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Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

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Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#61

Post by learc83 »

grecy wrote: post #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 ?

Happens all the time in child support cases. Dad won't pay because he says he doesn't have the money (or can't find a job), judge doesn't believe him and throws him in jail for contempt.

There's a huge lawsuit in Georgia arguing that this essentially creates a debtors prison.

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#62

Post by andylei »

andylei wrote: post #12
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #3

The 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 problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? This isn't really a problem. Cops can get a warrant to search your house, and I'm pretty sure they'll find some things that aren't illegal, but are very personal. If you restrict evidence finding procedure to those in which only evidence (and nothing else) can be found, then I'm pretty sure you'll end up with no evidence.

do people here honestly believe that its not okay for cops with warrants to search someone's encrypted hard drive because they might find something that's not illegal?

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#63

Post by Jach »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #31
Simucal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what the courts would say when told that it is possible to have a hidden inner volume that is impossible to detect and when I hand over my key it may just be the outer containers, not the hidden inner container that I have unlocked.

The best way to hide something is with misdirection and dead ends. It's by letting someone win a little but not all the way. If you're a straight male just make a second inner hidden volume and put a ton of gay porn on it. After a few days of arguing with the court just reveal your password to it and they'll think "oh shit, this is what he was hiding. Well nothing to see here, moving on. That's all."

This is the best comment really... I brought up Truecrypt's Hidden OS feature a while ago (here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3415658 ) and apparently in the UK you have to somehow prove the non-existence of such a thing. If you can't get them to leave you alone through such above trickery it becomes a fairly simple calculated choice deciding whether obstruction of justice is a less harmful penalty than what they want to find and charge you for after decryption.

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#64

Post by learc83 »

waiwai933 wrote: post #33

If I encrypt a letter by hand using, say, Caesar's cipher (despite how weak it is), could a court compel me (i.e. is there common law precedent in the US or elsewhere) to decrypt said letter? Surely there must be some precedent before we had computers and whatnot, right? This, after all, seems to be the closest-fitting analogy I can think of—both the "key to lock" and "privacy of mind" arguments seem to be stretching…

There is precedent that a court can't compel you give up the combination to a combination lock, because it would be considered testimony. Seems to me that this falls under that precedent.

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#65

Post by batista »

techiferous wrote: post #37
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #3

The 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. I don't have any of these. I'm not being contrary, just saying you should update your view that everyone has these things.

"Everyone", in common language, is not equivalent to the mathematical "all elements in the set". It just means "almost everybody, excluding very few people that might as well be statistical error". Actually, even 95% of the people qualifies as "everyone" for all practical purposes.

You might want to take a look at this: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#66

Post by EwanG »

techiferous wrote: post #37
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #3

The 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. I don't have any of these. I'm not being contrary, just saying you should update your view that everyone has these things.

Are you SURE you don't have any of these? That's one of the interesting things I've learned over the years. You may THINK you don't have any, or that you have never gone out of your way to get such. But that presumes that when you visited YouTube that the unlicensed excerpt you watched wasn't cached on your computer, and won't be found and used as evidence against you. That a friend or family member never borrowed your computer for a couple minutes to check email and left a copy of an attachment they shouldn't have had. And so on...

Oh, and you think folks who have no problem casually planting a bag of something in your car would have a problem dropping some files on your computer if they think that would help?

I'm not being contrary either, but to claim that you have nothing to hide could be seen as perjury for someone who wants to make sure they get you of something. And in this day and age I suspect the odds that you have something is higher than you may believe.

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#67

Post by [deleted] »

scottdw2 wrote: post #58

You can be compelled to produce a physical key to a safe. However what if the contents of the safe are paper with text written in an invented language, known only to you? Can you be compelled to translate them for the court? What if they just contained numbers? Could you be forced to explain what the numbers mean? I would conclude that such an action would violate the 5th ammendment. Forcing her to decrypt the hard d…

[deleted]

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#68

Post by WalterBright »

andylei wrote: post #62
andylei wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem here is what are they going to find that ISN'T Illegal? This isn't really a problem. Cops can get a warrant to search your house, and I'm pretty sure they'll find some things that aren't illegal, but are very personal. If you restrict evidence finding procedure to those in which only evidence (and nothing else) can be found, then I'm pretty sure you'll end up with no evidence.

do people here honestly believe that its not okay for cops with warrants to search someone's encrypted hard drive because they might find something that's not illegal?

Many people have secrets that, if disclosed, could ruin their lives even though they are not illegal. For example, a politician with politically unacceptable activities. I'm sure you can come up with examples, such are regularly reported on the news.

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#69

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #67
scottdw2 wrote: post #58

You can be compelled to produce a physical key to a safe. However what if the contents of the safe are paper with text written in an invented language, known only to you? Can you be compelled to translate them for the court? What if they just contained numbers? Could you be forced to explain what the numbers mean? I would conclude that such an action would violate the 5th ammendment. Forcing her to decrypt the hard d…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

#70

Post by jdietrich »

For anyone wondering what this might look like in practice, look up the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. There have been a number of prosecutions in the UK for failing to provide encryption keys, many of them resulting in imprisonment.

Notably, the first prosecution was of a paranoid schizophrenic man, who was moved to a secure psychiatric hospital during his prison sentence.

We have not yet had a test case regarding deniable encryption, but I imagine it will be only a matter of time.

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