Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by datenwolf » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

tpolm wrote: post #15

and this is why the software you use to encrypt hard drives should support plausible deniability. You give away the (other) password and the decrypted drive contains nothing but cat pictures.

The problem with that is, that prosecuters will then assume, that there still might by naughty stuff hidden. With hidden volume cryptography it's impossible to prove that one presented keys to the entirety of encrypted data.

From an information theory point of view, if each and every available bit was used it could be proven that the total entropy of the cleartext sums up to the total entropy of the ciphertext. In practice the amount of cleartext entropy will always be significantly lower than the entropy of the ciphertext.

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

#322

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:29 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #275

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The word "witness" is a legal term with a specific meaning. It requires providing testimonial evidence. The landlord that unlocks the defendant's apartment where the bodies are stored in the fridge is not a "witness" even though he helped the police get evidence.

And here we are, talking about a guy presumed to have some information on his head, arrested for refusing to disclose that information, in a thread about legal professionals creating BS, with somebody arguing that "witness" has a legal meaning that does not cover people disclosing information they have on their heads... Or, at least not on this case.

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

#323

Post by mindslight » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

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…

> 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

You moved on from this aspect too quick. The "price being paid" isn't the economic cost of more storage space, but the technical fact that your ciphertext is clearly capable of containing more information, and therefore probably does. This is a fundamental constraint of steganography.

The general answer to this is to align the size of the ciphertext with some larger more-fixed volume size that has another plausible reason for existing. With Truecrypt you could say "I created a 1GiB volume as a nice round number for future storage, even though I only ever stored 100MB on there". With a general steganographic filesystem you could say "I bought a 4TB disk even though I didn't put much on there", etc.

But note these arguments are only suggestive and not open-and-shut. If one has a data-hoarder amount of hard drives but only reveals enough data on them to fill up a decade-old single drive, they aren't going to be believed.

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

#324

Post by shawn-butler » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #268

PJDK wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by your reasoning here. If we agree that the files are definitely on the system how is it a "fishing expedition" to want to see those files for further investigation. A fishing expedition would be forcing everyone to submit their devices for inspection on the off chance of finding evidence - this case is one where the evidence is known to exist and a person is refusing to hand it over. The less emotive c…

> this case is one where the evidence is known to exist If that's the case the files aren't needed, they want to see the drive contents on the off chance of finding some other evidence.

Would you like to go to trial and attempt to persuade 12 non-technical jurors that "hashcodes" unequivocally demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that there is child porn on the external hard drive?

It's a foregone conclusion technically that the illegal content is on the hard drive. His guilt is not a foregone conclusion (not in the US anyway).

If you visit https://www.justice.org/sections/newsletters/articles/fifth-... and search for "foregone conclusion" you will get some good info.

The file hashes basically takeaway any good self-incrimination argument he could make and there might also be evidence of further criminality on the hard drive.

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

#325

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #37

Overtonwindow wrote: post #35

This raises an interesting idea: why not create two passwords for encrypted drives, one password decrypt the drive, another password completely wipes the drive. This way if someone is forced to give a password to decrypt something, that password renders the data moot. Thoughts?

Here's mine: destruction of evidence is a crime. Probably not the best idea. Hiding the partition or otherwise making the encrypted data hidden is probably your only bet.

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by wfo » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:35 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…

You are correct in that as a non-lawyer (I am a non-lawyer as well) you cannot read the law and reliably, confidently understand what it means, much in the same way a non-programmer cannot read read code and understand what it means.

There is a problem with this which is that non-lawyers are required to comply with the law but that's not really the issue here.

If you're trying to argue courts have gone through mental contortions to derive radical insane re-interperetations of the law that completely change its intent and meaning 180 degrees, and that the entire legal orthodoxy has gone through the same contortions in order to be able to practice law in its current state, you can do that and it's reasonable, but you should use better examples like e.g. the commerce clause, not slavery. Slavery was most definitely intentionally allowed, no interesting interpretation necessary.

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

#327

Post by wfo » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

shard972 wrote: post #62

eridius wrote: post #52

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. That said, personally I don't buy it. What if there's evidence of other illegal acts on the drive too, ones the police don't know about? Then decrypting the drive would definitely be incriminating because it would tell p…

> 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…

Similarly, if the police have a reasonable suspicion that there are illegal materials in your home, they should never be allowed to enter and search it against your will. Either they have enough evidence to charge you or they don't, right? So why bother searching? It doesn't matter if you have a nuclear weapon in your basement, if you say no they aren't allowed to come in and check/collect evidence that makes them certain no matter what the Geiger counter outside says.

Your reasoning invalidates all searches, all warrants, and it's everywhere in this thread, it's insane.

I'm all for security, privacy, encryption, Tor, but if the police have a strong enough reason to think I'm committing a horrible crime, and have convinced a judge to sign off on it, then yeah absolutely they should be allowed to search my computer. I don't get to say "Joke's on you g-man, we both know I'm a criminal and the evidence is right here and I can get into it, but I won't let you in until you've cracked my secret code!" The alternative is for them to just always assume encryption/Tor == criminal. The point is they can search /when they have a very good, explicit reason given to a judge/, not go on fishing expeditions or passively collect everything. You probably will lose your privacy for a little while if you're a reasonable target in a serious police investigation, that's always been the case, and it always will be.

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

#328

Post by sitkack » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:54 PM UTC

Buge wrote: post #99

oxide wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Keep in mind that a 17 year old taking a nude picture of themself is in possession of child pornography. Do you want a harsh minimum sentence for that?

Try them as an adult?

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

#329

Post by thinkmilitant » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

mrmstr wrote: post #160

Buge wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that a 17 year old taking a nude picture of themself is in possession of child pornography. Do you want a harsh minimum sentence for that?

You gotta cut the government some slack here, they have contracts with private prison providers and quotas to fulfill. Can't have compassion and reason get in the way of that. Also think of the children.

With private prisons only holding about 8.4%[1] the total state/federal inmates, do you perhaps mean prison guard unions?

[1]http://www.salon.com/2016/08/24/private-prisons-are-not-the-...

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

#330

Post by justinrandoh » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #78

_xhok wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The critical question is, why haven't they charged him? It is disingenuous of them to bring up the evidence they currently have essentially in an attempt to demonize him. Their evidence is sufficient or it isn't; if it is they should charge him; if not they're demanding self-incrimination.

You need to distinguish between requiring the defendant to turn over incriminating evidence (which the 5th amendment does not protect), and requiring the defendant to make incriminating statements ( i.e. to provide incriminating testimony). Sometimes, the act of producing evidence in response to a government request involves the defendant making implicit incriminating assertions. If the government says "produce all y…

>However, say the government asks you for your bank records. When you hand them over, you're implicitly saying "I have bank records," and "these are my bank records." That's not incriminating -- even if the bank records themselves might contain incriminating evidence.

Here's what I'm missing: why doesn't, in a similar vein, the government simply ask him to unlock the hard drives without any claimed assumption as to their contents?