I forget my password for things all of the time...This situation would be no different.
Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
31–40 of 135 posts
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#32I have question to those who know more about these things: Instead of hidden volumes, wouldn't it be better to have an "under duress" password?
The hard drive is encrypted and sensitive folders are identified by the user. When a password is given all contents are decrypted.
When a "under duress" password is given the sensitive folders are permanently wiped and all the (remaining, innoculous) contents are decrypted.
This stops them from finding hidden volumes or operating systems because there are none. Wouldn't that be a better model, and much harder to figure out?
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#33I have question to those who know more about these things: Instead of hidden volumes, wouldn't it be better to have an "under duress" password? The hard drive is encrypted and sensitive folders are identified by the user. When a password is given all contents are decrypted. When a "under duress" password is given the sensitive folders are permanently wiped and all the (remaining, innoculous) contents are decrypted. T…
Then they restore the hard drive from the cloned image they made before entering the password and ask you once more for the password. This time, with feeling.
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#34I have question to those who know more about these things: Instead of hidden volumes, wouldn't it be better to have an "under duress" password? The hard drive is encrypted and sensitive folders are identified by the user. When a password is given all contents are decrypted. When a "under duress" password is given the sensitive folders are permanently wiped and all the (remaining, innoculous) contents are decrypted. T…
This is a common mistake in security -- assuming that the hacker plays by your rules.
The police would just use a copy of the program which forgets to delete when the "on duress" password is provided. I imagine it'd require commenting out all of, say, five lines and burning the modified version of YourCryptoNameHere onto a live CD.
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#35Just out of curiosity, what's the case-law like if she had encoded these documents and stored them on paper? I certainly don't want to see mandatory decryption, but at the same time it doesn't make sense to let an accused completely skip out on discovery by simply truecrypt-ing the evidence either.
To me, the most convincing argument is, what if you legitimately forget your password? If that alone gets you thrown in jail, then you're going to be jailing a lot of innocent people. On the other hand, if that does not get you thrown in jail, then one can simply claim to have forgotten the password without repercussion. Personally, I'd rather let people hide evidence by encrypting it than jail people for being forge…
And, what if I do this?
head -c 1048576 /dev/random >not_encrypted_I_promise
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#36Just out of curiosity, what's the case-law like if she had encoded these documents and stored them on paper? I certainly don't want to see mandatory decryption, but at the same time it doesn't make sense to let an accused completely skip out on discovery by simply truecrypt-ing the evidence either.
Interesting argument. Or what about different languages: if I write it in German, they can just get a translator. If I write it in a language of my own creation (hat tip to Tolkien here), then can they force me to translate?
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, the most convincing argument is, what if you legitimately forget your password? If that alone gets you thrown in jail, then you're going to be jailing a lot of innocent people. On the other hand, if that does not get you thrown in jail, then one can simply claim to have forgotten the password without repercussion. Personally, I'd rather let people hide evidence by encrypting it than jail people for being forge…
I agree 100% I'm thinking about the case where a person never even knew the key to what they have. The example is a business laptop being carried through customs, that was encrypted by someone else, who will decrypt it upon your arrival (or something similar)
1. If there's no evidence that you know the password, that's possibly a reasonable defense. When the police have a recording of you saying "don't worry, the files are on my encrypted partition", it's less reasonable.
2. I would seriously reconsider the decision to carry unknown contents through customs.
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#38To counter this, you need an encryption method with these properties: - you can be banned or self-banned, irrevocably, from accessing your data; - you can prove to the judge that you can't access your data; - even with full forensic copies of your disk, you can't be un-banned. You can do that by having part(s) of the key on server(s) online. Give yourself, a couple of trusted friends and optionally a script, the abil…
http://clemens.endorphin.org/TKS1-draft.pdf
You can also use a scheme like this to improve your chances of making your expired key data unrecoverable to forensic techniques.
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#39I have question to those who know more about these things: Instead of hidden volumes, wouldn't it be better to have an "under duress" password? The hard drive is encrypted and sensitive folders are identified by the user. When a password is given all contents are decrypted. When a "under duress" password is given the sensitive folders are permanently wiped and all the (remaining, innoculous) contents are decrypted. T…
What you want to do is to have a password that decrypts the content to something innocently looking. If the encryption program has the feature to both "dual encrypt" and do an ordinary encryption it should be hard to prove anything :) Not sure how you go about doing that algorithmically though so it would resist reverse engineering the program
Re: Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, the most convincing argument is, what if you legitimately forget your password? If that alone gets you thrown in jail, then you're going to be jailing a lot of innocent people. On the other hand, if that does not get you thrown in jail, then one can simply claim to have forgotten the password without repercussion. Personally, I'd rather let people hide evidence by encrypting it than jail people for being forge…
And, what if I do this? head -c 1048576 /dev/random >not_encrypted_I_promise I can't prove that file isn't actually encrypted data. Are we going to throw people in jail for possessing random data without a justification?
No, we're only going to throw people in jail for possessing random data and failing to produce encrypted documents we have evidence they possess.