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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

#431

Post by cmdrfred »

sjy wrote: post #396
throwaway7767 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

By giving credible oral testimony. The defendant chose not to do that, perhaps because it would have exposed him to cross-examination, and perjury charges if his implausible story was rejected (he remembered other passwords and had been caught with child pornography on other encrypted volumes, and the government may have had evidence about how recently and frequently he had decrypted the external drive, because they…

>credible oral testimony.

So the system as it stands is you can be jailed indefinitely because a judge does not believe you actually forgot a password? That doesn't sound ideal.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #83
janwillemb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Onward, Christian soldiers" is not about physical war, but about spiritual warfare. Killing isn't usually performed by singing hymns, for example: Hell’s foundations quiver At the shout of praise; Brothers, lift your voices, Loud your anthems raise.

Yet, that doesn't stop Christians from misinterpreting the Muslim concept of jihad

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by sjy »

mtgx wrote: post #351

Remember when Obama passed the law that allows for indefinite detention without charge? And how his supporters said "Yeah, but it's not like he would use it"? I think it's already used all the time across the country now. A law that "is not supposed to be used" should not exist. If it exists, then it will be used. I'm sure this is some kind of Murphy law or something.

This case is about a federal statute that dates back to 1789.

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

#434

Post by brw12 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #385
Natanael_L wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like being forced to translate your own notebook written in code. Not my problem, get your own codebreakers to do it.

It's different because you can't verify the authenticity of the custom hand-rolled cipher. This is a request for the accused to produce the keys only, not to do the work of manually decoding.

No, you're exactly wrong. The demand on Rawls is that he do whatever work is necessary to produce the drives in an unencrypted state. If he hid a printout of the password on Mount Everest, that means he is compelled by the court to climb Mount Everest.

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

#435

Post by brw12 »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #154
imh wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a technical question about this comparison. In the locked door example, is the warrant an allowance for police to enter the area without the owner's permission, or is the warrant an order for the owner to give permission and assist?

If you're home, you have to let them in. If not, they are allowed to break in.

> If you're home, you have to let them in. If not, they are allowed to break in.

Right, but is it really a crime not to unlock the door?

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

#436

Post by naasking »

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?

Empirical studies have actually shown that consumers of child porn are unlikely to molest children. Those that are arrested for possession of child porn AND have a high likelihood of future molestation ALREADY had a history of molestation.

This shouldn't be surprising. Consumers of rape fetish porn are unlikely to actually rape someone, but actual rapists are likely to consume rape fetish porn. Furthermore, in countries where porn of all kinds was legalized, including child porn, enjoyed falling rates of child molestation.

The OP is making some of the same old arguments people have trotted out against porn for decades, just couched in pseudo neuroscience. The fact is, we don't understand these relationships to the degree the OP needs to justify his causal claims.

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

#437

Post by cookiecaper »

kakarot wrote: post #408
cookiecaper wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a very abstract way to say that you don't like some of the things that the state has characterized as crimes. That's fine, and you can utilize the organs of representative democracy to make your will on that point known (though a world where only violent crimes are recognized, like you're suggesting, is not usually considered appealing). However, attempting to trivialize the issue by abstracting it out t…

No, this is not a very abstract way of saying that. You straw-manned my argument. I am stating my views on state violence, and what power the state should have over others. And the state should never use violence, physical or psychological, to "compel" people to do anything. If they are a danger to society, then they can be locked away, but if they are not provably a danger to society in an uncompromised court of law…

>I am stating my views on state violence, and what power the state should have over others. And the state should never use violence, physical or psychological, to "compel" people to do anything.

This allows only for crimes of commission. Crimes of omission, like negligence, failure to pay taxes, etc., could not be prosecuted against this, because the state would be using its monopoly on violence to compel compliance with laws which impose affirmative requirements on individuals instead of merely enforcing laws that proscribe individual behavior.

Are you arguing only against indefinite detention on contempt charges or are you arguing against deploying state force to compel any type of active compliance?

>If they are a danger to society, then they can be locked away, but if they are not provably a danger to society in an uncompromised court of law, then that's it. Indefinite incarceration without legitimate reason is torture.

This isn't indefinite detention without reason. Habaes corpus is fully satisfied here. The government has given the detainee a rationale for his detention and, in this case, they've provided a remedy that he can employ to end his incarceration at will.

For the third time, I believe that the virtues of indefinite detention via contempt-of-court are dubious and that reforms are welcome. I'm not sure what you think you're disagreeing with here.

>Are you telling me if I have a problem with the way my state is run I should call my local Republican state representatives and not discuss my views on a mature open forum? Gtfo with that shit, this isn't your forum my dude.

Expressing your views to your state representative (not sure why the party of that representative is significant) is not mutually exclusive with expressing your views on HN. I was suggesting an option by which you could attempt to enact your views in order to clarify that those views do not reflect the current state of the law and would need legislative action to be realized. That has nothing to do with where you're allowed to express them.

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

#438

Post by cookiecaper »

baddox wrote: post #358
sjy wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not change the parent's point – he is in contempt for refusing to comply, not for being unable to comply. Contempt must be willful: https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-753-el...

Yes, and the people who are holding him in a cage are the people deciding whether he is unable or unwilling. Not exactly any consolation.

Yes, the state ultimately decides whether someone's behavior justifies their detainment or not. Is this really news to you? Should they just let him go because he said "Shoot, turns out I don't remember!" How would any criminal justice occur if we let people off with flimsy excuses like that?

Most of the time, absolute certainty that someone is guilty is not possible; that's why the criminal standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "proven to the point of mathematical certainty".

In this case, the simple fact is that the court does not believe Rawls's assertion that he is unable to comply, so he remains detained on contempt. This will change once the court is convinced that Rawls is indeed no longer able to comply.

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

#439

Post by imcoconut »

sgift wrote: post #328
hyperpape wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What should our standard be? Being accused equals being guilty? Tread carefully. The protections you give others are the protections you'll enjoy yourself if needed. And hoping you'll never need them is a very shortsighted strategy.

Well said.

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

#440

Post by cookiecaper »

brw12 wrote: post #434
cookiecaper wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because you can't verify the authenticity of the custom hand-rolled cipher. This is a request for the accused to produce the keys only, not to do the work of manually decoding.

No, you're exactly wrong. The demand on Rawls is that he do whatever work is necessary to produce the drives in an unencrypted state. If he hid a printout of the password on Mount Everest, that means he is compelled by the court to climb Mount Everest.

I'm speaking in practical terms here. I haven't read the actual order, but I understand the language of the order may technically require him to do the work necessary to render his drives in a decrypted state. That's because they expect the only requirement to be entering the key.

If he had a password hidden on Mt. Everest and demonstrated that to the court's satisfaction, and then cooperated with the court's order to reasonably assist in decryption (e.g., allowing the court access to the sherpa that routinely retrieves this key and enters it to decrypt his disks via some remote mechanism), I assume he would be considered compliant.

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