Man jailed 16 months, and counting, for refusing to decrypt hard drives • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by MertsA » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 9:52 AM UTC

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…

>The person is required to unlock the door and let the police in because the police have a warrant.

Is this true? The person is required to not do anything to hinder police but is the subject of a warrant ordered to assist them with the search? IMHO the difference between a key and a combination to a safe, which is the whole premiss behind being compelled to produce a decryption key being a violation of the 5th amendment, would seem to be at ends to that interpretation. Obviously if the door is unlocked when the warrant is served then the subject can't lock the police out but if there's an interior door that's locked, can the subject be compelled to provide the combination to unlock it? That's no different than being compelled to provide the combination to a safe so that would imply that the subject of a search warrant doesn't have to assist the police, just not actively impede the execution of the warrant.

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

#362

Post by jonathanstrange » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 9:54 AM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #243

literallycancer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>his failure was allegedly looking at child pornography FTFY It doesn't matter what they accuse him of, until they prove it, he's innocent.

He's innocent in court (and my non-lawyerly (aka worthless) sense says the fifth amendment favors him). But we're not a court, and our standard for speech shouldn't be "beyond a reasonable doubt". The parent poster was right. His failing was looking at child pornography.

But we're not a court, and our standard for speech shouldn't be "beyond a reasonable doubt". The parent poster was right. His failing was looking at child pornography.

That's what you think until you're falsely accused of such a crime...

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

#363

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 9:57 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #301

throwanem wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In pedophilia specifically? I doubt it. But it's not a far inference from dopamine's role in sexual arousal and satisfaction [1], and its role in drug addiction [2]. While it would be a stretch to postulate that the effect of child pornography on those disposed to it exactly matches that of drugs which provoke massive dopamine release on those who take them, the effects of dopamine on sexual behavior in the human mal…

Is it reasonable to suppose that perverts would be more likely to offend or just consume more porn?

[deleted]

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

#364

Post by jonathanstrange » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 9:58 AM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #223

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,…

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.

That's not his crime, or as the subtitle below the story's headline states: "He's not charged with a crime." He's held in custody, not serving a sentence for a crime of which he has been convicted. He has never been convicted of any crime by any jury. That's a huge difference, both legally and morally.

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

#365

Post by baddox » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #84

mnm1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is, one doesn't have to cooperate with a search warrant. The idea of encryption being a lock like on a locked door is ludicrous and downright dangerous. Using a fantasy metaphor in place of actual reality is incredibly misleading and outright manipulative. The difference between a lock and encryption is that all locks in the physical world can be broken by outside parties. If someone doesn't want to op…

It's not fantasy. Fantasy is a world where you can tell the police "I know how to open that thing that you have a lawful order to investigate, and you don't, so any crime of which I'm suspected is now uninvestigatable, nanny nanny boo boo". The analog with other difficult locks is just fine; the fact that these locks are so good that they are unbreakable doesn't really change anything about the accused's obligation t…

> It's not fantasy. Fantasy is a world where you can tell the police "I know how to open that thing that you have a lawful order to investigate, and you don't, so any crime of which I'm suspected is now uninvestigatable, nanny nanny boo boo".

And your alternative to this "fantasy" is that you go to jail for the rest of your life if you refuse to comply? I find that far more ridiculous.

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

#366

Post by Freak_NL » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:02 AM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #299

EdHominem wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says who? Neither of us saw it, so we can't know. There's a procedure though that we use to determine the likelihood of someone's guilt, based on evidence and legal arguments. Would you like to hear about it?

I think it's legitimate to say, in a discussion like this one where we're not dealing with punishment, that we should hold to a weaker standard (preponderance of evidence?) than should a criminal court. That said, as far as I'm aware the only evidence we've seen is that he's been accused of the crime. I don't what portion of accusations are false (or even a proxy like conviction rate in comparable situations).

That might seem reasonable at first glance, but it tends to turn into a witch hunt — especially with modern day communication channels.

That is, you are effectively dealing with punishment (by treating a suspect as a criminal and tarnishing their reputation before being convicted) by not applying the same rigour as the courts.

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

#367

Post by throwanem » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #310

throwanem wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should not like to think anyone mistook me to be arguing in favor of restrictions on cryptography in general, because someone might use it in the commission or furtherance of a crime. But responding to a case where cryptography is (maybe) used to conceal evidence of possession and/or distribution of child pornography, with, and I paraphrase, "why do we care about this kind of nonsense?", does not advance the cause…

> At the very best, it makes one who advances such an argument look like so completely detached a privacy absolutist as to defend even the vilest of crimes Oh come on, now who's being hyperbolic. Possession of child porn is clearly not the vilest of crimes, as child molestation is obviously much, much worse. And don't pretend like those are remotely the same.

I intended that to refer to both child pornography and child sexual abuse, although I appreciate I could've been more clear there.

And in any case, I don't think I strayed very far, if at all, into hyperbole, even taken verbatim. Child pornography may not be the same thing as child molestation, but it's still plenty vile nonetheless.

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

#368

Post by baddox » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #84

mnm1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is, one doesn't have to cooperate with a search warrant. The idea of encryption being a lock like on a locked door is ludicrous and downright dangerous. Using a fantasy metaphor in place of actual reality is incredibly misleading and outright manipulative. The difference between a lock and encryption is that all locks in the physical world can be broken by outside parties. If someone doesn't want to op…

It's not fantasy. Fantasy is a world where you can tell the police "I know how to open that thing that you have a lawful order to investigate, and you don't, so any crime of which I'm suspected is now uninvestigatable, nanny nanny boo boo". The analog with other difficult locks is just fine; the fact that these locks are so good that they are unbreakable doesn't really change anything about the accused's obligation t…

> The protection in the Fifth is to prevent a perverse system of coerced confessions, where innocent people can be placed on the stand and forced to falsely confess before the court.

Do you have a source for this claim? Compelled confessions are already invalid. I'm skeptical that this was the primary purpose of the amendment.

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

#369

Post by jonathanstrange » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:08 AM UTC

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.

Your reasoning is perfectly fine and in line with most jurisdictions word-wide. This is just one of many cases where people elsewhere shake their heads in disbelief. How the US and UK deal with this matter is a big exception and considered both immoral and illegal in much of the rest of the world.

These two countries are 'special' in many regards, and you cannot and ought not take their sense of morality and their system of law as a basis for anything.

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

#370

Post by throwaway7767 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:11 AM UTC

sjy wrote: post #337

ArchD wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no observable difference between inability to produce a result and refusing to produce a result. How do they know he didn't just forget the password? Or that the password was recorded somewhere that he no longer has access to? After sitting in jail for many months, it is very easy to forget a password that you no longer use regularly.

There's also no directly observable difference between killing with or without intent, which is why we have murder trials. The ability to decrypt data can be inferred from the surrounding circumstances, which is what happened here[1]: > The defendant did not testify at the hearing and did not offer any other evidence or testimony in support of his contention that memory failure prevented him from complying with the c…

Yes, the court system exists precisely to determine fuzzy things like this.

I'm still curious, what kind of evidence or testimony might be considered believable in this case. Whether someone remembers a particular sequence of words and symbols seems like a thing that's very hard to determine, and by its nature it's unlikely there is any evidence either way.

From the quote you give (and I'll admit I have not read up on this case beyond the article, so it's possible I'm missing something), it sounds like he claimed he didn't remember the password, the court responded with "I don't believe you because you haven't proven that you don't remember it, so have fun in jail until you decrypt."

How would you prove, if you were brought into court, that you don't remember a specific password?