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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

#381

Post by harryh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #380
harryh wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it isn't revealing information that only exists in your mind. Keep in mind the reason the 5th Amendment exists: the prevent the government from having an incentive to coerce false testimony through torture. An evil government could coerce someone to falsely say "I did it!" An evil government cannot coerce someone to falsely type a password into a terminal to decrypt files with incriminating evidence. Because…

> Keep in mind the reason the 5th Amendment exists: the prevent the government from having an incentive to coerce false testimony through torture. Thats not the sole purpose of the self-incrimination protection (which is, also, far too focussed in it's protections to meaningfully effect that end, since historically false testimony coerced through torture was very often sought from people other than the person it was…

True. It's also to prevent someone from ever being put in the position of having to choose between lying and self incriminating.

But again, that doesn't apply in this case.

or the target somehow manages to produce a result that matches the expectations.

This is an impossible end state. You might have a point if the password was a one time pad or something like that but that's not the case for the case in question.

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

#382

Post by dang »

69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #207

What would happen if he lobotomized(carefully and mildly) himself, and legitimately could not remember his encryption keys/pw nor the reason he performed lobotomy?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13920677 and marked it off-topic.

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

#383

Post by dang »

69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #376
pc86 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely this layman knows enough about the brain to know how to lobotomize himself such that he forgets his passwords, but not such that he forgets how to perform a self-lobotomy!

I can attest that it indeed quite simple. Have done a nearly a dozen on myself, no evident issues whatsoever.

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop.

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

#384

Post by Sciencehaters »

dang wrote: post #383
69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can attest that it indeed quite simple. Have done a nearly a dozen on myself, no evident issues whatsoever.

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop.

Can you stop doing everything you can to make people hate science. Stop being elitist maybe?

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

#385

Post by Dangisbiased »

dang wrote: post #383
69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can attest that it indeed quite simple. Have done a nearly a dozen on myself, no evident issues whatsoever.

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop.

Can you stop being an elitist asshole?

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

#386

Post by Overtonwindow »

Kostchei wrote: post #111
naasking wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect cloning to already be standard forensic procedure, but perhaps I'm wrong. If not, it should be.

yep. Work on the copy, or the copy of the copy in my case. It's digital with a hash, not a vhs tape

Ah cloning, very good point. So that raises a new question: Is there any way to prevent decryption of a drive, when the password is forcibly obtained?

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

#387

Post by taneq »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #266
taneq wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're going to ignore that pesky 'staying within the law' step they might as well just lock him up indefinitely right now.

Eighteen months without a charge. I think they're way ahead of you. IMO, they've already abrogated his 6th-Amendment right to a speedy trial as well.

That's actually where I was going with that - maybe I should have put that /s or ;) at the end of the post after all. :)

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

#388

Post by pvaldes »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #339
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm reading things correctly (IANAL, so it's very possible that I am not), it seems like there's not a lot of consensus. Some rulings say that the court can't compel you to disclose or use a password. Others say that per the Fifth Amendment it can't compel you to reveal "the contents of your mind", but can compel you to produce the protected items without disclosing the password, as those are covered by the Fourth…

What happens when I ask for you to produce the password required by this super highly technical algorithm (insert lots of jargon to make the jury's eyes glaze over) called xor which will take the given file and turn it into another file that contains something illegal? Can you prove there isn't a password? Can you prove they didn't forget the password? Should forgetting a password for an encrypted file containing unk…

I wonder how could one could be safe against the next hypothetical situation.

Lets suppose that there is someone motivated enough to distroy you. This people has months to mess with your system and substitute your usual decrypt command with a slightly modified version that 1) decrypts a file as usual when entered the right password and 2) runs a last extra line of code that inserts a child porn image or short video in the file. The timestamp of the decrypted file was changed to now. So you will not suspect that the file has been significatively modified also in the same operation. If the decrypt executable is closed and not easily available to examine... what could you do to prove your innocence?

Is possible for the jury (or the lawyer) to re-encrypt the file again exactly as in the first time to detect if the file was changed?

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

#389

Post by Rapehn »

dang wrote: post #383
69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can attest that it indeed quite simple. Have done a nearly a dozen on myself, no evident issues whatsoever.

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop.

How much rape is too much rape?

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

#390

Post by mirimir »

Pitarou wrote: post #239
mirimir wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting idea. But it arguably wouldn't have helped Mr. Rawls. Investigators claimed to know what they sought, so they'd still argue that he was holding out. Maybe it's safer to keep encrypted stuff anonymously in cloud storage. Mr. Rawls could have run his Freenet node on an anonymously-leased VPS, used Tor onion services for the various WebGUIs, and accessed it all via Tails. There would have been noth…

Rawls’ is an odd case. If the reports are accurate, he seems to have believed that a strong password on his hard drive gave him legal immunity, and didn’t really try to conceal what he was doing. Nonetheless, a line has been crossed, and cyber-libertarians have been predicting this breach for as long as I can remember. There’s nothing cyber-libertarians love more than a technical solution to state oppression.

Well, he was using Freenet without obscuring his IP address. That's pretty much not "really try[ing] to conceal what he was doing". But that's what Freenet devs have recommended, crooning of "plausible deniability".
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