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Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

arstechnica.com

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Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#51

Post by throwanem »

pmoriarty wrote: post #38
coldtea wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection. Apparently all these amendments are open to all kinds of BS interpretation by courts, with loopholes like "you don't really expect privacy when you send snail mail", "some random gun freak is the same as a well armed militia", "corporations are people" and other such shenanigans.

Yes. That's the problem with the whole "this is a government of laws, not men" idea. The laws are always, always interpreted by men. They are enforced (or not) by men, at their discretion. It's much like the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Bible. It's there in black and white, and about as clear and simple as you can get. Yet plenty of Jews and Christians kill, and often do so eagerly and joyfully, even thin…

> It's much like the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Bible.

That's an erroneous translation, although I concede it is very common - but rarely if ever found within a Bible as you claim; both the KJV, which I prefer for the music of its language, and the NIV, which is much more common these days, instead correctly render it as "Thou shalt/you shall not murder". I can't speak for Torah, but I doubt it differs there.

The laws of men distinguish mere murder from killing in general, whether it be manslaughter, justifiable homicide, the conduct of warfare, or any of sundry other nuances. Why, then, should the law of God overlook the same distinction?

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#52

Post by chatterbeak »

onion2k wrote: post #42
BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I bet something led police to the hard drive in question in the first place. I wonder what "that" something was. In the U.S. you can be arrested and held for Reasonable Suspicion (or Probable Cause)

Whatever that was it clearly wasn't a criminal act or he'd have been charged for whatever it was. No further evidence has come to light after 16 months. That's far beyond "reasonable suspicion." If the police can't find evidence of a crime then this guy should be released, even if he's the reason they can't find it.

Which means he probably just downloaded something. Not even resent it out.

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#54

Post by throwanem »

coldtea wrote: post #26
planetjones wrote: post #15

As expected on HN I am not surprised to see people defending one's right to privacy and encryption. However, what's the solution then ? If all the "bad guys" who distribute illegal material do so encrypted volumes and refuse to give up the decryption key then what do we do ? It's a different world now; the police can't just take a drill out and open the safe.

> As expected on HN I am not surprised to see people defending one's right to privacy and encryption. However, what's the solution then ? If all the "bad guys" who distribute illegal material do so encrypted volumes and refuse to give up the decryption key then what do we do ? Why do we care for people distributing "illegal material" in the first place? And how come this "illegal material" doesn't ever get decrypted?…

> Why do we care for people distributing "illegal material" in the first place?

Is "distributing child pornography should not be a crime" really the hill you want to die on?

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#55

Post by ryan-c »

hdhzy wrote: post #45
spaceboy wrote: post #19

I thought the U.S had better key disclosure law[1] than other countries? Personally I would rather not self-incriminate myself by revealing a key, no matter how draconian and lengthy the sentencing was. Why, you ask? Well I consider all my own personal data likened to an extension of my own mind, and revealing a key is like slicing a thin part of my brain and attempting to pick its contents. Never a gentlemanly thing…

Very interesting. You don't have any need for persistent storage that exceeds the amount of information that can be remembered? (E.g. work artifacts, photos, passwords)

Remote storage is an option.

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#56

Post by throwanem »

sixQuarks wrote: post #18
ghurtado wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you do that with apostrophes? It makes your comment harder to read and doesn't add anything to it.

I think he's doing a southern accent

He's not. He might be trying, but if so then one has to question whether he's ever heard such an accent before.

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#58

Post by mildbow »

AckSyn wrote: post #17

He shouldn't have to decrypt his hard drives, and I support his decisions. The problems with this are numerous. First of all no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection. It's not a "right" for the police at all to have. Imprisoning someone for failure to disregard their constitutional rights is absurd. They have no evidence to hold him period.

What happens if he says he doesn't remember his password anymore?

ie: sits down, and seemingly tries to decrypt, but tries 1( or 50 times) and says "Oh shucks, I forgot"?

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#59

Post by Zombieball »

hdhzy wrote: post #45
spaceboy wrote: post #19

I thought the U.S had better key disclosure law[1] than other countries? Personally I would rather not self-incriminate myself by revealing a key, no matter how draconian and lengthy the sentencing was. Why, you ask? Well I consider all my own personal data likened to an extension of my own mind, and revealing a key is like slicing a thin part of my brain and attempting to pick its contents. Never a gentlemanly thing…

Very interesting. You don't have any need for persistent storage that exceeds the amount of information that can be remembered? (E.g. work artifacts, photos, passwords)

I don't want to assume on spaceboy's behalf, but I think all you need is to remember a master password to some sort of (online) password manager. From there you could use cloud services (eg. Dropbox) to access such documents.

Securing cloud hosted documents is obviously another discussion.

Re: Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives

#60

Post by terminado »

planetjones wrote: post #15

As expected on HN I am not surprised to see people defending one's right to privacy and encryption. However, what's the solution then ? If all the "bad guys" who distribute illegal material do so encrypted volumes and refuse to give up the decryption key then what do we do ? It's a different world now; the police can't just take a drill out and open the safe.

  "bad guys" who distribute illegal material
Honestly, I fail to see how or why this should be a problem, considering that no actual injuries are inflicted in the storage or possession of ones and zeroes.

Sure, that's an obtuse abstraction, but honestly, the buck stops there. At the end of the day, they have a circuit encoded in a given state. Magnetic media that can be arbitrarily degaussed.

It's not real.

Stop prosecuting it.

So, okay, you wanna argue. Let's get more specific.

Bad things people can "have" encoded on their digital storage media:

  1. stolen economic identifiers, such as credit 
     card numbers, and other mechanisms of fraud

  2. raster graphics and audio depicting nudity, 
     or evidence of events that have since transpired, 
     and prove culpability, via direct participation
     rather than simply the hoarding of collectible
     media files of whatever persuasion

  3. preferences and settings that can correlate 
     identity in other crimes, subscriber information
     such IMEI numbers and MAC addresses, and more

  4. classified information restricted from being
     leaked among state actors or the general public

  5. intellectual property that translates directly
     to business opportunities, insider trading,
     corporate espionage and other white collar 
     crimes

  6. copyrighted music and movies, oh noes!
Listen. If it can fit onto a credit card sized device, it's already too late. So nothing is being stopped by this sort of search.

The demand for relinquishing data, in any such situation is not unlike demanding all the things that people write on napkins and envelopes. Every scrap of paper in someone's pocket. Movie tickets, dry cleaning stubs, match books, and so on. Evidence of a crime? Possibly. Is everyone guilty until proven innocent? Gee, I don't know. Maybe we should just make everyone empty their pockets, and take pictures, just in case.

The fact of that matter is that these are essentially fishing expeditions for item #3.

It's not about "illegal data" at all, nothing is ever going to divert ones and zeroes as contraband. That simply doesn't happen, and doesn't work. It's about coming up with reasons to harass people, as vectors into prosecuting other crimes. Smoking out the paranoid, so that they crack under the pressure of getting sweated down in the hot seat.

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