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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

#271

Post by deanCommie »

c3534l wrote: post #221
rayiner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’d also need to plant a sister who will testify that you showed her a bunch of child porn.

The question isn't if this particular man is guilty, it's if investigators and judges have the constitutional authority to sentence a person to life in prison because they think that a person remembers a password they say they don't remember.

No,t he question is also would the investigators and judges have sentenced this man without the additional child porn circumstantial evidence

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

#272

Post by tptacek »

300bps wrote: post #218
rayiner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’d also need to plant a sister who will testify that you showed her a bunch of child porn.

The judge's ruling says essentially what you're saying... there's enough evidence already that he considers it a foregone conclusion that there is child porn on the encrypted hard disk. The only problem I have with this argument is that if it is such compelling evidence why not send the case to trial and let a jury decide?

Because you can only send this case to a jury once without triggering double jeopardy, so the state has an interest in sending the strongest case it reasonably can.

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

#273

Post by toolz »

e12e wrote: post #209
slim wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could simply claim that the free space in your hard drive is an encrypted hard partition

Not if it was zeroed out, they couldn't. (Not reasonably, anyway).

So now I should zero out my unused space to prevent indefinite jail time? Seems like a flawed system.

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

#274

Post by derekp7 »

howlgram wrote: post #270
derekp7 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way would be to bang your head into the wall and cause an injury serious enough that a doctor could testify that you have brain damage and therefore memory loss.

Don't be silly

If I was innocent, and legitimately forgot my password, and faced an indefinite time locked away, I would probably actually consider that as an option. Now that act itself could be an act of contempt, but then again you could always use the excuse that someone else did it to you. Or you could pick a sufficiently damaging fight with another inmate or guard.

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

#275

Post by drostie »

c3534l wrote: post #223
drostie wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, he could have testified at the contempt hearing or presented any sort of evidence that he just plain forgot the password, and the court might have heard that. He opted to not testify or introduce any testimony at this hearing. So that court hearing did not seriously consider memory failure because the defendant did not seriously assert it. (Of course if he was lying about the failure of his memory, that asser…

He DID testify that he forgot his password.

Maybe he told the police that and maybe he told the public that -- he DID NOT testify this at his contempt hearing.

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

#276

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo »

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) ?

Did you read? He showed the pictures to his sister so the court is reasonable certain that he does know the password. If that's the case then he lied to police which is an offense in itself.

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

#277

Post by naikrovek »

c3534l wrote: post #221
rayiner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’d also need to plant a sister who will testify that you showed her a bunch of child porn.

The question isn't if this particular man is guilty, it's if investigators and judges have the constitutional authority to sentence a person to life in prison because they think that a person remembers a password they say they don't remember.

Well, he says he does remember it, and that he won't provide it, because he feels it is a 5th amendment violation.

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

#278

Post by sjy »

Clubber wrote: post #199
sjy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article relies on Doe v. United States , 487 U.S. 201 (1988)[1], in which the Supreme Court found that a suspect could be compelled to sign a form authorizing banks to disclose records of any accounts over which he had a right of withdrawal, because 'neither the form nor its execution communicates any factual assertions, implicit or explicit, or conveys any information to the Government.' Applying that decision,…

No, I meant judges in this particular case, not all judges. This is the key part. We do not disagree with the dissent that “[t]he expression of the contents of an individual’s mind” is testimonial communication for purposes of the Fifth Amendment. … We simply disagree with the dissent’s conclusion that the execution of the consent directive at issue here forced petitioner to express the contents of his mind. In our v…

That's a fair point, and the last sentence of my previous reply should be qualified: compelling someone to reveal the combination to a wall safe is not necessarily a violation of the Fifth Amendment. In this case, the court decided that the 'foregone conclusion' exception in Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391 (1976)[1] applies. In Fisher, the court acknowledged that producing documents in response to a subpoena can be testimonial, because it 'tacitly concedes the existence [and possession] of the papers demanded.' But when the existence of the location of the documents are a foregone conclusion, the testimonial aspect of the production of documents – the tacit concession as to their existence – adds 'little or nothing to the sum total of the Government's information.'

As you suggested, compulsory key disclosure can be a violation of the Fifth Amendment, and here the court referred to an example of that in In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated Mar. 25, 2011, 670 F.3d 1335 (2012)[2]. The difference was that in In re Grand Jury Subpoena, there was no evidence that the TrueCrypt volumes contained any data, and no evidence that the suspect could actually decrypt them.

[1]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/425/391/case.htm...

[2]: https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_case?case=201586737907...

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

#279

Post by lsaferite »

dTal wrote: post #76
lsaferite wrote: post #58

> The suspect appealed the indefinite prison sentence twice, but both appeals failed. His lawyers tried to argue that holding him breaches his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself, but appeal judges did not see it that way. Judges pointed out that the Fifth Amendment only applies to witnesses and that the prosecutors didn't call him as a witness but only made a request for him to unlock his device, hence…

I think you misread; the government doesn't know the password. Nor are they interested in the password, per se; they are interested in the contents of the suspect's hard drive. Therefore, rather than ask for the password itself, which is information contained in his head and therefore arguably "testimony", they are merely compelling him to perform an "action" in decrypting the drive; he is free to keep the secret of…

I find that so wrong I guess. The act of decrypting the drive is "testimonial" itself, even without providing the password to a third party.

But yes, I agree that I misunderstood what they were saying.

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

#280

Post by Para2016 »

Crontab wrote: post #168
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…

Well, it is also bullshit to require the subject of an investigation to assist in their own investigation. I don't care what the laws says - it's wrong.

They have a warrant to access the device and he won't unlock it. I think he should have to unlock it, sort of like unlocking your house if they have a warrant for searching it.

My dislike for police is eclipsed by my dislike for pedophiles. So I'm biased here.

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