Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
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Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#2[deleted]
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#3The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal?
Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents. Then there's content that isn't illegal but very personal: chat logs, email archives, contact lists, usernames & passwords, FTP info, master passwords to everything, OH and my entire life's worth of inventions and ideas. I'm not saying they'd steal them but remember, we're talking about the American Government here. The same one that can't account for billions of dollars in missing money. Lost 6.6 Billion in Iraq and doesn't know what happened to it. And doesn't know how or why a warehouse full of missiles in the middle east is empty. If that's how they treat their money and weapons, I wonder how they're going to treat my life's work. So...
Just use TrueCrypt to create a hidden volume on a flash drive or SD card, keep everything else un-encrypted. They won't even know it's there. I've got a 32 GB SD card just for this purpose, it's got all my project files on it, thunderbird portable, my entire collection of inventions and business ideas, my life's work basically. If anyone were to plug that card in, it would just read "card has not been formatted yet". I've got a backup of it as well.
If you have a hard drive full of torrented content or DVD rips that look like torrented content just make 2 TrueCrypt volumes, one that is visible (put some porn on it to simulate a "this is all I have hidden" excuse) and the other volume hidden (with all of your pirated content). They literally won't ever know it was there.
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#4>Dubois said that, in addition, his client may not be able to decrypt the laptop for any number of reasons. "If that's the case, then we'll report that fact to the court, and the law is fairly clear that people cannot be punished for failure to do things they are unable to do," he said.
So can everyone just claim they can't decrypt their drive because of ?
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#5This is an interesting case. From a civil liberties, card-carrying ACLU member standpoint, I'm all for the "anti" side of this - keep the gov't out.
On the other hand, there's a decent case made that establishing this kind of precedent would basically mean that if criminals are smart enough to use PGP, then that data can never be used against them. Since you can be compelled to turn over a physical key via due process, why can you not also be compelled to turn over a digital one?
Most of the privacy arguments vanish as well since they don't want the password (which could give them access to other things they're not supposed to have), but they just want the data.
I'll be watching this one closely.
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#6The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents. Then there's content that isn't illegal but very personal: chat logs, email archives, contact lists, usernames & passwords, FTP info, master passwords to everything, OH and my entire life's worth of inventions and ideas. I'm not saying they'd steal them but remember, we're talking about the A…
The fact that you have truecrypt installed on your start menu is a dead giveaway.
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#7The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents. Then there's content that isn't illegal but very personal: chat logs, email archives, contact lists, usernames & passwords, FTP info, master passwords to everything, OH and my entire life's worth of inventions and ideas. I'm not saying they'd steal them but remember, we're talking about the A…
The fact that you have truecrypt installed on your start menu is a dead giveaway.
No, he has a plausible deniability plan.
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#8The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents. Then there's content that isn't illegal but very personal: chat logs, email archives, contact lists, usernames & passwords, FTP info, master passwords to everything, OH and my entire life's worth of inventions and ideas. I'm not saying they'd steal them but remember, we're talking about the A…
>Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents
That's a bit of a leap, really.
Also, Truecrypt's deniable encryption here doesn't seem like it would help, since they're talking at the computer level. Presumably, a power on or hard drive password. Assuming there's only one volume, you put that one in and the attacker has the keys to the kingdom.
Besides that, most averages joes wouldn't go through this kind of trouble. If you're running in opposition to a ruling power who might, say, launch a missile at you from 30,000 feet while you're in foreign territory (not naming any names here), then you probably already know to cover your ass.
On the other hand, an average joe thinking that they're cute by giving up the password to the concealed volume will only land a contempt charge when the file access times are checked.
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#9The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents. Then there's content that isn't illegal but very personal: chat logs, email archives, contact lists, usernames & passwords, FTP info, master passwords to everything, OH and my entire life's worth of inventions and ideas. I'm not saying they'd steal them but remember, we're talking about the A…
...unless Chris Norstrom is your real name and they know how to use a search engine to find this post.
Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
#10The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? Everyone has cracked software, pirated movies, & torrents. Then there's content that isn't illegal but very personal: chat logs, email archives, contact lists, usernames & passwords, FTP info, master passwords to everything, OH and my entire life's worth of inventions and ideas. I'm not saying they'd steal them but remember, we're talking about the A…
You could even get a MicroSD card, stick it in your phone, and carry it across that way.