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Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

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Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not braindead simple 5th amendment stuff. Among the unsettled the questions in this case: (1) is providing a decryption key a testimonial act? (2) are the contents of the drives would constitute testimony protected by the 5th Amendment? Courts have come to different conclusions on both questions. Experts disagree on both questions. Even the precursor question (is requiring a defendant to provide the combinati…

(1) is obviously true. Nobody can dispute this in good faith, even if the jurisprudence is hard to settle among bad actors. Prosecutors are simply upset technology makes the 5th powerful. (2) is obviously false. You can't get to it without testimony, though, so too bad. This is the intention of the 5th. The court avoided the 5th Amendment issues because, again, the courts are a joke.

(1) is not obviously true. Even judges known to favor defendant's rights can't agree whether this would constitute a testimonial act. Claiming otherwise suggests that you don't understand how the law works, how the technology works, or both.

(2) is not obviously false, because you're conflating two separate things: the encryption key and the contents of the encrypted device. Using the analogy of a locked safe: a picture taken by the defendant, for example, would be testimonial, but a picture taken by a third party would not. There's no way to know without actually reviewing the contents.

If you have a simplistic understanding of the law, it's easy to make black and white statements. But the law is not deterministic code, and has never worked that way.

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device?

> "I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device? Try to think about it from the court's point of view. The truth could be: A. You legitimately forgot. B. You're lying. I know which one Occam's Razor favors.

A. You're innocent.

B. You're guilty.

Uh, this is the essential question to begin with. The judge doesn't decide this unless you're in clown court.

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device?

For the third time: the courts are a joke. edit: I hope every boot-licker that downvotes this comment gets to learn the hard way.

I don't think people are downvoting you because they disagree with your assertion that the court system is in some way bad, they're downvoting you because you're just basically saying 'courts sux man' with no further information, which adds nothing to the discussion.

Also now they're probably downvoting you because you're calling them 'bootlickers'.

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My most important passphrases are very complicated, and I lose the ability to reproduce them from muscle memory (the only place they exist) after a few days of non-use. How can you prove passphrases are remembered?

They don't have to prove that you remember the passphrases. They just have to show that the encrypted devices/partitions/whatever were in your custody at the time of encryption. Then you have to (a) show why you weren't the one to encrypt the devices or (b) make a 5th Amendment argument about why you don't have to turn over the encryption key during which time you may be incarcerated. "I forgot" is generally not a va…

> "I forgot" is generally not a valid defense.

The number of times that people invoke "I don't recall" while giving testimony under oath says otherwise.

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#26
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device?

> "I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device? Try to think about it from the court's point of view. The truth could be: A. You legitimately forgot. B. You're lying. I know which one Occam's Razor favors.

The whole point of a justice system is that Occam and his Razor are a terrible way of determining guilt.

Yeah, I'd bet that most people claiming to have forgotten a key or password are lying. But so what? How do you differentiate those who're concealing vs. those that legitimately don't know the string of characters? If they float, they're a witch, if they sink, then I guess they're not? (That's what 18 months for contempt is akin to)

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#27
post #4

Idea: write malware that drops random data/encrypted files on the infected devices drive but is otherwise harmless, distribute widely. Bam! Plausible deniability for everyone.

Malware? Include with the operating system, to use the unused part (which might be all of it) of the encrypted partition for random data. Anyone who has no encrypted files, will not know the password to decrypt it, because there isn't any.

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device?

> "I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device? Try to think about it from the court's point of view. The truth could be: A. You legitimately forgot. B. You're lying. I know which one Occam's Razor favors.

I don't. I have users that forget their password 5 minutes after they set it.

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#29
post #7

> The Fifth Amendment gives witnesses a right not to testify against themselves. Rawls argued that producing a password for the hard drives would amount to an admission that he owned the hard drives. But the 3rd Circuit rejected that argument. It held that the government already had ample evidence that Rawls owned the hard drives and knew the passwords required to decrypt them. So ordering Rawls to decrypt the drives…

> Rawls argued that producing a password for the hard drives would amount to an admission that he owned the hard drives. But the 3rd Circuit rejected that argument. It held that the government already had ample evidence that Rawls owned the hard drives and knew the passwords required to decrypt them. So ordering Rawls to decrypt the drives wouldn't give the government any information it didn't already have. Of course…

They can't require you to personally admit to it, but if they know about a notebook where you wrote it they can require you to give up the notebook. (The rule makes more sense if you think about it in terms of financial crimes; it'd be hard to ever prosecute someone for fraud if they didn't have to give up their books.)

Re: Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt

#30
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device?

> "I encrypted the device but don't have the key" isn't a defense to being compelled to decrypt the device? Try to think about it from the court's point of view. The truth could be: A. You legitimately forgot. B. You're lying. I know which one Occam's Razor favors.

But it could also be that you legitimately accounted for such threat of the government trying to force you to decrypt your disks and made keys volatile and unrecoverable.
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