If the drive is encrypted, how can they say in contains hashes of know illegal content? Unless the content is shared in its encrypted form along with the key... This sounds like BS on their part.
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
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You have misunderstood what "foregone conclusion" means in this case. It is not a foregone conclusion that this is child porn on the disks. It is a foregone conclusion that there is something on the disks and that something is encrypted with a password known by the defendant. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
You're mistaken.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...
Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have misunderstood what "foregone conclusion" means in this case. It is not a foregone conclusion that this is child porn on the disks. It is a foregone conclusion that there is something on the disks and that something is encrypted with a password known by the defendant. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
You're mistaken. Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...
The author of the arstechnica piece (who, unlike the author of the Washington Post piece, is not a laywer) hasn't really explained things well. It's worth reading the actual decision from the court[1].
A relavent paragraph:
In Fisher, however, the Court also articulated the “foregone conclusion” rule, which acts as an exception to the otherwise applicable act-of-production doctrine. Fisher, 425 U.S. at 411. Under this rule, the Fifth Amendment does not protect an act of production when any potentially testimonial component of the act of production—such as the existence, custody, and authenticity of evidence—is a “foregone conclusion” that “adds little or nothing to the sum total of the Government’s information.” Id. For the rule to apply, the Government must be able to “describe with reasonable particularity” the documents or evidence it seeks to compel. Hubbell, 530 U.S. at 30.
Note that the issue with this question is the "existence, custody, and authenticity" of the evidence not its actual contents.
1. https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rawlsopin...
Re: Man Who Refused to Decrypt Hard Drives Still in Prison After Two Years
#284> Investigators said content stored on the encrypted hard drive matched file hashes for known child pornography content How on earth is this supposed to work? Unless they can decrypt the hard drives I am pretty sure that this is impossible to deduce. Maybe he used freenet or something in his unencrypted hard drive?
My best guess is that something on the unencrypted Mac Pro was referencing files on the encrypted drive. I'm not sure what kind of metadata macOS stores or what a third-party app would have, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine that something had hashes for files on the external drive.