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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

#311

Post by naasking »

throwanem wrote: post #178
coldtea wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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! B…

> 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

Reinforcing the circuits to reward yourself with more porn, not with molesting children. Your whole point is exactly the kind of pseudo scientific rationalising every authoritarian uses to push their "moralistic" agenda.

Real studies have actually shown that exposure porn reduces recidivism and tendencies to molestation, except in a small class of pedophiles which already have violent tendencies.

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

#312

Post by marksomnian »

tnzn wrote: post #250
jhiska wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm surprised you haven't been called a pedophile/pedophile supporter yet. Every time I tried to have that argument, it happened (tho not in HN).

And that is the reason you can never have a rational discussion about the subject. No matter how strong the arguments you present, the other side can always say "b... but... but think about the terrorists and the paedophiles!" and if you reply you get called a sympathiser - for having a rational discussion.

Welcome to 2017.

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

#313

Post by cwilkes »

libertymcateer wrote: post #272
realo wrote: 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…

> 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. Yes, and in this scenario she would not be held in contempt, so your hypothetical does not apply. You can only be held in contempt for refusing to comply with court orders, not for the failu…

How far can court orders go? Let's say he was a crooked accountant and the police couldn't understand his spreadsheet. Is he obligated to show him what he was doing?

To me this is what the disk encryption is like. The cops can't understand how to read the disk. Is he obligated to help them? What if the pictures in there are encoded using a weird format? Should he be forced to produce a program to read them?

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

#314

Post by flukus »

branchless wrote: post #269
externalreality wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one bright spot is this leads me to hope they can't decrypt at will via some non-public method.

Or they're just not willing to divulge the methods existence for a kiddy porn case.

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

#315

Post by belorn »

realo wrote: 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…

I co-authored a project that works on Debian that do unattended reboots of encrypted disk drives which allows for scenarios where Alice don't know any part of the key. Every time the machine boots up bob get a request on the network and he can chose to approve or deny. Bob in turn could be in a different country which would make coercion a bit hard.

(Project called Mandos)

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

#316

Post by gydfi »

naasking wrote: post #305
vivekd wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> His crime is disobeying a court order, which is a crime that you can go to jail for. Sure, but isn't the question whether he should go to jail indefinitely? If defying a court order is a crime, then perhaps it should have a well defined jail term.

It does, the term is "until you comply".

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

#317

Post by jakeogh »

brokenmachine wrote: post #260
jakeogh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Since it was a laptop boot PW I generated (ranpwd), wrote it down, memorized over a week or so and then lost the piece of paper. Wasn't too concerned because I "had it"... until I didn't.

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

#318

Post by sschueller »

adventured wrote: post #265
zik wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just unethical. Illegal. Indefinite detention without charge is against the law.

What's the current status on §§ 1021-1022 from the 2012 NDAA bill? [1] Did that become law as it was written, and is it still active? It made provisions for the US military to indefinitely detain US citizens without due process. I've found these things difficult to keep track of frankly, with so many egregious laws from just the last ten years. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-d...

Obama quietly signed the following in January: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/294...

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

#319

Post by zhemao »

adventured wrote: post #265
zik wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just unethical. Illegal. Indefinite detention without charge is against the law.

What's the current status on §§ 1021-1022 from the 2012 NDAA bill? [1] Did that become law as it was written, and is it still active? It made provisions for the US military to indefinitely detain US citizens without due process. I've found these things difficult to keep track of frankly, with so many egregious laws from just the last ten years. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-d...

Wikipedia indicates that it's still in effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_detention_without_t...

This is mainly because nobody has standing to challenge the law. To my knowledge, no US Citizen has yet been detained as an enemy combatant since the law was passed. It will be an interesting court case once that happens.

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

#320

Post by zhemao »

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,…

The difference is that the authorities can crack open a safe without the suspect cooperating. But it's virtually impossible to decrypt something without the receiving the key.
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