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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

#251

Post by closeparen »

diyorgasms wrote: post #166
cookiecaper wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It sounds like you believe the only legitimate state is one where a criminal suspect can say "no thanks" and walk away in response to a court summons or arrest warrant. What brings anyone to walk into a courtroom to face charges at all, other than the knowledge that they will be tied to a chair and wheeled in if they refuse?

Of course the state uses violence to extract compliance with social norms. That's what it's for. The much more interesting questions are about which norms it should enforce (criminal codes) using how much force (sentencing, prison conditions, police rules of engagement, etc) and subject to what controls (due process, civil rights, etc).

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

#252

Post by vivekd »

Programmatic wrote: post #246
vivekd wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

great, now look up what "dissent" means. Dissent is legal mumbo jumbo for "stuff that ain't law." When you have a panel of judges, we go with the decision of the majority of judges. The decision of the minority of the judges is still published under the heading "dissent." It isn't the ruling and it doesn't affect the law, but it's published just to note that they disagreed and their reasons. There are some 5th amendm…

I am well aware of what "dissent" means. Fortunately, this is a supreme court justice talking about a case that was not about a combination lock. Unless you can show something that says that you can be compelled to open a combination lock (I couldn't), I'll take the supreme court justice's word for it.

You're right, combination locks are protected by 5th amendment as Testimonial evidence. I was wrong in my original post, however this doesn't apply to computer encryptions which the court seems to treat more like keys to a safe which are not protected, I'll correct my post accordingly thanks.

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

#253

Post by angry_octet »

mildbow wrote: post #58
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.

What happens if he says he doesn't remember his password anymore? ie: sits down, and seemingly tries to decrypt, but tries 1( or 50 times) and says "Oh shucks, I forgot"?

Any significantly genuine attempt to remember the password will reduce the entropy to such an extent that your rpi could crack it. The fact that in our brain the fragments are hopelessly jumbled and you forgot if you added 1999! or 1990? to the end does not mean a computer cannot achieve a significant shortcut.

In fact I cracked one of my own filevault v1 passwords, from a Powerbook G4, using this technique. I had a muscle memory for part of the password, and that was enough to make it tractable. Cf vilefault, https://github.com/libyal/libfvde

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

#254

Post by Retr0spectrum »

gresrun wrote: post #225
saycheese wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IANAL, but what if the same keys were also used to encrypt client-attorney communications?

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

#255

Post by sologoub »

enneff wrote: post #188
sologoub wrote: post #101

Modern encryption isn't that much difference in basic concept to a cipher, such that it takes data in readable form and makes it unreadable. In Apple/Gov dispute on the San Bernardino iPhone case, Gov brought up the Burr case from 1807, arguing that a 3rd party could be compelled to decipher the contents, provided there was no self-incrimination (Apple argued Burr did not apply): http://www.macworld.com/article/30460…

Aren't decrypt and decipher synonyms? What is their distinction, if any?

Not sure from the mathematical point of view.

Not a lawyer, but the Burr case seems to imply that the secretary could be compelled by court to translate the cipher (literally decipher) the letter, provided in doing so he was not going to incriminate himself.

If translating a cipher and decrypting a drive is held equivalent, then the subject of this article is likely protected, irrespective of how reprehensible the alleged crime is...

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

#256

Post by angry_octet »

iopq wrote: post #196
cortic wrote: 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…

Or to give it an engineering flavor, the ROC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteris...

It seems we accept a higher FAR (False Alarm Rate, a diagnostic which gives a false positive) for certain communities (poor people, minorities) than others.

The consequence matters too: even people who support the retributive aspect of the death penalty may reject it in practice because of the excessive false conviction rate.

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

#258

Post by upofadown »

>"...Instead, the order requires only that [Rawls] produce his computer and hard drives in an unencrypted state."

This language makes it sound like the government is specifically asking the defendant to take an affirmative action to produce the evidence required to incriminate himself. That would be the same thing as issuing an order with the intent to compel an accused murder to tell the police where the body is. I really don't understand how a court could issue an order based on such an argument.

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

#259

Post by angry_octet »

spaceboy wrote: post #148
kybernetikos wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 q…

Wow this is an innocent perspective. TailsOS would definitely raise suspicion even if you otherwise seemed as pure as the driven snow. Suspicion will prompt a deeper investigation, which is what you don't want.

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

#260

Post by brokenmachine »

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.

You expected to be able to remember a >15char random password?

Or did you have it in some kind of password store that you no longer have access to?

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