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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

#141

Post by cookiecaper »

kelnos wrote: post #122
cookiecaper wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Because he's violating a lawful order. If the accused wants to challenge the legality of that order, he can file a lawsuit to do so (and from the article, it sounds like he has). But unless the judge supervising that lawsuit issues a stay on the order in question, the accused is still obliged to comply and can be detained based on his/her refusal to do so. So here's the thing about that. If he's filed an appeal on…

>And that's the problem with contempt-of-court. If you can be held indefinitely without being charged with anything, that's a corruption of the legal process. Someone being held in that manner for long enough will likely do anything to get out of that situation, even confess to a crime that carries a sentence of a defined length, because knowing you'll be out in 10 years (or whatever) might be better than being held indefinitely.

Yeah, as I said in my original post, I agree with this. There needs to be a limit on contempt-of-court.

The flip side, however, is that someone who does something that would carry a large prison sentence would be incentivized to violate orders, spend one year waiting out contempt charges, get charged with obstruction and sentenced to 3-5 years, making a total of 4-6 years jail time. That could be a big win for the criminal if complying with the government's order would allow them to prove a crime that carries a much stiffer sentence.

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

#142

Post by cookiecaper »

kakarot wrote: post #112
tansey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Rel…

Gosh, compelled is such a nice euphemism for "psychologically and physically brutalized until complicit". I don't think it is right to "compel" you to produce anything, key nor combination.

I mean, yes, the thing that ultimately underpins all authority is the ability to exert physical force to see it honored.

I'm not clear on what you're suggesting.

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

#143

Post by rfrey »

jakeogh wrote: post #65
Elijen wrote: post #53

"I forgot the password" Problem solved.

Surprisingly easy to do. I have a LUKS laptop drive that I doubt I will ever get back into. Went on vacation and that was it. All I could remember is it's strong, random, >15chars and started with a S.

Don't take it across a border.

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

#144

Post by coldtea »

braveo wrote: post #137
coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he cares more about the general case and the discussion here, than about the particular article?

The context of the discussion is the topic of the article, whether or not he's interested in the general discussion, he needs to be willing to read a fucking article. Or are we to believe this person is somehow well informed when they can't be bothered to read a short, simple article?

We are just to be courteous and not rude.

You'd be surprised how many people skim through or just read the title of the article, and then participate on the discussion.

But that's orthogonal to them giving valuable comments and insights in the discussion, since, as you'll surely have noticed, the context of the discussion is almost never the article -- it's only used as a starting point, and discussion them jumps to several different tangents.

Like, you know, any actual human discussion that's not finely constrained and regulated by some panel.

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

#145

Post by danbruc »

parhurs wrote: post #27
danbruc wrote: post #13

This is probably a lot less black and white then it might seem at first. If there is sufficient evidence, one can obtain a search warrant and this forces you to possibly act against your own best interest by allowing the police to search your home. On the other hand you can usually not be forced to testify against yourself. So this becomes the question where decrypting a hard drive lies on this spectrum. Is it more l…

Obviously the former. The home search is analoguous with handing the hard drive to the police (they're free to search it). Giving the key is analogous to voluntarily digging up a secret stash in your back yard. And I disagree with it not being black and white, if you didn't already notice that. Rights are rights.

As I just wrote in other replies, I was probably wrong with regard to search warrants. Therefore my argument that sometimes you already have to act against your best interests falls apart unless someone can point at a better example than a search warrant.

Rights are rights.

But we make up those rights. If there is a right to not to incriminate oneself that applies in all circumstances, then I am of course with you, you should not be forced to decrypt the hard drive.

My point was that I am not sure if such a right applying in all circumstances exists and I thought the search warrant scenario proved that to not be the case but that turned out to be wrong.

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

#146

Post by coldtea »

throwanem wrote: post #106
coldtea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the "abolish BS laws" hill. How about creating child pornography being a crime? That's what's actually hurtful.

Pretty sure that already is a crime. But I gather there's a large quantity of the stuff that exists already. Your proposal ignores it - legalizes its distribution, in fact. Why?

Why not? It doesn't hurt anybody physically anymore, and if it keeps those people of the streets on on their screens, even better. It's not like they're gonna be cured of their tendencies if they don't have access to such material.

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

#147

Post by Jillboy »

jwatte wrote: post #118

"My hard drive contains only the finest random bytes. There is nothing to decrypt. Please prosecute me for lying if you can prove otherwise."

I'm assuming when they boot up (their copy of) the hard drive, it prompts for a passphrase, and if you type an incorrect one it'll tell that it's incorrect (as opposed to simply outputting garbage). That's the most common case anyway.

If that's the case, and it likely is, then that's pretty concrete proof that there IS something to decrypt.

edit: Actually, the article says that the hard drive was encrypt with Apple's FireVault, so there you go.

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

#148

Post by spaceboy »

kybernetikos wrote: post #82
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…

If you need to cross a border, you will find that the border agents think they have the right to compel you to boot your laptop, including entering any secret or attaching any device required to do so. I doubt that they could ultimately stop you returning to your own country if you held out, but they could stop you leaving, and they could certainly make your life pretty miserable. In my opinion you'd be much better w…

There's nothing about TailsOS that could arouse suspicion if there's nothing persistent on it that could arouse suspicion, or draw more attention to you. TailsOS is strictly a utility like a wrench or a screwdriver. Providing you exit TailsOS properly and watch the screen as it's wiping the memory to ensure it has infact wiped. TailsOS can prove to be an innocuous O.S after you unload it from memory. They might ask questions, but they have nothing on you.

Bringing a Windows OS is stupid as Windows doesn't clean up properly after shutting down and leaves a forensic footprint which is difficult to cleanup unless you use something like Bleachbit[1] or CCleaner after using Windows. You typically want to offload cleaning up to the O.S level and avoid using such tools such as CCLeaner in the first place (Keep in mind, since this is Windows, there are issues with free space on the drive that leave deleted files remaining on the hard-disk, even after explicitly stating they should be deleted).

With TailsOS, In other words, you can browse freely and with peace of mind that you won't leave a forensic footprint behind, giving you an upper-hand over other passengers who have to self-censor their browsing for fear of scrutiny at a later date from border officers.

[1] https://www.bleachbit.org

[2] https://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER

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

#149

Post by vorticalbox »

al_chemist wrote: post #139
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)

Article mentions Freenet traffic detected at his computer. AFAIR Freenet is like BitTorrent, except nobody knows what you are downloading.

Doesn't mean it was illegal.

Protecting ones privacy and data is not illegal and is no cause for suspicion. Just because they detected freenet or even tor that wouldn't be enough for a warrant.

I wonder what evidence they did have for that warrentbin the first place.

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

#150

Post by donovanm »

curun1r wrote: post #86
Elijen wrote: post #53

"I forgot the password" Problem solved.

That was the answer the man in the case gave. The judge believes he's lying. His 16 months of imprisonment show that his problem is far from solved. The better answer is to have a second encrypted volume on the disk. Perhaps put a few pirated movies on it or some personal documents as a justification for why it's encrypted. That way, when they ask you to enter your password, you enter that one and unlock the volume t…

Seems a bit harsh to be detained for 16 months because a judge thinks you're lying.
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