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Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

arstechnica.com

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Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#81

Post by mejari »

hackuser wrote: post #65
hackuser wrote: post #56

Some discussion overlooks that this is a special case: ... the appeals court, like the police, agreed that the presence of child porn on his drives was a "foregone conclusion." The Fifth Amendment, at its most basic level, protects suspects from being forced to disclose incriminating evidence. In this instance, however, the authorities said they already know there's child porn on the drives, so Rawls' constitutional…

And for ease of reading, I'll reply to my own comment with other interesting issues: * "The fact remains that the government has not brought charges," [his attorney] Donoghue said in a telephone interview . It seems a warrant is at issue, if I understand correctly. * The contempt-of-court order against Rawls was obtained by authorities citing the 1789 All Writs Act. The All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Depa…

It could be that they want the drives unencrypted in order to help other investigations into the sources of the material, and think it will be better to compel him to release it before sentencing so he can't use it as leverage to lessen his sentence.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#82

Post by mjolk »

finkin1 wrote: post #20

Is there a charitable interpretation of this that I'm not seeing? Or is this truly as terrifying as it appears?

Head's up that the source goes into some detail and is a miserable, sickening read.

Per the source (https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsr...), the prosecutors already have a case based on checksums of the media that the defendant had downloaded, and per the logs, stored on his external hard drive. I imagine that the prosecution wants the media so they can perform harm reduction services for the identified, affected children and/or improve their data for going after other/future child abusers.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#83

Post by mjolk »

neltnerb wrote: post #22
petee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A possibility is that if they prosecute based on what they have now, then he will _never_ decrypt it - they may be aiming to break up a porn-ring or the actual producers, and he may have very valuable data on the drive, that may potentially save lives

If this were the case, they would provide him immunity in exchange for cooperation in prosecuting up the "food chain" like they do with mobsters.

I think this is just a thing that happens in the movies. Also, check out the source document and let me know if you think someone found guilty of the described acts deserves immunity.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#84

Post by oxide »

a3n wrote: post #66
shard972 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument made in the article is that it's a "foregone conclusion" that there's child porn on the drives, so decrypting them isn't self-incriminating because they already know what's on the drive. The immediate thought that comes to my head when they say this is: Then whats the problem? You can prove it, so why do you need more proof? Unless your possibly maybe your case isn't rock solid or you want to find more…

yeah, if it's a foregone conclusion, then why isn't the trial over and time being served?

Where's the mandatory minimums for possession of child porngraphy? The zero tolerance? Our prisons fill with drug offenders, yet we give sex offenders a scarlet letter + probation?

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#85

Post by [deleted] »

hackuser wrote: post #65
hackuser wrote: post #56

Some discussion overlooks that this is a special case: ... the appeals court, like the police, agreed that the presence of child porn on his drives was a "foregone conclusion." The Fifth Amendment, at its most basic level, protects suspects from being forced to disclose incriminating evidence. In this instance, however, the authorities said they already know there's child porn on the drives, so Rawls' constitutional…

And for ease of reading, I'll reply to my own comment with other interesting issues: * "The fact remains that the government has not brought charges," [his attorney] Donoghue said in a telephone interview . It seems a warrant is at issue, if I understand correctly. * The contempt-of-court order against Rawls was obtained by authorities citing the 1789 All Writs Act. The All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Depa…

[deleted]

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#86

Post by beisner »

goodplay wrote: post #42

Sitting directly in front of me are two moderately large encrypted hard drives the passwords for which I forgot. If I get a subpoena to produce their contents, I will potentially remain in jail of the rest of my life for the crime of being forgetful. That judge's behavior and (the laws that enables it) is sickening. You either have enough evidence to convict a person, or you don't.

Our justice system, by and large, rests not on proving the truth or not, but on a (idealistically) rational group of peers deciding both on the probability that a crime occurred and the justification/reasoning of both the crime itself and the law criminalizing it. Beyond that, it rests on a legal system (police, courts, etc) that, by and large, also act on notions of reasonability and discretion to bring forth evidence that will inform a jury's decision. As we have seen in many high-profile examples, the system is imperfect - it is human, and in many prominent cases (from exoneration of lynchers in the 1930s to indefinite detention today) it fails in disturbing ways. It is because of intentional vagueness that these failures arise, but it is also by this vagueness that unique exceptions arise. In this case, I don't think that the decision necessarily sets precedent for all of us with hard drives for which we have forgotten the password. I don't necessarily agree with the indefinite detention (although I do not claim to know the scope of other investigations that might rely on the evidence on those drives), but I think the circumstances are positioned such that this decision is an exception to our system rather than the beginning of a slippery slope. Of course i might be wrong, but I wouldn't decry the end of privacy just yet.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#87

Post by rayiner »

smsm42 wrote: post #16

This reads as extremely bizarre. I mean, reading the fifth amendment makes it pretty clear - no one should be compelled to witness against oneself. However, it looks like the current executive and judicial are thinking "well, those Founders were just idiots for putting such an amendment in, clearly it'd be much easier to prosecute people if we could compel them to witness against themselves, so why don't we just igno…

It's not bizarre at all. "To be a witness against himself" is not metaphorical or ye olde English. It literally means what it says--the government can't force someone to testify against himself (i.e. to provide a confession). If the Founders had meant to say that the government can't compel someone to cooperate in an investigation at all, they would have said that.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#88

Post by 1024core »

Can you refuse a search warrant? My understanding (albeit limited) is that you can't, if it's been signed by the proper legal authority. Is refusing to unlock the HDD the same as refusing to unlock a room, when presented with a lawful warrant? I would think so.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#89

Post by walrus »

M_Grey wrote: post #70
goodplay wrote: post #42

Sitting directly in front of me are two moderately large encrypted hard drives the passwords for which I forgot. If I get a subpoena to produce their contents, I will potentially remain in jail of the rest of my life for the crime of being forgetful. That judge's behavior and (the laws that enables it) is sickening. You either have enough evidence to convict a person, or you don't.

More and more I'm convinced that the only solution is data destruction on a fail-deadly system. Like a warrant canary, if it's your default operation, you should be alright. As I always add though, don't keep your family photos on that drive.

I don't understand what a fail-deadly drive would look like. Can you give an example?

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#90

Post by rayiner »

goodplay wrote: post #42

Sitting directly in front of me are two moderately large encrypted hard drives the passwords for which I forgot. If I get a subpoena to produce their contents, I will potentially remain in jail of the rest of my life for the crime of being forgetful. That judge's behavior and (the laws that enables it) is sickening. You either have enough evidence to convict a person, or you don't.

The Court's opinion explicitly addresses that (at 18-19). It first recognizes that impossibility of compliance is a defense to a contempt charge. But it then explains why the trial judge reasonably did not buy that argument:

> At the contempt hearing, the Government presented several witnesses to support its prima facie case of contempt. Doe’s sister testified to the fact that, while in her presence, Doe accessed child pornography files on his Mac Pro computer by means of entering passwords from memory. Further, a detective who executed the original search warrant stated that Doe did not provide his password at the time because he wanted to prevent the police from accessing his computer. Doe never asserted an inability to remember the passwords at that time.

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