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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

#221
post #206

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…

Using the same two-key method, attorney–client privilege might be of use, though not sure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney–client_privilege

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

#222
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Thank you. That pretty much sums up what I was getting at. I understand the need for violence when one man attacks me or my family. And I understand the need for violence when one man attacks any human around me.

These people break the Golden Rule and remove themselves from its binding contract of being treated equally. BUT, they still deserve to be treated fairly.

Sometimes, even you can get them to see the error of their ways, and use their past to create a better future for others, and all without violence. But asking someone to give you a variable to a mathematical algorithm that he owns is absolute horse shit.

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

#223

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,…

His crime is disobeying a court order, which is a crime that you can go to jail for. Just like if you had the key to a safe, and the court orders you to open the safe, you would go to jail if you refuse to do so. If he forgot the keys he could have told the court that and the court would evaluate his credibility.

*edited changed from key to combination because combination locks are protected by the 5th amendment and keys are not.

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

#224

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,…

> Encryption is nothing new people, you are just putting your data in a safe. I know this is an old argument, but what if I put the contents in a paper shredder, in the safe? It's still the data, it's just that it went through the shredder. Why is ok for the government to compel you to change the state of the data from encrypted to unencrypted? They couldn't compel Apple write software to decrypt a phone. Why can the…

>They couldn't compel Apple write software to decrypt a phone.

no, they didn't compel apple

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

#225
post #206

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…

Using the same two-key method, attorney–client privilege might be of use, though not sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney–client_privilege

IANAL, but it would fail to meet the basic criteria, as the communication was not for the purpose of securing legal advice and, the prosecution would argue, the communication was made for the purpose of committing a crime.

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But we don't know whether he looked at CP or not.

And lets face it, the NSA claim - and win in court with this claim - that "collecting and storing" personal communications doesn't count as surveillance, until a human queries the database and reads from the collected interceptions. While a personal hard drive full of child porn is unlikely to be "innocently" explained away quite that easily, I wonder if owners of, say, usenet binary hosting newsservers ever need to…

Bogus defense IMHO. Acquiring the ability to query a database is enough to constitute surveillance. I wonder if my land lord could use the same logic to legally record me in the shower.

We have to understand that, much like it's a military's responsibility (and desire) to go to war, it is the goal of spy agencies to gather all the intelligence it possible can. In both cases it is up to law making bodies comprised of "the people" to check these agencies' ambitions.

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

#227
post #211
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a private activity, it directly supports an industry of violence against children

You can make the same argument for the adult porn industry, and that leads to one of two conclusions: - That the viewer of adult porn shouldn't be prosecuted for viewing porn. or - That there is a societal / governmental acceptance of the exploitation of men and women, as long as they are adults. The easy argument out of this hypocrisy is to claim that while children can never consent, adults can, but then that opens…

Yet another reason a universal basic income makes sense. Slavery by another name becomes much less likely.

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

#228
There's a burden of proof here the court needs to meet before holding the defendant in contempt.

For starters, it's reasonable to assume the defendant owns the hard drives in question if they're in their possession, irregardless of their testimony otherwise.

Given that piece of information:

1: The court has to prove the disks are actually encrypted. It is not merely enough for the cops to pick up the disks, see some garbled data, and determine it's encrypted. Now if you're using a file level encryption protocol that leaves enough un-encrypted stuff on disk that you can identify the filesystem and the file encryption, then you've met the requirement. If you are using full disk encryption, especially something designed to hide the data and filesystem from anything but a forensics package and even a forensics package see's garble, then there's effectively no way to tell the disk is actually encrypted or with what.

AND

2: They have to prove the defendant, at some point, had the encryption key. That requires proving the method of encryption and key generation. With a door lock, you know there's a key. With a safe combo, you know the combo could be 12 digits and broken up between a dozen people. With an encryption system, any combination of things you know, are, or have could be part of the key. Compelling the defendant to reveal all of that is absolutely a violation of their 5th amendment rights.

Example:

Lets assume we're using windows EFS. Lets further assume analysis of EFS indicates the user named "YOU" owns the account. Furthermore, lets assume there are files that have date modified dates within the end users folder that indicate they had logged in the day prior to the search warrant being served.

You give the court the "I don't remember" line.

In that case, forgetting the password is destruction of evidence, not contempt. If a key escrow is used and they can prove it, same deal, destruction of evidence.

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

#229
post #206

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…

Doesn't this boil down to the "I am willing but unable" situation? The man in this case was the "unwilling but able" situation. My question is wouldn't the man be shifted into the former situation if he just claimed to be now willing but to have forgotten his keys.

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

#230
post #196
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Let's say you have 200,000 suspected criminals, some % of which are criminals. How many of them are you willing to put in prison? If it's looking that most likely around 30% are guilty, do you put 60,000 in prison and say "oh well, some false negatives, some false positives, whatever" or do you just put 30,000 in prison to prevent most innocent persons from going to jail? Then you are letting half of the guilty peopl…

I see what you are getting at, but it would still be;

60,000 = "oh well, some false negatives, some false negatives AND false positives, whatever"

30,000 = "oh well, some false negatives"

Although i get the feeling we are moving into semantics, its just always bothered me the way this was worded. Anyway thanks for that perspective, made me think.

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