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Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

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Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#61

Post by JorgeGT »

jancsika wrote: post #29

There's a better article in Ars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef... From that article: > The court also noted that the authorities "found [on the Mac Book Pro] one image depicting a pubescent girl in a sexually suggestive position and logs that suggested the user had visited groups with titles common in child exploitation." They also said the man's sister had "reported" that her brother s…

> The court also noted that the authorities "found [on the Mac Book Pro] one image depicting a pubescent girl in a sexually suggestive position and logs that suggested the user had visited groups with titles common in child exploitation." They also said the man's sister had "reported" that her brother showed her hundreds of pictures and videos of child pornography.

The fact that hey have so much evidence and yet they still prefer to lock him up in jail until he decrypts the drive rather than convict him makes me believe this case is intended to provide jurisprudence in order to force other people to unlock encrypted devices in much more dubious cases.

Not unlike the "locked iPhone" case where terrorists had destroyed all the devices that could be of interest and yet the FBI went against Apple because the case appeared very good to get support in the public eye (it's to catch terrorists!).

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#62

Post by jo909 »

geofft wrote: post #40
jancsika wrote: post #29

There's a better article in Ars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef... From that article: > The court also noted that the authorities "found [on the Mac Book Pro] one image depicting a pubescent girl in a sexually suggestive position and logs that suggested the user had visited groups with titles common in child exploitation." They also said the man's sister had "reported" that her brother s…

> "The fact remains that the government has not brought charges," Donoghue said in a telephone interview. "Our client has now been in custody for almost 18 months based on his assertion of his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination." To be clear (and I am pretty sure the public defender knows this, but is just phrasing it like this for public perception), the prosecution's position is that the Fif…

My analogy would be that

  1. There is an unbreakable safe
  2. The judge believes he has the key to the unbreakable safe
  3. They know there is evidence inside the safe
  4. They ask him to unlock the safe
  5. He refuses to do so, so they try to force him by jailing him
They do not ask him to testify about the safes contents or even to hand over the key, just to "insert and turn the key". And their argument is that he can not refuse that by pleading the fifth. In a physical world they would be able to seize the key from him by force even if he gets hurt in the process (within some limits).

In the end he will probably be able to argue that he does no longer have the key, and they will not be able to proof he still has. But _at the moment_ this is not whats being argued about.

(Not saying I find anything about that right or just or moral, but I do not find it completely without reason)

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#63

Post by ZenoArrow »

libeclipse wrote: post #36
ZenoArrow wrote: post #34

One potential option: 1. Install a hardware keylogger (software keylogger wouldn't work) in the laptop. 2. Release the defendant. 3. Get a warrant for the arrest of the defendant for CP-related crime. 4. Decrypt the laptop with the password recovered from the keylogger. All of this depends on the suspect using the laptop again, but I'm guessing they'd want to recover the contents on the laptop.

Anyone with half a brain wouldn't trust anything they get back from a third party.

We're talking about someone who openly shared his illegal porn habits with a family member. I don't think we're looking at a Mensa champion.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#64

Post by Pharylon »

JohnBooty wrote: post #56
mcny wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely but I'll go further. Having something in your hard drive or book or whatever should never be a crime in itself. I mean in India it is a crime to carry an authentic map of India with you. What harm does the contents of an encrypted disk do to society? It is not like he was going out and trying to legalize child abuse. If the person was involved in child abuse, we must try to convict him absolutely but we sh…

Yeah, I'm uncomfortable with the banning of certain kinds of content. The root problem here is child abuse. Anybody abusing children, or financially supporting the abuse of children, is doing a seriously bad thing and this is what should be illegal. I'm highly skeptical that images on a hard drive can cause the abuse of children. That's the same kind of logic people used back in the 1970s to argue that playing D&D an…

But children were abused to create these photos.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#65

Post by kakarot »

lagadu wrote: post #55

What's appalling about this is that it effectively means that anyone can be arrested potentially for life because they forgot a password. As someone who has forgotten passwords in the past: this is outrageous.

When I was in jail for only a month, I forgot a password I had recently changed, and when I got back home I ended up having to reformat my hard drive and lost a lot of old data. Poems, prose, music, images from my childhood... (well, what was left from recovering a failed drive from a year earlier, anyways)

Put me in jail for a year or two and I'll probably lose access to everything I own.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#66

Post by maaaats »

poizan42 wrote: post #25
Pywarrior wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storing hashes of unencrypted files, would that allow FileVault to verify it was decrypted without error?

The correct order is hash then encrypt, exactly so you can't do that. Now I don't know if FileVault is doing this correctly, but hopefully it does. Edit: So two people have downvoted me without explanation. Is what I'm saying wrong?

You can't unhash, so you could never retrieve the original file again.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#67

Post by Clubber »

jo909 wrote: post #62
geofft wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The fact remains that the government has not brought charges," Donoghue said in a telephone interview. "Our client has now been in custody for almost 18 months based on his assertion of his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination." To be clear (and I am pretty sure the public defender knows this, but is just phrasing it like this for public perception), the prosecution's position is that the Fif…

My analogy would be that 1. There is an unbreakable safe 2. The judge believes he has the key to the unbreakable safe 3. They know there is evidence inside the safe 4. They ask him to unlock the safe 5. He refuses to do so, so they try to force him by jailing him They do not ask him to testify about the safes contents or even to hand over the key, just to "insert and turn the key". And their argument is that he can n…

I think a more apt analogy is a cyphered letter. Instead of anything physical like turning a key, the judge is compelling him to decipher the letter.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#68

Post by ZenoArrow »

ship_it wrote: post #43
ZenoArrow wrote: post #34

One potential option: 1. Install a hardware keylogger (software keylogger wouldn't work) in the laptop. 2. Release the defendant. 3. Get a warrant for the arrest of the defendant for CP-related crime. 4. Decrypt the laptop with the password recovered from the keylogger. All of this depends on the suspect using the laptop again, but I'm guessing they'd want to recover the contents on the laptop.

> Install a keylogger: Ok, check. Keylogger installed. > Release the defendant: If this is judges decision, he can't be in court again for the same crime. > Get a warrant for the arrest: Again? Isn't he released? As such, gov must not return laptop with backdoor either in hardware or software mode. > Decrypt the laptop: Even if all above matched, you think he'd use the same laptop again? If he has a bit of brain, I t…

> "If this is judges decision, he can't be in court again for the same crime."

He hasn't been charged with a crime yet.

> "Again? Isn't he released? As such, gov must not return laptop with backdoor either in hardware or software mode."

Don't release him fully then. Release him on bail or some other form of conditional release.

> "Even if all above matched, you think he'd use the same laptop again? If he has a bit of brain, I think he wouldn't."

Admittedly this is the weakest part of the suggestion. It'd rely on the person being addicted to CP to impair his judgement.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#69

Post by poizan42 »

maaaats wrote: post #66
poizan42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct order is hash then encrypt, exactly so you can't do that. Now I don't know if FileVault is doing this correctly, but hopefully it does. Edit: So two people have downvoted me without explanation. Is what I'm saying wrong?

You can't unhash, so you could never retrieve the original file again.

What do you mean? You obviously store the encrypted file together with the encrypted hash.

Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years

#70

Post by maxerickson »

NiklasMort wrote: post #8
ddorian43 wrote: post #5

`Investigators said content stored on the encrypted hard drive matched file hashes for known child pornography content.` Well there's the reasoning

that makes 0 sense, if the files are encrypted they cannot be a match

Yeah, it's likely an error propagated or introduced by the Bleeping Computer reporter.

This article talks about "data" related to Freenet and filenames:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160908_Should_ex-Philly_...

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