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

#411

Post by 9mit3t2m9h9a » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #198

mindslight wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Supporting or undermining it by unpaid distribution of its disgusting output material? If he was directly supporting it, he would be already convicted based on tracing the payments, I guess.

And if obtaining and distributing the output material of a content industry without payment is supporting the industry, let that be put in writing…

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

#412

Post by digler999 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

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.

> and that right cannot be removed by states.

but cities like new york somehow removed it.

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

#413

Post by digler999 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:26 PM UTC

smokedoutraider wrote: post #410

Are we just ignoring that he is a pedo, and likely has incriminating garbage on his laptop?

what's being ignored is the constitution. which is an even more grave injustice than child abuse.

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

#414

Post by digler999 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:27 PM UTC

hysan wrote: post #325

What happens if the drives develop bit rot over those 16 months preventing them from ever being decrypted? Based on the wording of what he is in contempt of, it sounds like he would sit in jail until death. To me, it sounds like the prosecution is trying to play a word game to get around 5th amendment protections.

investigators image drives, they dont work with the originals.

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

#415

Post by 9mit3t2m9h9a » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #266

briHass wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The examples you chose are interesting, not only because they reveal an obvious bias. I think the correct interpretation of the various amendments is to view them in conjunction with the ninth. That is, the default should be to argue in good faith about what rights the amendment is attempting to preserve, not nit-picking them to find technicalities that the state can use to limit or restrict someone's rights. Your hi…

> it's clear from reading other writings by the Founding Fathers that the 2nd Amendment was written to allow an individual to own firearms It's also clear it was to buttress the perpetuation of slavery in the minds of founders. So, you know.

Could you please mention the number of amendment that restricts the right to refuse self-incrimination in the same way as the 13th amendment restricted the right to own slaves?

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

#416

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:36 PM 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…

> "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"

So "I know stuff about a 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" is fine, real and serious, but "I know a thing that would allow you 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" is laughable?

Should you be also compelled by indefinite arrest to disclose location of the body of your victim (when other evidence against you is insufficient)? Because it looks mighty similar to disclosing password to encrypted evidence of the crime.

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

#417

Post by naasking » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #374

naasking wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 chil…

That's a counterintuitive result, and I would be very interested to learn more about it. Rather than sling accusations of pseudoscience and authoritarianism, will you cite some of these studies?

I'm surprised you think whatever intuitions you may have developed on such a complicated subject as human sexuality and neurology actually mean anything. Plenty of people with just as much confidence as you that ordinary porn was harmful were similarly surprised decades ago when rape and sexual assault rates continued to fall despite the continued spread of porn. Why would pedophilia be any different than any other sexual fetish in this respect [1]? In fact, there exists direct evidence that legalized child porn reduces sexual abuse against children [3].

All of the studies purporting to demonstrate links between possession of child porn and child molestation are plagued with methodological errors [2]. This issue is so emotionally charged that most of the science around it is garbage. The stigma against child porn is no different than claiming that consumers of staged rape fetish porn must all be closet rapists, and viewing this porn will simply make them act on it. It's a patently absurd claim.

About the only possessors of child porn that are at high risk of molesting a child are the ones that actually produce it, and so had already sexual abused children [4].

[1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/1123799?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

[2] https://www.fd.org/docs/training-materials/2012/FJC2012/Chil...

[3] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-010-9696-y

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716325/

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

#418

Post by 9mit3t2m9h9a » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:43 PM UTC

keithnz wrote: post #245

Seems to me the 5th should protect him. Question is, is that a good thing? Should law enforcement have a right to search through court orders? In a world of unbreakable locks it seems very hard to get justice unless the law can do proper searches. If we end up in a world of unbreakable encryption everywhere, seems to me, criminal activity will have huge benefits. If we can't control crime, we can't have a just societ…

If the only trace a criminal activity leaves is on a single encrypted drive, is it important if it gets prosecuted or not?

The police does parallel construction to avoid admitting access to illegally collected evidence, civil forfeiture to punish people for things police doesn't like without having to prove anything, etc — incentives for police to step over the rules are a larger problem than unbreakable encryption right now.

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

#419

Post by naasking » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:44 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #367

naasking wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Child pornography may not be the same thing as child molestation, but it's still plenty vile nonetheless.

More hyperbole. You really think young cartoon characters conducting sexual acts, which is illegal child porn, is as vile as perfectly legal scat porn? Or is your claim once again hyperbolic because, a) it's not your sexual preference, and b) you assumed, wrongly, that everything classified as child porn is necessarily harmful to children?

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

#420

Post by naasking » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 4:46 PM UTC

gydfi wrote: post #316

naasking wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

That's not what well-defined means. You might as well say we should jail people until their victims feel better.

Furthermore, there's no evidence demonstrating he actually can comply.