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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

#91

Post by Paul-ish »

ethbro wrote: post #77
beezle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few points - Devils advocate, travel back to the 1950s. The government searches your home and takes a letter or other document that is clearly written in code. Can/would they jail you as in the current case until you decode it? And without even charging you with any other crime first? At what point is "I used a one time pad" or "I don'remember" sufficient? I'm sure all of us have at least once (probably many) times…

Following from this, if perfect encryption leaves a ciphertext indistinguishable from random noise, then what proof does the court expect that a given decryption is the correct decryption? If he were to hand them an elaborately constructed fake file system, who would they be to say those weren't the encrypted contents? (For purposes of thought exercise, mooting arguments about headers / magic fingerprints / leaky met…

TrueCrypt let you encrypt your drive in a "plausibly deniable" way. One password would let you see the encrypted contents as would expect, but there was also a sort of duress password. If you mounted the drive with the second password, you would not see files added with the "true" password. You could even add files to this file system so it looked like a fully functioning file system.

How would the authorities know you have given them the correct password?

I'm not sure how effective it was, I remember there being some criticism of it.

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

#92

Post by bluejekyll »

briHass wrote: post #66
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.

The examples you chose are interesting, not only because they reveal an obvious bias. I think the correct interpretation of the various amendments is to view them in conjunction with the ninth. That is, the default should be to argue in good faith about what rights the amendment is attempting to preserve, not nit-picking them to find technicalities that the state can use to limit or restrict someone's rights. Your hi…

> it's clear from reading other writings by the Founding Fathers that the 2nd Amendment was written to allow an individual to own firearms.

This is irrelevant, it matters what made it into the contract, i.e. Constitution.

The second amendment in full is: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

A well regulated militia is completely dropped from all modern court rulings. Guns can and should be regulated.

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

#93

Post by bluejekyll »

briHass wrote: post #66
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.

The examples you chose are interesting, not only because they reveal an obvious bias. I think the correct interpretation of the various amendments is to view them in conjunction with the ninth. That is, the default should be to argue in good faith about what rights the amendment is attempting to preserve, not nit-picking them to find technicalities that the state can use to limit or restrict someone's rights. Your hi…

> it's clear from reading other writings by the Founding Fathers that the 2nd Amendment was written to allow an individual to own firearms.

This is irrelevant, it matters what made it into the contract, i.e. Constitution.

The second amendment in full is: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

A well regulated militia is completely dropped from all modern court rulings. Guns can and should be regulated.

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

#94

Post by tansey »

cookiecaper wrote: post #84
mnm1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is, one doesn't have to cooperate with a search warrant. The idea of encryption being a lock like on a locked door is ludicrous and downright dangerous. Using a fantasy metaphor in place of actual reality is incredibly misleading and outright manipulative. The difference between a lock and encryption is that all locks in the physical world can be broken by outside parties. If someone doesn't want to op…

It's not fantasy. Fantasy is a world where you can tell the police "I know how to open that thing that you have a lawful order to investigate, and you don't, so any crime of which I'm suspected is now uninvestigatable, nanny nanny boo boo". The analog with other difficult locks is just fine; the fact that these locks are so good that they are unbreakable doesn't really change anything about the accused's obligation t…

Except it seems there is good case law to show that in fact suspected cannot be forced to open a combination lock, as it falls under fifth amendment protection. They can, however, be compelled to provide a key if it is a key-based lock. This applies similarly to biometric-based locks.

It's hard to believe that an encryption key is any different than a combination lock in this "encryption is like a safe" metaphor.

Relevant cases:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/425/391/case.htm...

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/487/201/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/27/case.html

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

#95

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

Can he appeal this judge's decision to imprison him? Or is he trapped given the lack of a conviction?

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

#96

Post by braveo »

throwanem wrote: post #51
pmoriarty wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

ooooh, I guess God was ok with killing people as long as it was mass killings so you could call it something besides murder.

Because apparently the exact name somehow makes the act better (or worse?) in God's eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc&t=0m25s

We should go tell Feynman he's nuts...

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

#97

Post by braveo »

coldtea wrote: post #90
spacemanmatt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, that doesn't stop Christians from misinterpreting the Muslim concept of jihad

That's because militant muslims have been using it for millennia for actual attacks and war, not just spiritual ones.

so exactly like Christians.

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

#98

Post by Paul-ish »

terminado wrote: post #60
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 prosec…

If it is all 1s and 0s, I am curious how you feel about the NSA having a good deal of your personal information stored on their drives?

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

#99

Post by godelski »

bluejekyll wrote: post #78
godelski wrote: post #71

From what I understand our legal system was designed to fail "open". Or rather that we are willing to let a guilty person go free rather than an innocent person go to jail. I know everyone wants to have a perfect justice system but we have to ALSO decide which direction we would like it to fail until that time comes (never). In essence cases like this are more about this question. When the system fails, which directi…

You have an interesting point. I think the struggle that I see as a layperson, is that the system fails hard when it fails. Let me ask a question, is jail the appropriate sentence for a contempt of court charge? This is not the first time, reporters have been jailed for many months bc of contempt of court charges. Is this the appropriate sentence for the crime of not complying with a court order? I don't know what th…

Well I would consider myself a layperson and welcome anyone with actual experience to help educate me on the subject matter. I'm saying this because I'm just offering my own opinions.

In reference to your question I'll pose another question: "Should this be counted as being in contempt of court?"

As to the innocent people going to jail because of bad defense, I think this is why we need to fail in the direction of the innocent. I'd personally rather guilty men go free than innocent men be imprisoned. I think if we're going to figure out the limitations of the 5th Amendment in the digital age we need to decide which direction the system is going to fail. I think many on HN will agree with me, but I'd be interested to know what the country as a whole believes (if anyone has that info).

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

#100

Post by mirimir »

externalreality wrote: post #31

Not sure what the man's crime is here. Does he even remember his keys after sixteen months in the slammer? I don't even remember my Gmail password after 16 days of vacation. Basically, like the article says, it like not opening a safe for an inquisitor: you are damned if you do, you are damned if you don't. Encryption is nothing new people, you are just putting your data in a safe. We have a tendency to misconstrue,…

This was pretty much inevitable :(

> Encryption is nothing new people, you are just putting your data in a safe.

Well, you could also be held indefinitely for refusing to provide the combination for a safe. If there were safes that could keep them out indefinitely, anyway.

I suspect that they nailed him using ICAC's Black Ice app. It's a hacked version of the Freenet client that logs peer IPs, and tracks hashes that they handle. So his mistake was assuming that deniability was adequate, and failing to hit Freenet via Tor.

Edit: 2016-05-26 - Police department's tracking efforts based on false statistics: https://freenetproject.org/news.html#20160526-htl18attack

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