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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

#151

Post by vinceguidry »

Retric wrote: post #109
vinceguidry wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If someone watches 'gladiator' the movie then real people are not actually being harmed. IMO, it's harder to suggest that watching fake content is also wrong. Now, extend that to fringe Anime and there is now sick content that's was not harmful to create. I don't see how your suggesting there is an actual difference between movie types assuming all actors are adults and blood was faked etc.

The difference is of degree and not kind. When you add reality to content it makes it both morally and psychologically worse. In between the real and the completely fake is the very convincing. Snuff films fill this niche. In between snuff films and Gladiator would be your fringe anime.

Fake content isolates negative aspects of experience and presents it in a comforting bubble where you don't have to contemplate all of the nasty context surrounding the portrayal if it were real. As content acquires more reality that bubble is progressively burst.

I've watched lots of questionable content over the years, but the things I've seen that have left the nastiest impressions were always real or based on the real. The audio of the Jonestown massacre was among the most horrifying things I've ever came across.

If you're watching real content of real kids really getting abused, that's probably one of the worst things you could ever do short of actually doing what was in the video. But the difference between enjoying that and the less graphic is one of degree and not kind.

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

#152

Post by bobwaycott »

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…

> 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.

Was OP's comment edited after you replied? I read nothing implying the OP concludes forgetting one's password means life in prison. I read a seemingly tongue-in-cheek, obviously hyperbolic bit of nonsense about using this as a vector for watching the world burn because people couldn't prove otherwise. Sure, OP is stretching for effect, but it doesn't seem OP missed relevant details.

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

#153

Post by maxerickson »

Veratyr wrote: post #131
silveira wrote: post #126

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 percei…

Yes, this was a feature of Truecrypt, though I'm not familiar with the underlying crypto.

It just uses data layout. Normal volumes have some wasted space filled with random data. Volumes with hidden volumes inside them fill that space with a second header. If the outer volume is naively mounted, writes can destroy the data stored in the inner volume.

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

#154

Post by mordocai »

tptacek wrote: post #53
throwaway7767 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, how can we differentiate between a suspect who's refusing to unlock something, and a suspect who has genuinely forgotten his password? I know for myself, even with passwords I use multiple times a day from memory, it only takes a couple of months of not using them before I cannot recall them again. This guy has been locked up for 7 months. See also the numerous people who stored bitcoin in brain wallet…

There is no foolproof way, but uncertainty is something the law has dealt with for centuries, and isn't unique to this situation. The short answer is: it gets argued in court like everything else. If cryptography introduces too many new cases of contempt, we'll need to rework the contempt system, and, in particular, introduce juries to the process (perhaps for contempt sentences exceeding a certain number of weeks).

He isn't getting the chance to argue it in court, from what i've seen.

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

#155

Post by PeterisP »

tptacek wrote: post #37
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!

It is not in fact settled law that unlocking an encrypted drive is testimonial. It's also worth remembering that the primary motivation for 5A is to prevent false, coerced testimony and torture; when SCOTUS eventually deals with this, they could find that no protected substantive rights are threatened by demands to unlock encrypted media. We're unlikely to get it both ways: both a right to strong encryption without g…

Defying court demands should always be an option - such actions can be a crime, and it can be adequately punished, but it certainly is an option that can happen, and if a person does defy court demands, then consequences should require the following:

1) There is a proper verdict that the person has actually defied the court (as opposed to forgotten the password or the encrypted data not being his in the first place) - this has not happened in this situation, we have only claims by the prosecution not verified by the court;

2) the guilty person receives an appropriate punishment for this crime - and indefinite imprisonment (e.g. life sentence if the person doesn't yield) is not valid even if the person is guilty of everything claimed.

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

#156

Post by 15155 »

tetrep wrote: post #20

I find this interesting, as I would almost certainly have forgotten my password by now, it only takes me 4-6 months of never using a password to forget it, so I wonder what happens if you can't decrypt your drives, due to honest forgetting from sitting in jail refusing to, or from some sort of deadman's switch or similar that drops keys after N days.

> or similar that drops keys after N days

This cannot exist on "dumb" hardware.

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

#158

Post by mordocai »

Spooky23 wrote: post #149
tremon wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Unless, of course, he actually has forgotten the password after 7 months+ of not using it.

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

#159

Post by Programmatic »

vinceguidry wrote: post #59
Hondor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim they're doing nothing wrong. Every year, rhinos in Africa are threatened by poachers in Africa who want their horns for the black market in China. Every person who buys rhino horn in Africa, every person who is in a position to fight the unnecessary consumption of endangered animals and doesn't, is complicit in the destruction of their species. You don't get a pass because you aren't t…

1) Are you advancing the argument that abuse of children is an economic response to demand, and not that the perpetrator wanted to do it in the first place? 2) How does this argument explain the illegality of drawings depicting underage sex with none of the depictions being based on a real-life individual?

Somewhat unrelated (I'm not trying to set up a straw man here), I believe that it's more consistent to believe that society finds paedophilia to be disgusting and that due to their disgust that paedophiles should be jailed. I believe that this is due to the conflation of thoughts with actions, and the belief that someone with those thoughts will always be prone to action. It's a somewhat risky viewpoint to espouse that "paedophilia in and of itself should not be illegal, abuse of a victim should" given the fervor of the people against paedophilia, but I think it is more congruent with a living in a free society. It's a shame that anyone suggesting nuance there is usually then associated with paedophiles in the mind of the person hearing the argument.

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

#160

Post by andrewla »

nluux wrote: post #101

Let's not use euphemisms like "kiddie porn" and realize the danger that child pornography feeds the child slavery industry. The core issue is that the suspect is potentially hiding his network, clients or victims' identities. Until he surrenders his hard drives, the truth may never come out.

If there is useful information for law enforcement unrelated to the case at hand, it seems that we have plenty of already-existing mechanisms. They could offer him immunity in exchange for unlocking the drive, thus completely skirting the fifth amendment issue, or they could convict him based on other evidence, and offer favorable sentencing in exchange for unlocking the drive.

The fact that he is being compelled to offer evidence against himself seems like the dubious part of this whole proceeding.

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