Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 1:04 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #41

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 as black and white as you make it. If there is a warrant to search my property, I am obligated to assist if required. E.g. open the gun safe. (Hey, speaking of guns...You know what other antedquated amendment from the Founding Fathers would be really convenient to ignore...) Now, AFAIK, no one has tested whether that still hold true of a combination safe, where the access substaintivly requires information f…

Post by lsaferite » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 1:06 PM UTC

kbart wrote: post #161

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #151

Thought experiment: What if there were an encryption system whereby if a user inputs one decryption key, the encrypted data decrypts to one set of values and if the user uses a second key, it decrypts to a second set of values. Sure, in order to encode both sets of data into a single encrypted result would require more storage space, but that is a small price to pay for protection against self incrimination from our…

You can't get two different sets of cleartext from the same ciphertext (except collisions, which is impractical and can be excluded for practical purposes). Of course, you can store few sets of ciphertext and decrypt depending on provided key/password, but watching disk IO may reveal that parts of disk are getting skipped. Basically, it all boils down to the competency level of the examiner.

Post by rayiner » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 1:11 PM UTC

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #253

jaredklewis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interpretation of the 5th amendment is quite different than it has been historically interpreted by the courts. For example, in a trial, the prosecutor might subpoena some documents and you cannot refuse to turn over those documents, unless doing so would trigger a 5th amendment assertion. Turning over the documents implicitly testifies to at least two important pieces of information: that the documents exist an…

>Your interpretation of the 5th amendment is quite different than it has been historically interpreted by the courts. Part of the issue seems to be the courts are very proficient in coming up with very interesting interpretations. It feels a lot like a literature or art interpretation class, where everything is BS but a lot of people have a bunch of rules convincing them they aren't. Then again, the founding father's…

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #182

naasking wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is a warrant to search my property, I am obligated to assist if required. I'm not sure that's true, the police are authorized to break whatever they need to if you don't assist. As for combo safes, this seems like a good overview: http://blogs.denverpost.com/crime/2012/01/05/why-criminals-s...

Yes, they can proceed without your assistance. Also, they can charge you with obstruction with justice.

Post by rayiner » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 1:16 PM UTC

Esau wrote: post #272

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…

"no one should be compelled to witness against oneself" More specifically, no one should be compelled to assist the government in one's own prosecution.