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Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

arstechnica.com

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Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#221

Post by mickronome »

mirimir wrote: post #23
danso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be an interesting case but that's not what seems to be argued here. The state is arguing that they have enough evidence that "the presence of child porn on his drives was a 'foregone conclusion.'". It's likely the defendant didn't use forgetting-the-password as a defense because it was obvious via IP traffic and witness testimony that he had regularly and recently used his computer. The ruling here seems f…

> Forensic examination also disclosed that Doe [Rawls] had downloaded thousands of files known by their "hash" values to be child pornography. The files, however, were not on the Mac Pro, but instead had been stored on the encrypted external hard drives. Accordingly, the files themselves could not be accessed. He was running a Freenet node. Investigators were also running Freenet nodes, which peered with his. The wer…

Interesting, didn't think it could be Freenet related, as lists of hashes during synchronisation was stated. If so it could explain why the prosecution want the drive decryped although they on the surface seems to have enough evidence.

But then the foregone conclusion argument could to be slightly disingenuous, depending on exact details which appears to be unknown at the moment?

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#222

Post by brownbat »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #183
jaredklewis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interpretation of the 5th amendment is quite different than it has been historically interpreted by the courts. For example, in a trial, the prosecutor might subpoena some documents and you cannot refuse to turn over those documents, unless doing so would trigger a 5th amendment assertion. Turning over the documents implicitly testifies to at least two important pieces of information: that the documents exist an…

So here's my concern: guy's now been in jail without charge for 18 months. The prosecutors say his guilt is a foregone conclusion, but apparently it's not foregone enough that they're willing to go ahead and prosecute without the contents of his hard drive. They're gonna hold off until they get what they need. We're starting to get to the edge of the point where this guy might legitimately forget his password. I thin…

He goes free in 14 years or sets a new record. Up to the judge.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=8101209&page=1

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#223

Post by theprotocol »

ominous wrote: post #199
jaredklewis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interpretation of the 5th amendment is quite different than it has been historically interpreted by the courts. For example, in a trial, the prosecutor might subpoena some documents and you cannot refuse to turn over those documents, unless doing so would trigger a 5th amendment assertion. Turning over the documents implicitly testifies to at least two important pieces of information: that the documents exist an…

If a confession can be evidence of being guilty, refusing to confess is to withhold evidence?

But you don't yet know that it's evidence of guilt. Additionally, testimony can be counted as evidence, yet the 5th Amendment allows you not to testify if doing so would incriminate you. So something being evidence is not unconditional in needing to be turned over.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#224

Post by pricechild »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #151

Thought experiment: What if there were an encryption system whereby if a user inputs one decryption key, the encrypted data decrypts to one set of values and if the user uses a second key, it decrypts to a second set of values. Sure, in order to encode both sets of data into a single encrypted result would require more storage space, but that is a small price to pay for protection against self incrimination from our…

Truecrypt has hidden volumes.

There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose_(file_system) and others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption

Same general principle, you allegedly can't prove the hidden volumes exist unless you have the decryption key.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#225

Post by ryan_j_naughton »

breakingcups wrote: post #215
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #151

Thought experiment: What if there were an encryption system whereby if a user inputs one decryption key, the encrypted data decrypts to one set of values and if the user uses a second key, it decrypts to a second set of values. Sure, in order to encode both sets of data into a single encrypted result would require more storage space, but that is a small price to pay for protection against self incrimination from our…

I think this is wat TrueCrypt does (did).

Interesting. Quick wikipedia searches lead to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt#Plausible_deniabilit...

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#226

Post by mickronome »

boogersan wrote: post #21
nabla9 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to know why he has not used this excuse. Imagine having encrypted disk format where fast delete happens by writing over the main key in the volume header with random data and not all zero or some other magic value. You could have lots of deleted disks and memory sticks and go to jail because you can't decrypt them when asked.

The prosecution would say that he frequently accessed the computer (which they could prove with forensic analysis) and argue it unlikely that he forgot his passphrase. The judge would accept that argument. It's scary to me because I've forgotten my encryption passphrases more than once, and I'm highly-educated.

After 18 months I definitely would be unable to comply to unlock the drive if the password was even remotely complicated.

Seems like the proper thing to do with a drive you forget the password to is to zero the drive.

I know I have encrypted archives of very mundane data in incremental backups which I have no clue as to what the password is, and due to the technology involved it's almost impossible to remove the files without risking to compromise the ability to restore other files. Ooops.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#227

Post by emanreus »

bsder wrote: post #122
fencepost wrote: post #25

This is an interesting contrast to the article reported this past week about Nigel Lang, a black man in the UK who was accused of having or sharing child porn because of an extra digit added to an IP address during investigations[1]. One relevant section from the apology/explanation letter: "The issues around the downloading of IIOC [indecent images of children] are that statistically out of a cohort of offenders, th…

> The issues around the downloading of IIOC [indecent images of children] are that statistically out of a cohort of offenders, the predominant characteristic is that the offence will be committed in the main by white males. Only a very small percentage will be black, around 3%, and only around 2% will be female. That's quite a remarkable statistic. I wonder why.

Black people constitute around 3% of UK population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_British

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#228

Post by mickronome »

mjolk wrote: post #82
finkin1 wrote: post #20

Is there a charitable interpretation of this that I'm not seeing? Or is this truly as terrifying as it appears?

Head's up that the source goes into some detail and is a miserable, sickening read. Per the source ( https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsr... ), the prosecutors already have a case based on checksums of the media that the defendant had downloaded, and per the logs, stored on his external hard drive. I imagine that the prosecution wants the media so they can perform harm reduction services for t…

But harm reduction and improving data for other cases is not the intended use of warrants and contempt of court, or is it?

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#229

Post by timv »

michaelmrose wrote: post #155
timv wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but the judge can only make judgements based on the arguments presented. If the defendant wanted to argue that he no longer remembered the password (but would be willing to decrypt the drive if he could), then that's something that the judge would consider. But a judge can't (and won't) simply say "Oh, maybe he hasn't complied because he just forgot the password. I'm going to let him off"

Its literally impossible to prove someone has or hasn't forgotten something. You shouldn't be able to jail someone indefinitely for not producing something you can't prove exists.

Yes, but that's fairly well tested ground and isn't unique to this case.

Witnesses (in the sense of being called to that stand in a courtroom) are frequently asked to tell the court what they saw/heard/did, or from where/whom they received information. Refusing to answer may get them pulled up on contempt charges, and if they claim not to remember then the judge needs to decide whether they are lying.

Given the impossibility of proving (in an absolute sense) that the witness does in fact remember (at that exact moment), it's a game that witnesses are likely to get away with (hence the standard "I don't recall" answer from politicians and beuracrats​), but it's not a universal solution to the "I don't want to tell you" scenario.

Re: Man jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives loses appeal

#230

Post by msravi »

jaredklewis wrote: post #170
smsm42 wrote: post #16

This reads as extremely bizarre. I mean, reading the fifth amendment makes it pretty clear - no one should be compelled to witness against oneself. However, it looks like the current executive and judicial are thinking "well, those Founders were just idiots for putting such an amendment in, clearly it'd be much easier to prosecute people if we could compel them to witness against themselves, so why don't we just igno…

Your interpretation of the 5th amendment is quite different than it has been historically interpreted by the courts. For example, in a trial, the prosecutor might subpoena some documents and you cannot refuse to turn over those documents, unless doing so would trigger a 5th amendment assertion. Turning over the documents implicitly testifies to at least two important pieces of information: that the documents exist an…

Let's say a guy has some documents that he happened to show someone that can implicate him in a crime. The person he showed it to testifies that the guy showed it to him/her. Can he be held until he turns over those documents?
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