Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 504 posts

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

#171

Post by cortic »

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…

I've always been confused by this proposition; If there is an innocent person convicted of a crime, then there also has to be a guilty person that has gone free.. so it seems the ultimatum has to be

"are we are willing to let a guilty person go free rather than let a guilty person go free and an innocent person go to jail."

Which has a much more obvious answer..

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

#172

Post by battlebot »

droithomme wrote: post #37
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.

"no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection" I like that idea. However, the 5th amendment's protection is something different: "No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Consider the case of someone running a drug lab or counterfeiting press in their residence. Police show up with a warrant based on probable cause to search the resid…

Supplying passwords is being a witness against yourself.

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

#173

Post by vorticalbox »

throwanem wrote: post #54
coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I can see the point I think. Shouldn't time be sound going after the people making the material?

You could argue that looking at CP is no different then looking at a murder photo.

Both are a picture of a crime you didn't commit.

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

#174

Post by throwanem »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #140
throwanem wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Images and videos of child sexual abuse aren't just "information about [...] crime"; their creation, possession, and distribution are all actions which themselves qualify as criminal under modern American jurisprudence. This is generally justified on the grounds of ongoing harm to the victims, which, while not unreasonable, I think might be a weaker argument than that distribution in particular may make and expand a…

>these are all currently crimes in their own right, so they fall under your first category, rather than your second, so I'm not quite clear what sort of point you're making here. I was answering the question below: >Your proposal ignores it - legalizes its distribution, in fact. Why? If, in response to my answer, you conclude that committing a crime is an action tantamount to sharing, viewing, or possessing informati…

Well, what makes a crime is a law stating that such-and-so action is a crime, so I suppose I'd say that, since a legislative body classifies an action as a crime, it is pretty much by definition exactly that. We're discussing whether this specific action should be a crime, which is a separate conversation altogether, and one I think best carried out without reference to some sort of nebulous Platonic ideal of crime, to which you seem implicitly to appeal.

You're also underplaying your hand here somewhat, I think - either that, or you find your own arguments unconvincing. You've already conceded, in your concept of "indirect harm" (still harm, but less so?) and the weaksauce relative-injury argument which constitutes your last paragraph, that the distribution of child pornography does inflict ongoing harm on those abused in order to produce it - but you don't think that that harm suffices to justify the injury inflicted upon those who engage in such distribution, but not such production, in the course of being convicted of and punished for that crime. That the former are innocent, and the latter are not, seems not to move you; your concern appears instead to be purely utilitarian.

I don't suppose it would be surprising if you were indeed unconvinced of this - it strikes me as a very difficult position to defend! But I'd be interested to see whether and how you do so, nonetheless. Or perhaps I've misgathered your point?

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

#175

Post by throwanem »

coldtea wrote: post #160
throwanem wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that's old testament morals that have been deprecated by Christ. In general, you're not wrong. In this case, though, you are. Matthew 19:16-19 [1]: > 16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? 17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandme…

> Had Christ intended to modify the commandment to "thou shalt not kill", I expect He would have. Well, he also gave additional commands and advice of his own to that very effect.

I'm afraid I am not familiar with them, but I've never pretended to be other than a rather poor Christian. Perhaps you will do me the kindness of citing them, so that I may improve my ability to live up to my faith.

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

#176

Post by jmcdiesel »

throwanem wrote: post #54
coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If you wont stand up for the rights of even the most vile of humans, you deserve none.

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

#177

Post by literallycancer »

danbruc wrote: post #136
skrause wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In Germany you never have to actively help the police even if they come with a warrant. They can't even compel you to open the door of the house or a physical safe. They will of course come in anyway and send you the bill for the locksmith, but it's your perfect right to jus…

You made me realize that I was probably wrong here, i.e. you do not have to allow the the police to enter your home acting against your own best interest, and as far as I can tell this also applies to the USA. This raises the question if there is any other situation where you have to act against your own best interest, otherwise my initial argument falls apart and it seems unreasonable to try to force someone to decr…

I'd guess no one can fault you for assuming it's a home invasion in case the LE fail to identify themselves.

The downside is that you'll probably end up dead, since the police (in the US especially) have a record of killing even people who don't shoot at them.

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

#178

Post by throwanem »

coldtea wrote: post #146
throwanem wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure? There's a strong neurocognitive argument to be made that reinforcing the tendency, by repeatedly acting on it with pornography to the end of, among other things, rather strongly triggering the dopamine reward system, will tend to strengthen the interest by reinforcing the circuits which interact with it, and vice versa.

I don't think anyone would argue this "cures" the tendency - certainly I will not! But, at the very least, I can't see how it could do other than make a pedophile less likely to graduate to child molesting, to have built a strong habit of not acting on the urge - and, again, vice versa.

There are also other forms of harm than the physical. I am not myself moved to dismay by the possibility of images of my own abuse circulating on the Internet, although that may have more than anything to do with the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no such images were made, and in any case said abuse occurred long before the dawn of the era in which such distribution became trivially simple. But I hardly imagine it is my place to tell someone who does find such a possibility - or a certainty - dismaying, that she is wrong to feel that way, or that she should not consider herself to be harmed thereby. Nor do I believe it is anyone else's place to do so.

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

#179

Post by mindslight »

slantaclaus wrote: post #162
mirimir wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for the background, but somebody has to say it: his failure was looking at child pornography.

This is not an activity I want to engage in or even associate with people who do, but a nonviolent private activity is not a reason to violently persecute someone, especially to this degree.

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

#180

Post by oconnor663 »

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…

You could perfectly encrypt a hard drive such that it could decrypt to anything, but the "key" (a one-time pad) would be as big as the drive itself. All real-world crypto software uses short keys, which are just big enough that it's impossible to brute-force guess them. In general for a given encrypted drive, there is probably no other key besides the real one that would produce meaningful looking output, because the space of all possible outputs is so much larger than the space of all possible keys.
Post reply on HN