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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

#311

Post by tynpeddler »

jaredklewis wrote: post #170
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…

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…

The police are asking this guy to produce a document that does not currently exist. The police are effectively asking this guy to take a document they do have and is useless (the encrypted hard drive), and using the contents of his own mind to transform it into a document that is useful to them.

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

#312

Post by M_Grey »

stagbeetle wrote: post #96
walrus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'd imagine you'd have to do a task (like inputting a passcode) every so often or the drive would be made inoperable. For SSD's it'd be as simple as an automatic single pass overwrite and a new encryption key. For HDD, the hyper-paranoid could rig their drives with small explosives to fracture the platters.

^This. In fact you can buy readymade solutions now which physically destroy the NAND gates on the input of a code, or as you say, if you fail to input a code within a time limit.

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

#313

Post by futun »

jaredklewis wrote: post #170
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…

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…

Right, but in that case the court is asking for specific documents which it knows exists.

In this case, the court is asking the man to provide evidence which the court is not aware of. And there also might be evidence for other crimes which the court isn't aware of.

This is also a right to privacy issue.

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

#314

Post by M_Grey »

walrus wrote: post #89
M_Grey wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

An example I've given here before is: http://securedrives.co.uk/

There are other solutions though, and of course you can make your own if you feel confident about it.

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

#315

Post by bawana »

Although most of the comments here have to do with legality, I am more concerned with the technical aspect. The prosecutors say they know that he has porn because the hash values they obtained are identical to the hash values of porn images.

Are hash collisions not a consideration? Can hash values be as incriminating as direct evidence?

Is it possible to take a hash of a benign image (kitten?) and encrypt it with an algorithm that gives a result which is identical to an unencrypted hash value of a pornographic image?

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

#316

Post by mindslight »

Buge wrote: post #94
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…

The existence of the child porn might be a forgone conclusion, but there is a lot of other stuff on the hard drive. And that other stuff is not a forgone conclusion. So by decrypting the hard drive, he would be giving them information that is not a forgone conclusion.

I believe the persecution would argue that any newly discovered evidence can simply be excluded by the court. The legal system's philosophy is that it should be all-powerful, and that it will parcel out what it deems to be our rights.

Of course, Free people know that rights are obtained and maintained by individuals themselves - eg the second amendment.

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

#317

Post by DanBC »

bawana wrote: post #315

Although most of the comments here have to do with legality, I am more concerned with the technical aspect. The prosecutors say they know that he has porn because the hash values they obtained are identical to the hash values of porn images. Are hash collisions not a consideration? Can hash values be as incriminating as direct evidence? Is it possible to take a hash of a benign image (kitten?) and encrypt it with an…

> Are hash collisions not a consideration?

His defence team would be hopelessly incompetent if they didn't mention that if it was a realistic possibility.

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

#318

Post by benchaney »

futun wrote: post #313
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…

Right, but in that case the court is asking for specific documents which it knows exists. In this case, the court is asking the man to provide evidence which the court is not aware of. And there also might be evidence for other crimes which the court isn't aware of. This is also a right to privacy issue.

If the court knew that the documents existed, he would have been convicted for possession of child porn by now. The court thinks that the documents exist, but obviously they can't prove it.

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

#319

Post by ouid »

harryh wrote: post #256
ouid wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not similar at all. No one can prove that an encrypted drive is an encrypted drive and not a random number. whereas a safe is plainly a safe.

While it's true in a mathematical sense that one may not be able to prove that a sequence of seemingly random bits is an encrypted files that is not true in a legal sense. The law isn't about proving things 100%. The law is about weighing the available evidence and proving things to various standards (preponderance of the evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, etc). For example if if there are server logs showing I downl…

the standard is "beyond reasonable doubt".

A doubt which you cannot reason away is reasonable, by definition. Therefore it is below the threshold of legal proof.

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

#320

Post by harryh »

ouid wrote: post #319
harryh wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true in a mathematical sense that one may not be able to prove that a sequence of seemingly random bits is an encrypted files that is not true in a legal sense. The law isn't about proving things 100%. The law is about weighing the available evidence and proving things to various standards (preponderance of the evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, etc). For example if if there are server logs showing I downl…

the standard is "beyond reasonable doubt". A doubt which you cannot reason away is reasonable, by definition. Therefore it is below the threshold of legal proof.

That's not what the legal term "beyond reasonable doubt" means. Beyond reasonable doubt means that a reasonable person would have no doubt that the party in question was guilty.
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