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TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

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Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#191

Post by seanp2k »

sorbus wrote: post #127
maratd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what it would look like. VLC would have a link to D:\pirate_movie.avi but when you decrypt the volume, all it shows is a bunch of text files on D:\ ... because the password provided is a trigger for the software to show a bunch of text files, not your pirated movie collection. Granted, if we were working for the prosecutor we would be able to put 2 and 2 together ... but ... these are the same morons who j…

> these are the same morons who just a few days ago grabbed an entire rack instead of one server, not being able to tell the difference. The FBI agents who did that are very much not prosecutors (and we still don't know why the FBI did that; it may have been intentional).

THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW http://www.dedleg.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/m...

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#193

Post by otterley »

thehotdon wrote: post #189
otterley wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the plaintiff claimed it.

Wait, did you just say that seriously? Plaintiff: "There was a dead-body in the toilet, but the defendant has been regularly flushing, thereby destroying the evidence and proving his guilt." Judge: "Well, if you say it, it must be true!"

I was referring specifically to civil matters, not criminal ones. A relevant example would be a claim that D defrauded P; a finding that D intentionally destroyed evidence that would prove the fraud could be used to support a finding of fact that the fraud occurred.

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#194

Post by ja27 »

baisdl wrote: post #145
ThaddeusQuay wrote: post #104

This may be a hoax. There are only two occurrences of his name on PACER, and both are discharged bankruptcy cases. Also, the federal inmate locator ( http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp ) shows no one by that name.

Why would a guy facing federal charges be locked up in county jail?

Because there are no federal jails, or at least very few. So local/state agencies hold them until and throughout trial.

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#195

Post by Rophuine »

encoderer wrote: post #164
Duff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically, you are in trouble when you destroy evidence when you has reasonable cause to believe that it is evidence. If I delete all of my email today, I'm not committing a crime. But if I find out that my company is being sued for breach of a contract that I was working on, deleting email becomes suspicious.

My attorney has advised me that the best thing in this situation is to have a personal data retention policy: "I delete my email the first monday of every month." Then, do just that. If a civil or criminal case is brought against you the law says you must stop any routine houskeeping tasks like that to preserve evidence, but the most you'd have then is 4 weeks worth. Much better than 4 years.

The flip side is I escaped being charged with conspiracy to launder money because I had kept email from several years prior in which I complained at length to my manager about how a particular client was behaving, and then escalated it to his manager. Both managers were implicated, but I could show that I'd reported the behaviour and been reassured by two people who I trusted that nothing illegal was going on.

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#196

Post by AretNCarlsen »

sorbus wrote: post #129
AretNCarlsen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be perjury, though. You are now a Lying Guy, not just a Fifth Amendment Guy, and no amendment will be able to save you if they figure out that you gave a hidden volume password and claimed it as the "real" and only password. I'm not saying plausible deniability is bad, just that it would be better not to rely on technical arms races to protect fundamental rights. The Passive Aggressive Award will go to the…

You generally give them the non-hidden volume password, not the hidden volume password. This is because, unless you tell them so (or they see you using it, or have spyware on your system, etc.), there is absolutely no way to prove the existence of a hidden volume from looking at the file. There's also no way to prove that a truecrypt file does not contain a hidden volume, which leads to some interesting problems if p…

You're right, I butchered the jargon there. By "hidden volume" I meant the volume that is hidden during normal use, whereas the conventional meaning of that term is the volume that is hidden when you give the false password. Exact opposites.

> I recommend creating a hidden volume in any encrypted container...

Do you not want the recommendees to enjoy plausible deniability? After all, if they always create a hidden volume, they could reasonably be held in contempt for refusing to give two passwords for every volume.

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#197

Post by Rophuine »

Rophuine wrote: post #195
encoderer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My attorney has advised me that the best thing in this situation is to have a personal data retention policy: "I delete my email the first monday of every month." Then, do just that. If a civil or criminal case is brought against you the law says you must stop any routine houskeeping tasks like that to preserve evidence, but the most you'd have then is 4 weeks worth. Much better than 4 years.

The flip side is I escaped being charged with conspiracy to launder money because I had kept email from several years prior in which I complained at length to my manager about how a particular client was behaving, and then escalated it to his manager. Both managers were implicated, but I could show that I'd reported the behaviour and been reassured by two people who I trusted that nothing illegal was going on.

Actually, I should elaborate: if it were just two people I trusted reassuring me it was fine, I would probably have still been on the hook for contributory negligence. What got me off completely was the fact that the responses I got from the senior manager said that he'd passed all of my information on to the legal team, who'd been over it with a fine-toothed comb and decided it was all above-board. What got HIM in trouble was that he'd never passed it on to legal at all.

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#198

Post by xelfer »

Canada wrote: post #98
xelfer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truecrypt can have hidden volumes, the truecrypt file may be split into 1.5gb / 0.5gb. The truecrypt file reports 2GB, but different passwords mount different the different sized volumes, hence putting in the 512MB password will mount a 512MB volume of a 2GB file.

It works the way the parent says, not the way you say.

Oh, my bad then. I guess I should look at my volumes closer. :)

Re: TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

#200

Post by saranagati »

nkassis wrote: post #167
saranagati wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an EFF lawyer talked about this at toorcon last year and said the exact opposite of what you just said. What she basically said was that you can plead the fifth to not give up the password however the court can give you amnesty for whatever you say (the key) can not be used against you. The content that is found on the hard drive using that key could still be used against you. Once the court gives you amnesty you can…

I find that problematic in a way. If in a murder case the defendent was given immunity for him to say the statement "the body is buried at xyz" would the corpse being found using that statement be used against him? I can see this as still incriminating himself no?

bit late on the response but it's a different situation. Pleading the fifth isn't the same as not knowing or forgetting something. Murderers don't bury bodies then when caught say that they know where it's buried but aren't telling. Even if this was the case and they gave the defendant immunity for knowing where the body is, once they found the body they could use the body to try and find evidence to link the defendant to the murder. It's just like saying "ok well just because you know where the body is, it doesn't mean you murdered the person".
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