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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

#151
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."

I really like this idea but I think it is important to ensure that whatever XXX material you have, the actors are clearly over 18. Lord knows it may make your standing far worse if you have anything pushing the line.

So, 30+ year old models in your Safe For Government/get out of jail porn directory.

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

#152
Does the defendant's fate hinge on the contents of this laptop? It seems not: the article mentions other evidence against her.

If a case hinges entirely on the contents of an encrypted laptop, perhaps it's not the strongest of cases... which is kind of the point of the fourth and fifth amendments: keeping the government honest, so to speak.

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

#153

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…

Comment taken from Reddit:

Actually if you read the ruling, it states that they have a recording of a conversation, transcribed in the ruling, where she basically admits what they are looking for is on the laptop. They then use existing Vermont case law where some perv had child porn on his laptop that an officer and ICE agent witnessed before getting locked out of the laptop. The case law the judge quotes says "where the existence and location of the documents are known to the government, no constitutional rights are touched, because these matters are a foregone conclusion." So basically the established case law they are using is where they already knew for sure the perv's laptop contained the evidence they are looking for because they saw it firsthand. In this lady's case, they know the laptop contains the documents they are looking for because they have her recorded saying so. The judge states as much in the ruling: "There is little question here but that the government knows of the existence and location of the computer’s files." So as much as people are freaking out about this, I don't think this is definitive case law that says the 5th amendment doesn't ever apply. The Vermont case and now the Colorado case both hinge on the government knowing that what they are looking for is on the encrypted drive because they saw it and have an admission to it respectively. This is what the ruling states in my opinion. The 5th amendment may still apply if they don't know for sure the encrypted drive contains what they are looking for, that is to say they never saw the contents nor you admitted to it containing the contents which they seek.

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

#154
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 c…

This is probably good enough for most cases, where ham-fisted cops will pull the plug to seize the computer.

But RAM isn't instantly wiped when turned off. The capacitors take some time to discharge, and it is possible to quickly snatch a RAM stick and put it in a device that will preserve its content and allow to read it later on.

If the strategy you propose becomes more prevalent, law officiers will adapt.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. Reasonable people are sophisticated enough to understand that there is a difference between using a sentence as a password, and believing that sentence to be true. On a related note, I once looked into changing my middle name to an executable implementation of RSA, so that my passport would be a non-exportable munition. (No go.)

What was their reason for declining the name change?

I would guess that it would be too long if written out in English, and that they'd probably deny a name change to a name that contains characters not normally used in names (asterisks, semicolons, underscores...)

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

#156

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.

If you're able to pass silly laws, wouldn't it be easier to just pass a law saying discovery can't compel people to divulge encryption keys kept only within their own head?

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the file time problem, though. Okay, let's say you're Joe Randomguy and you keep two XP partitions. One that you actively use and might have all manner of contraband on it, and another "boring" one for showing any would-be snoopers. It's Jan 2012. What do you think is going to happen when they see that the one you gave up the code to hasn't been touched since July 2011? Does Truecrypt have an option to not re…

Truecrypt does have an option to disable file time updates on file volumes. Also for ext at least, you can mount with nomtime, noatime, noctime and completely disable file times.

How does preventing the filesystem from writing timestamps solve anything? We're talking about the 'boring partition' having timestamps that suggest that you haven't used it in months (i.e. really old timestamps), when there is probably evidence elsewhere that you have used it (e.g. emails that you've sent since those timestamps).

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I really like this idea but I think it is important to ensure that whatever XXX material you have, the actors are clearly over 18. Lord knows it may make your standing far worse if you have anything pushing the line. So, 30+ year old models in your Safe For Government/get out of jail porn directory.

Also make sure the XXX material is fully paid for and licensed, or they'll no doubt slap pirating charges on you for your porn collection.

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

#159

I'm a government-should-leave-reasonable-people-the-hell-alone libertarian and a crypto-is-the-shit kind of guy. I also think warrants for searches of encrypted media are totally legit, and think the hair splitting over "typing in the password without anyone seeing it" vs. "being compelled to dictate the password" is completely pointless. 1. Not every vocal Utterance qualifies as Testimony, and the only person who ge…

Individuals should not be compelled to actively participate in their own prosecution. This is the spirit of the 5th Amendment.

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

#160

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."

Except no I couldn't because that's clearly unreasonable. Let's try to avoid any reduction to the absurd, here.
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