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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

#71

Post by gte910h »

gcr wrote: post #6
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 fact that you have truecrypt installed on your start menu is a dead giveaway.

Truecrypt is also excellent full disk encryption in case your computer is stolen

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

#72

Post by gte910h »

eck wrote: post #51

Isn't this one of the things TPMs are designed to defend you against? The TPM only releases the encryption key after the right password is entered, some number of wrong passwords cause a reset, and perhaps a single duress code instantly causes a reset? Once the TPM is erased, who's to tell if it wasn't just broken to begin with.

You mirror drives as part of evidence collection

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

#73

Post by scottdw2 »

Karunamon wrote: post #5

This 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 proces…

They savy criminal argument doesn't pass constitutional muster.

You could say "allowing criminals to not testify against themselves could frustrate law enforcement because a savy criminal could just commit everything to memory."

The 5th ammendment clearly says "too bad, those are the rules."

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

#74

Post by IgorPartola »

nirvana wrote: post #60

I wonder about this: What if the key to the encryption is written on a dozen seemingly random notes on yellow sticky notes in your office full of yellow sticky notes? Or, it is composed of the last letter on each page of a series of innocuous looking documents, such that the government might seize the documents but naturally in the process of doing so, scramble the documents order rendering the password irretrievable…

Sure. You could do even better: keep your computer on at all times and keep everything you do in RAM. No encryption is necessary here, just a $100 UPS and your laptop's own battery.

The problem with all these comments about "what if I give half of my phrase to a friend?" or "what if I write it in the dust at the entrance to my house and the FBI wipes it away when they bust in?" is that it doesn't really address the core issue. There is no technological solution to this situation:

1. The gov't can just give up on the idea of looking at encrypted drives. Not likely and possibly bad for society as a whole. I am not able to judge that.

2. The judge can just refuse to understand that there is no way to decrypt the drive and hold you in contempt of the court indefinitely at which point you'll be cursing yourself for not burying the passphrase chiseled into a stone in your back yard.

3. The gov't makes it illegal to encrypt drives without giving them the keys. At best this is done through some kind of third-party escrow service so that an actual warrant needs to be given before the key is given out. At worst, you just drop off your encryption keys with the nearest post office.

4. There is no #4. The judicial system won't just go "well, this guy has an encrypted drive and we can't get in. Let's just let him go since he clearly outsmarted us." They either will find something else on you, or compel you to decrypt the drive.

Like I said, there is no technical solution, only social/behavioral. Encryption became too sophisticated and there isn't much that we can do nowadays.

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

#75

Post by cynest »

nirvana wrote: post #60

I wonder about this: What if the key to the encryption is written on a dozen seemingly random notes on yellow sticky notes in your office full of yellow sticky notes? Or, it is composed of the last letter on each page of a series of innocuous looking documents, such that the government might seize the documents but naturally in the process of doing so, scramble the documents order rendering the password irretrievable…

The problem here is that you have to convince people you're telling the truth. If there are any number of stenographic techniques at your disposal, and only way to confirm whether you're being honest is if the drive decrypts, then unless that occurs it can't be easily determined whether you were giving a good faith answer or not.

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

#76

Post by techtalsky »

chimeracoder wrote: post #55
meatmanek wrote: post #48

A stupid idea: what if we passed a law making, say, knowing an encryption key illegal, with a $0.01 penalty per year? Then asking you for your encryption key would be asking you to provide self-incriminating testimony.

You don't need to do that - there's a decent argument to be made that forcing you to decrypt a drive is already forcing you to testify against yourself, in violation of the 5th Amendment.

Right, and that's what the article says a judge decided is NOT the case.

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

#77

Post by IgorPartola »

kinghajj wrote: post #53
Karunamon wrote: post #5

This 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 proces…

My understanding of existing case law regarding safes is that you can be compelled to give up a key, as it is just physical property to which the state has right to request, but can not be compelled to give a combination, as that is just memory and would violate the fifth amendment. Just because cryptographers use the term "key" doesn't mean the should be treated as real keys. It seems obvious that a key/paraphrase i…

You don't have to give up a key. They would be asking you to decrypt the drive. Whether that requires you to enter a passphrase or turn on the webcam and do a jig, it doesn't matter. They have no interest in your key/password/secret 4 digit code. They want the contents of the drive.

Now they could be playing at a disadvantage, but the point is that the 5th amendment does not enter into here. If the police have a warrant for papers in your safe, they simply ask you to open the safe, by whatever means. This is no different when they have a warrant for files (papers, information) on your encrypted drive (safe) and are asking you to open it by whatever means.

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

#78

Post by yew »

gte910h wrote: post #72
eck wrote: post #51

Isn't this one of the things TPMs are designed to defend you against? The TPM only releases the encryption key after the right password is entered, some number of wrong passwords cause a reset, and perhaps a single duress code instantly causes a reset? Once the TPM is erased, who's to tell if it wasn't just broken to begin with.

You mirror drives as part of evidence collection

. . . which is subsequently rendered useless by the TPM erasing itself.

(The standard procedure is to encrypt the drive using a key stored in the TPM. The TPM then decrypts the drive when provided with the proper authentication. If the designated security policy is violated the TPM destroys the key, rendering the drive's contents useless.)

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

#80

Post by newbusox »

Simucal wrote: post #15
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…

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 jurisprudence in this area has to evolve. In a house, for example, the police might be able to search your house because they have a warrant, or they might be able to search your house because of any other exception to the warrant requirement. In all of those cases, police can only search for discrete things--as in, they probably couldn't turn over your bed, unless they thought someone was hiding under it, or the warrant they got suggested that they could. The "plain view" doctrine might indicate that something clearly illegal in plain view could be seized, but this is somewhat narrowly tailored.

If digital jurisprudence evolves the same way, perhaps a warrant (or discovery request) could be obtained to search within a single folder only, but not another, or the like. Perhaps there are cases out there like this already--but possibly a whole body of jurisprudence needs to evolve to deal with these issues.

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