Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

arstechnica.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 224 posts

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#61

Post by notayacht »

Some theories I have heard in the past:

* Law enforcement will claim (possibly lie) that a person is a child predator in order to get cooperation from neighbors/etc. Who wouldn't want to help get a child predator off the streets? If you don't assist, maybe you're a child predator yourself!

* Law enforcement can plant child pornography with relative ease. Maybe a polaroid tossed into your back yard or left on your trash can outside. Or maybe an image with CSS display:none injected into some webpage you visit (which may sit in your cache for some time).

Normally I would consider these to be conspiracy theories.

But when we start seeing stories like this, I have to wonder if there is any manipulation here.

We the people respond pretty intensely to any accusations of sexual abuse of a child. Our knee-jerk reaction is "get the noose ready!", so we're pretty open to manipulation.

Maybe this guy is guilty as hell...but this is a ridiculous precedent to set. What happens if someone sustains a cranial injury that affects their memory?

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#62

Post by belorn »

DanBC wrote: post #14
mabbo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First sentence of the article says he's already been there 7 months. They won't get 'more bad guys', they just want to prove that they can do this to anyone who doesn't obey.

Or they want to identify the child victims of sexual abuse, and want to make sure those children are safe, and that the people abusing them and taking photos of that abuse are prosecuted.

The article did specify that the files were obtained through Freenet, a distributed information storage and retrieval system where all the files are shared and distributed to any node that requests it. I would be surprised if agencies against sexual abuse of children do not already operate nodes that siphon up all data it can get.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#63

Post by cypherpunks01 »

This certainly points towards having more widespread support for plausible deniability, no? Are there any mass encryption tools that are reasonably simple to set up providing this (besides TrueCrypt Hidden Volumes)?

Would someone continue to be held in contempt if they furnished a decrypted drive that didn't contain the information that court held as a "foregone conclusion" that it contained?

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#64

Post by corin_ »

vinceguidry wrote: post #59
Hondor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedophilia is a sexuality. Some people are just that way inclined. Don't confuse child abuse with sexuality the way people used to do about gays. That's extremely harmful to actual pedophiles who may have done nothing wrong. It's not even classified as a disease unless it causes problems for the person afflicted with it.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim they're doing nothing wrong. Every year, rhinos in Africa are threatened by poachers in Africa who want their horns for the black market in China. Every person who buys rhino horn in Africa, every person who is in a position to fight the unnecessary consumption of endangered animals and doesn't, is complicit in the destruction of their species. You don't get a pass because you aren't t…

The person you are replying to wasn't saying that paedophiles who look at child porn aren't doing anything wrong. If he was, your rhino analogy would be a good one, and is the reason nearly everyone agrees that child porn should be illegal even if you are only viewing it. But he was saying that a being attracted to children is in itself not doing anything wrong. Plenty of paedophiles don't look at child porn, do anything to children, or negatively affect children in any way.

The rhino equivilent would be if you wanted to use rhino horn but because you know it would be wrong to, you never do use it. Not only are you not the one shooting the rhino, you're not creating demand for shooting rhinos either.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#65

Post by hiq »

tptacek wrote: post #37
coreyp_1 wrote: post #2

This is an important constitutional issue! The subject may be deplorable, but the root issue is not. If it is a "foregone conclusion", then they should have no problem convicting the guy without forcing him to testify against himself. If it is not a "foregone conclusion", then they have been lying and are illegally (unconstitutionally) depriving him of his freedom for months, without even charging him with a crime!

It is not in fact settled law that unlocking an encrypted drive is testimonial. It's also worth remembering that the primary motivation for 5A is to prevent false, coerced testimony and torture; when SCOTUS eventually deals with this, they could find that no protected substantive rights are threatened by demands to unlock encrypted media. We're unlikely to get it both ways: both a right to strong encryption without g…

> We're unlikely to get it both ways: both a right to strong encryption without government interference and a right to defy court demands to decrypt specific files.

What about the plausible deniability that is provided by some encryption softwares (Truecrypt was one of these when it was still relevant and considered secure, I don't know about current ones)? If the suspect decrypts an encrypted volume and can deny plausibly that there is another one hidden within, is he supposed to remain in jail until he decrypts a volume providing evidence of crimes he might have committed?

In my opinion this is the reason why "I have forgotten the password" should be accepted as an answer, for the two situations are similar: either there is enough evidence to convict the guy and other evidence is not really needed, or there is not and the burden of the proof should not be on the suspect.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#66

Post by Bartweiss »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #2

This is an important constitutional issue! The subject may be deplorable, but the root issue is not. If it is a "foregone conclusion", then they should have no problem convicting the guy without forcing him to testify against himself. If it is not a "foregone conclusion", then they have been lying and are illegally (unconstitutionally) depriving him of his freedom for months, without even charging him with a crime!

I think people are undervaluing this point. Sure, you can say he's probably guilty, but the entire point of a jury trial is to determine that!

"That guy's totally guilty" isn't a basis for any kind of prejudicial action - either you have enough info to try him, or you don't have enough info to hold him on suspicion.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#67

Post by Bartweiss »

s_q_b wrote: post #41
INTPenis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Investigators say they know child porn is on the drives. His sister saw some of it and the suspect is said to have shown his family an illicit video, too. So that's their basis for this "foregone conclusion" apparently. That at one point in time it was witnessed. That is very dangerous logic. The sadest thing in this is that it took child pornography to make the headlines, not political activism or journalism but th…

It's also totally insignificant. He could have broadcast it all over Times Square. That in no way waives his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. Also, every prosecutor in history has thought their entire case in chief was a "foregone conclusion." That's totally irrelevant.

It's baffling to me that people are treating "he will be found guilty" as evidence that he's already guilty and can be punished freely. We've got a code of laws specifically designed to avoid Inquisition-style "accusation of guilt is presumption of guilt" thinking.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#68

Post by spacemanmatt »

CPLX wrote: post #60
virmundi wrote: post #45

The best part of this whole story is the unintended consequence of attack. Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops. Say you saw him looking at what could be kiddie porn. The guy doesn't know the password. Life in prison. No excuse. This applies not merely to Bob in Accounting that's a dick, but to everyone: Congress! Start sniping political enemies. A jump drive here.…

Or you could just put actual kiddie porn on the planted hard drives and save yourself this entire legal conundrum.

Then you have gotten your hands very much dirtier than necessary. A good attack should not put you at such risk.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#69

Post by avar »

CPLX wrote: post #60
virmundi wrote: post #45

The best part of this whole story is the unintended consequence of attack. Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops. Say you saw him looking at what could be kiddie porn. The guy doesn't know the password. Life in prison. No excuse. This applies not merely to Bob in Accounting that's a dick, but to everyone: Congress! Start sniping political enemies. A jump drive here.…

Or you could just put actual kiddie porn on the planted hard drives and save yourself this entire legal conundrum.

Coming up with real fake evidence is a lot harder than just coming up with a random blob that the cops think is evidence the suspect is hiding.

E.g. are you really able to carefully craft a filesystem image that you're sure has no metadata that proves the innocence of the suspect?

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#70

Post by sametmax »

virmundi wrote: post #45

The best part of this whole story is the unintended consequence of attack. Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops. Say you saw him looking at what could be kiddie porn. The guy doesn't know the password. Life in prison. No excuse. This applies not merely to Bob in Accounting that's a dick, but to everyone: Congress! Start sniping political enemies. A jump drive here.…

This would work for your average Joe, but not for Congressmen. Unless somebody more powerful than them want them gone, they will have the resources to just deflect the problem. Honestly, how many politicians have you seen going to jail ? Does it match the global % of population in jail ?
Post reply on HN