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Then you could give up the key, but tell them "see, it's broken and I haven't been able to use it anyway."
"I shot the sheriff."
Then you could claim that supplying your password would constitute self-incrimination, and so you'd like to invoke your 5th Amendment rights :)
What if she can't remember the pass phrase? Of course, she could be lying, but how could they prove that?
A case. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsN...
The tech. http://www.forensic-centre.com/assessments/brainwave-profili...
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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…
Go to a foreign country. Buy a flash drive. Set up two partitions; make one a small TrueCrypt bootstrap partition, configured to decrypt the second with a password. Random-wipe the second. (For insurance, you may wish to do this provably. Maybe use a publicly-accessible source of random data?)
Travel back across the border. When you are asked to decrypt your drive, inform the authority that you are unable to do so, since no password exists, and the data is utterly meaningless.
They will probably want you to provide some evidence of this. Refuse; insist that you cannot be required to prove that you have not done something wrong.
If all goes well, they'll arrest you for something. Then, call a lawyer.
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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 warr…
This seems acceptable if they have a warrant for the contents of your safe. If they had a warrant for "evidence" and no knowledge or reason to believe that it was in the safe, could they open it/force you to open it simply because you own the safe. Similarly, if you had a hard drive, could they force decryption without knowing how the contents relate to the case.
Another issue that comes to mind is what happens if a hard drive containing truly random data is found, but the state thinks it contains encrypted data. Could someone be held in contempt for not releasing the (nonexistant) keys. This is probably related to the problem of destroyed keys.
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…
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…
I know this is rare, but in my opinion it's best to reason about the digital world by explicitly ignoring any analogies to the real world. Rep. Watt said during the SOPA committee hearings that we need parallels in the virtual world to the physical world. I couldn't disagree more.
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That's not a leap at all. Many people don't have things like that, either for moral reasons, or there just don't care. Of the four computers I maintain for others, none of them has anything on your list. You can despise the MPAA without downloading movies. Just as you can desire privacy without committing any crimes.
Many? Yes, I agree. Most? I personally highly doubt it. I don't think I've known a single person since the late 90s who doesn't on at least rare occasion download or otherwise acquire unlicensed music. Sure there are some, and when you consider the population of the world is several billion that "some" can become "many" without really saying anything about the majority.
That may be a matter of definitions. While I wouldn't say I have any unlicensed music, I might if you count my YouTube cache file.
What if you made your passphrase itself a confession to a crime? "I shot the sheriff." Then you could claim that supplying your password would constitute self-incrimination, and so you'd like to invoke your 5th Amendment rights :)