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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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

beezle wrote: post #73
droithomme wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by dwaltrip »

I have a related, seemingly analogous situation that I'm curious about.

If a suspect might have physically buried important evidence hundreds of miles of way in the middle of nowhere, such that it is effectively impossible to find, can the courts "compell" the suspect to give up any knowledge of this, in a similar fashion as the man in the article?

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

#203

Post by diyorgasms »

iopq wrote: post #193
diyorgasms wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear that the parent is accusing the state of using torture to coerce compliance, which is a strong indication that the state itself is no longer legitimate.

The state cannot exist without violence to back it up. Why would anyone pay taxes if you couldn't be thrown in jail for non-compliance?

I think you make the mistake of thinking that people oppose all state violence. Many people approve of some state violence in the name of maintaining societal order, but oppose torture. And I would posit that coercive incarceration is a form of torture.

It is a mistake to believe that people are ideologically consistent. And I would be hard pressed to believe that torture is not more extreme or less legitimate than other forms of violence.

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

#204

Post by bluejekyll »

dmm wrote: post #107
bluejekyll wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mi…

The supreme court has ruled that the second amendment protects an individual's right to own guns and that right cannot be removed by states. If you don't like that get 2/3rds of congress to agree with you and change the constitution.

It's impressive that you read "regulate" as somehow not aligned with "an individuals right to own guns".

These are not mutually exclusive, and I personally want people to maintain the right to own guns.

What I don't want is semi-automatic rifles and handguns to be available to the population at large and without any regulation whatsoever so that they can easily be incorporated into some lunatics shooting spree.

I know this will be unpopular: all semi-automatic handguns and rifles should be outlawed.

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

#205

Post by [deleted] »

dmm wrote: post #107
bluejekyll wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mi…

The supreme court has ruled that the second amendment protects an individual's right to own guns and that right cannot be removed by states. If you don't like that get 2/3rds of congress to agree with you and change the constitution.

[deleted]

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

#206

Post by realo »

I have a question...

Suppose the suspect Alice only has a portion of the key. Someone else (Bob...) has the remaining key bits.

Alice is busted, and 'compelled to give the key', and DOES provide her portion of the key.

Bob is never found.

Then Alice would be indefinitely imprisoned, even if she would have actually complied with the court order.

It seems unethical, to me.

Bonus question: Alice pretends that Bob exists, but actually he does not, but police cannot prove that. What then?

A possible answer to the first question: Alice is not compelled to provide the key. She is compelled to decrypt the drive. Obviously she can't do that without Bob. Alice is screwed and will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Seems harsh.

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

#207

Post by morgante »

mirimir wrote: post #100
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…

> Well, you could also be held indefinitely for refusing to provide the combination for a safe.

Is there case law supporting that? Traditionally I think the combination would be considered forced testimony.

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

#208

Post by anigbrowl »

dwaltrip wrote: post #202

I have a related, seemingly analogous situation that I'm curious about. If a suspect might have physically buried important evidence hundreds of miles of way in the middle of nowhere, such that it is effectively impossible to find, can the courts "compell" the suspect to give up any knowledge of this, in a similar fashion as the man in the article?

No. But proximity carries a great deal of weight for purely practical reasons - when you already know you have the goods then it's maddening to not know how to access them.

Not an endorsement of the reasons for the guy's drive being impounded, which I'm ignoring completely for this example.

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

#209

Post by mirimir »

mindslight wrote: post #179
slantaclaus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, enjo-kōsai is merely controversial in Japan. But bare female skin is illegal in Saudi Arabia.[0] De gustibus non est disputandum. What's key is mindfulness.

0) http://livinginsaudiarabia.org/73/pornography-in-saudi-arabi...

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

#210

Post by bigiain »

iopq wrote: post #187
slantaclaus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But without 100% proof he can't be jailed. The prosecutors don't have enough evidence to prove it, so how can he be jailed for it already? "Innocent until proven guilty" is the foundation of our legal system

There are other precedents I think.

Here (Sydney Australia) the penalty for refusing a roadside alcohol test is the same as the top range blood alcohol penalty. So you can refuse a test, and they'll penalise you assuming the worst-case result you could have produced.

I'm guessing this guy is in a quite perplexing quandary - he's betting on whether they'll keep him in jail for as long for refusing to decrypt the drives as they would for the crimes that decrypting the drives expose?

(At least I _hope_ that's his quandary - I sincerely hope the reality isn't that he's genuinely forgotten the passwords, and when the FBI/NSA _finally_ bruteforce it, they end up with baby photos, teenaged angst poetry, and a few bittorrented Hollywood movies... That does, at least, seem quite unlikely...)

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