on the other evidence anyway. The failure to provide additional incriminating evidence could be used as an aggravating circumstance in the ruling, not as a separate crime with infinite detainment. (edit: replaced punishment with detainment, it's probably more neutral)

>Then he should be sentenced on the other evidence anyway

Yes, probably. I'm not really convinced that this isn't a violation of the fifth amendment, but I'm not a lawyer.

I suspect a jury would find him guilty anyway, and the fact that he refuses to decrypt his hard drive will likely not help his chances of convincing a jury that he's innocent.

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

#142
Seven months imprisoned without trial and counting. The technicalities about contempt and hard drives are a distraction; the real injustice is that, as a routine matter, the US government no longer gives trials without extensive pre-trial punishment.

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

#143
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Then he should be sentenced on the other evidence anyway. The failure to provide additional incriminating evidence could be used as an aggravating circumstance in the ruling, not as a separate crime with infinite detainment. (edit: replaced punishment with detainment, it's probably more neutral)

To be sentenced he would have to be charged, which he still isn't after 7 months...

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

#144
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

Mens rea used to be a key part of the law, but most new legislation is now strict liability.

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

#145

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.

Being a terrible person isn't against the law.

That's a good point :) But they are breaking laws in the process. God, the US government is even breaking the habeas corpus, the most important law of all, and nobody bats an eye.

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

#146
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

That is decided during a trial, and the decision is the outcome of the trial. The 6th amendment says "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial", the 7th amendment says "the right of trial by jury shall be preserved", and the 5th amendment says "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

I would interpret what is happening as a de-facto trial by judge, not peers, and thus a deprivation of liberty without due process of law, which must include a trial by peers.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ob…

>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 won't go into a long story but TLDR: I thought of myself as gay from puberty until a couple of years ago, I am now entirely bisexual. I don't know if the side of me that is attracted to women (I'm a guy) didn't exist a decade ago and my sexuality changed, or if it did exist and I just didn't know how to access it. But it certainly was a definitive change, previously there just wasn't any sexual feeling towards women in my head, ever. Despite this personal experience of sexuality being malleable in at least some form, I am still entirely confident that homosexuality (including the gay side of bisexuality) cannot, at least with our current scientific knowledge [0] be purposefully changed, and while I'm lucky enough not to have a personal anecdote about paedophilia, everything I've read up on the subject makes me believe the same goes for that.

[0] I say current scientific knowledge because who knows, maybe in X years/decades/centuries we'll fully understand the human brain and be able to modify it as precisely as you can modify a computer program. Setting aside the fact that this advance in science/technology would probably do far more to scare me in terms of how it could be used negatively vs. benefits such as removing the attraction to children from paedophiles, since we are no where near being able to do this we might as well keep the debate within the frame of what we actually can achieve in the foreseeable future.

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

It's known that there are paedophiles who no matter how hard they try, and get supported with therapy/etc., never find themselves attracted to adults. It's also known that there are paedophiles who find adults as attractive as children, or also attractive but more/less so than children. It's very hard for anyone to find out how many of each because paedophiles in general often prefer not to talk about their condition, even to medical professionals, and especially paedophiles who can be happy in adult relationships probably don't have much motivation to think about fixing their attraction to kids, since they can have a sexually-fulfilling life without them.

(Incidentally, my gay->bi sexuality is why I find the subject of paedophilia from a medical point of view fascinating, since it does seem that they are very similar things biologically, just not culturally. And no, I don't mean that because they are similar biologically that they should be similar culturally, I fully approve of saying homosexual relationships are good and adult/child sex relationships are bad.)

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. It's going to be on your mind constantly, surely.

I forgot my previous master password a month or two after I changed it. But the point is, after many months (eg 7) plus stress... many people would. Not everyone, but enough people that I don't think you can blanket say "you surely know it, hand it over" .

But not while you were in prison for not revealing it. Surely you'd be lying there at night and passwords would be all you could think about!

I keep going over where I went wrong in the exams I did a month ago and I've already had the results with all at 90%+ (yeah r/iamverysmart, I know)

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

#149
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Then he should be sentenced on the other evidence anyway. The failure to provide additional incriminating evidence could be used as an aggravating circumstance in the ruling, not as a separate crime with infinite detainment. (edit: replaced punishment with detainment, it's probably more neutral)

Why?

He's in possession of data deemed contraband, but apparently not linked to distribution. The police need to demonstrate possession and can do so when their search is complete.

The police did an investigation, obtained a warrant to search for the contraband and seized the hard drive. The defendant was ordered by the judge to decrypt the drive per the warrant, and refused to follow the order. He's in contempt of court, and he can get out of jail very easily -- by complying with the order.

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

#150
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really important to separate what someone thinks from what someone does. Having violent thoughts about people is very common, acting on them far less so. Someone who reads sick fiction and or looks at man made images is hardly harming anyone. I mean Vorarephilia is also a thing, and they can get off watching monster movies. But, there are very few actual cannibals out there. At best you could make a comment base…

> It's really important to separate what someone thinks from what someone does. I agree. That's why I said that people shouldn't be subjected to legal consequences for their thoughts. They should definitely not be morally absolved. > Having violent thoughts about people is very common, acting on them far less so. I would argue that a person that looks at paedophilic content is arguably being violent themselves. If yo…

I think it's important to recognize that the violence of gladiatorial combat was both legal and accepted in Roman culture, where as dog fighting isn't today. So, it's a little unfair to compare the two as if they're equivalent moral issues.

Of course that hinges on the fact that you accept that morality is a cultural construct and not absolute, which is a philosophical rabbit hole.

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