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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

#131

Post by johncolanduoni »

lenkite wrote: post #49

So the police no longer need to plant drugs. They can just plant encrypted hard drives to which you have 'forgotten' the password. Hard-drives containing hashes of 'bad' pics. And then you can spend your life in jail (unless you plead guilty) ?

If they're going to do that, they might as well just leave the pictures unencrypted. I don't see how encrypting it and then going through all these gymnastics in court helps them; in fact doing that seems like a good way to draw unnecessary attention to the frame job.

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

#132

Post by kobeya »

shaggerty wrote: post #121
Powerofmene wrote: post #117

When the FBI used the All Writs Act against Apple to attempt to force Apple to bypass the password functions of an iPhone or develop a backdoor method of access, the courts ruled that decryption was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment "if the contents were a foregone conclusion." So if "foregone conclusion" is the criteria that must be met, I have to ask how the contents of this man's external hard drive could be…

The article says that there are hashes of known child pornography content on the drive.

How does that happen? Technically I mean? This isn't full disk encryption? What terrible software leaked the hashes of what it was encrypting? This seems highly relevant to the discussion.

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

#133

Post by Powerofmene »

shaggerty wrote: post #121
Powerofmene wrote: post #117

When the FBI used the All Writs Act against Apple to attempt to force Apple to bypass the password functions of an iPhone or develop a backdoor method of access, the courts ruled that decryption was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment "if the contents were a foregone conclusion." So if "foregone conclusion" is the criteria that must be met, I have to ask how the contents of this man's external hard drive could be…

The article says that there are hashes of known child pornography content on the drive.

But that does not mean he downloaded them if someone else has access to his computer nor does that mean they are still there.

I read the article to mean that the police have proof that hashes of known child pornography were downloaded and are not on the computer so they are assuming that they were downloaded to the external hard drive. How can they see what files are sitting on a password protected encrypted drive? Who is to say that it is this external hard drive these files were download onto?

I just believe that more is needed to meet the "foregone conclusion" threshold.

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

#134

Post by gshulegaard »

shaggerty wrote: post #121
Powerofmene wrote: post #117

When the FBI used the All Writs Act against Apple to attempt to force Apple to bypass the password functions of an iPhone or develop a backdoor method of access, the courts ruled that decryption was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment "if the contents were a foregone conclusion." So if "foregone conclusion" is the criteria that must be met, I have to ask how the contents of this man's external hard drive could be…

The article says that there are hashes of known child pornography content on the drive.

Not quite. Investigators said they had found he had downloaded thousands of files whose hash values matched known child pornography [1]. The files were not found on his computer so they wanted to decrypt his external drive to see if they were there...

Which makes more sense to me...I believe it is unlikely that hash values would remain intact through encryption.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rawlsopin...

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

#135

Post by johncolanduoni »

ada1981 wrote: post #122
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…

How does one prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that I haven't actually forgotten the password? If I've forgotten the password, wouldn't I no longer be in a position to aid in obtaining the evidence? Would the burden of proof be on the fed to prove that I have not forgotten the password? If I lost the physical keys to a vault, could in be held for not being able to open it? I think Child pornography / abuse is one of…

> How does one prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that I haven't actually forgotten the password?

It appears the disk wasn't fully encrypted (since they found hashes of individual files), so they likely know when the computer was last used and possibly when the data in question was last decrypted. I don't think the former being very recent should be enough to establish that he hasn't forgotten the password, but the latter sure seems like a good standard.

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

#136

Post by mdekkers »

shaggerty wrote: post #121
Powerofmene wrote: post #117

When the FBI used the All Writs Act against Apple to attempt to force Apple to bypass the password functions of an iPhone or develop a backdoor method of access, the courts ruled that decryption was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment "if the contents were a foregone conclusion." So if "foregone conclusion" is the criteria that must be met, I have to ask how the contents of this man's external hard drive could be…

The article says that there are hashes of known child pornography content on the drive.

there are hashes of known child pornography content on the drive

On an encrypted drive? Sounds like bullshit to me.

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

#137

Post by kortex »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #126
roblabla wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, justice doesn't carry out fully. Cases fail for a variety of reasons. We sometimes fail to charge the guilty. The reason why it works this way is simple : it's better than charging the innocent. What should happen in this case IMO is that they should charge him with whatever they have right this moment, and if it fails, release him. Infinite detaining of individuals should be impossible, no matter what. Th…

I agree that indefinite detention of individuals without charge is dangerous, and I would not advocate for that. However, it's important to understand the precendence that would be set by the case you describe. Assuming that the evidence outside of what's stored on the encrypted hard drive is flimsy, and the charges are dropped, are we then open to the idea of untouchable criminals? If all it takes to be a criminal t…

What ramifications does it have for our legal system if you can be convicted without solid evidence, only circumstantial online activity?

Encryption, once you lose the key, effectively destroys data. If you wanna charge someone with destruction of evidence, then charge that.

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

#138

Post by johncolanduoni »

beisner wrote: post #111
foldr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're in possession of the original files they can just look at the files to see what they contain.

There could be a hash collision, which might be enough to provide reasonable doubt for a jury.

The chances of a hash collision are drastically lower than the false positive rate of a DNA test, and US courts have accepted the latter for a long time.

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

#139

Post by DanBC »

kobeya wrote: post #132
shaggerty wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that there are hashes of known child pornography content on the drive.

How does that happen? Technically I mean? This isn't full disk encryption? What terrible software leaked the hashes of what it was encrypting? This seems highly relevant to the discussion.

It doesn't happen like that.

They know he downloaded files which have the same hash values as known images of child sexual abuse.

They arrest him and search him. They can't find these images but they find an encrypted hard drive.

In some countries (England) they can ask for the keys, and not handing over the keys is its own offence (with 2 or 5 year sentence depending on the supposed contents).

I have no idea what the legal situation is in any other countries.

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

#140

Post by mdekkers »

threatofrain wrote: post #109
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…

If there is such overwhelming evidence that it's a foregone conclusion, then I wonder why they haven't charged and convicted the man already. Why do they need any cooperation at all?

If there is such overwhelming evidence that it's a foregone conclusion, then I wonder why they haven't charged and convicted the man already. Why do they need any cooperation at all?

It isn't about childporn, or whatever this guy is accused of doing. This is about "you are not doing as you are told, citizen, and we will fuck you up for that".

It is about control, in the same way that security theater at airports isn't about security.

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