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French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

theguardian.com

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Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#91

Post by flangola7 »

blibble wrote: post #75
negidius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that someone who forgets their passcode because of the stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison could easily be wrongfully convicted. It's a horrible law, even for those who don't care about privacy.

I am not a fan of the RIP Act (and there's plenty more badness in there) but playing devil's advocate, without this specific offence the disclosure sections would be completely ineffectual (remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US)

If you can't remain silent then what are you supposed to do to not accidentally incriminate yourself?

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#92

Post by cscurmudgeon »

vkou wrote: post #85
robswc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a big part of it. I remember growing up reading Harrison Bergeron (in school) and always thinking there's no way such a system would ever come about by the will of the people... yet SF proves people are all too happy to implement such a system (tearing down gifted students for the perceived benefit of everyone else). SSDD.

Of all the insane, repressive and straight-up authoritarian systems in the United States today, you picked... A failed pilot for middle-school algebra in SF?

It wasn't just a failed pilot: It was a pilot which prevented advanced students from taking algebra. Lines up with Harrison Bergeron perfectly.

And on top of it they claimed it was a success as failure rates went down. The failure rate went down because nobody was being tested.

https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/algebra-for-none-fails-in-...

> The district had bragged that algebra failure rates had dropped. Families for San Francisco, a parent group, analyzed the data: Failure rates dropped after the district dropped the end-of-course exam.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#93

Post by flangola7 »

eertami wrote: post #51
abridgett wrote: post #27

It's even worse - under RIP act not only can you be "forced" to reveal any passwords: - the onus is on _you_ to "prove" that you don't know it or have forgotten it - you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password Anyone administering systems might want to think about this, governments aren't known for good security.

Hypothetically speaking, if you're not a UK resident: Surely you can keep the password on a separate device in another country, and if asked for it, say that you do have know how to get the password, but you can't physically access it without travelling to the other country. You then aren't breaking the rules, as far as I can tell. Of course you can't give them something that is only available in another country, whe…

How would explain you were able to unlock and use the device within in the past minutes or hours? (Which could be easy to prove)

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#94

Post by cscurmudgeon »

toyg wrote: post #45
cm2187 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absence of a strong constitution protecting fundamental rights is also an issue. With a 50%+1 majority, the house of commons can vote pretty much any law it wants with no counterpower.

The British system is, indeed, fundamentally insane, from a technical perspective. They nerfed aristocratic power by neutering the House of Lords, but didn't bother replacing it with some other check or balance, leaving the Commons all-powerful - and with an electoral system that disproportionately favours cohesive ideologic minorities. Ironically, this was largely done by self-declared leftists, who utterly failed t…

> Ironically, this was largely done by self-declared leftists

And they now want a similar thing in the US:

https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2019/4/9/18300749/s...

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#95

Post by tristor »

flangola7 wrote: post #91
blibble wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a fan of the RIP Act (and there's plenty more badness in there) but playing devil's advocate, without this specific offence the disclosure sections would be completely ineffectual (remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US)

If you can't remain silent then what are you supposed to do to not accidentally incriminate yourself?

This is one of the reasons why other countries outside the US aren't as free as the US, even though the US is a complete mess too in different ways. Freedom of both speech and silence are not really respected in law anywhere outside the US to the extent that they are in the US.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#96

Post by cscurmudgeon »

toyg wrote: post #44
pengaru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Berlin's society is already atrophying in this department.

Germans are actually the most inoculated against that type of virus, they will be the last to fall. They are at the forefront of anti-authoritarian efforts in technology, for example. US/UK/France, on the other hand...

Wasn't Germany actively supporting Russia despite US warnings before the Ukraine war?

https://elamerican.com/germany-mocked-trump-dependence-on-ru...

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#97

Post by yongjik »

negidius wrote: post #69
blibble wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing is it's not incontrovertible proof, it's "beyond reasonable doubt" the prosecution would show up with when you bought the phone, how many times you'd used it, that you used it 80 times in the last hour, and so on and it comes down to whether or not a jury would believe that you had really forgotten it (despite that evidence)

Which means that someone who forgets their passcode because of the stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison could easily be wrongfully convicted. It's a horrible law, even for those who don't care about privacy.

IANAL but it sounds like this defense would be received about as well as "Your honor, the defendant was in grave stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison. That's why he completely forgot why and how he parked his car next to Crosby Lake and was walking in the shallow water, carrying an identified bag, at 3am."

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#99

Post by miles »

blibble wrote: post #75
negidius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that someone who forgets their passcode because of the stress of being arrested and threatened with years in prison could easily be wrongfully convicted. It's a horrible law, even for those who don't care about privacy.

I am not a fan of the RIP Act (and there's plenty more badness in there) but playing devil's advocate, without this specific offence the disclosure sections would be completely ineffectual (remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US)

> remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US

Even in the US, the law has changed rather drastically[0]:

“The only way to prevent the government from introducing evidence of the suspect's silence at trial is to explicitly invoke (assert) the right to say nothing. In other words, without being warned by the police or advised by a lawyer, and without even the benefit of the familiar Miranda warnings (which might trigger an ‘I want to invoke my right to be silent!’), the interviewee must apparently say words to the effect of, ‘I invoke my privilege against self-incrimination.’”

[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#100

Post by causality0 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #23
phnofive wrote: post #2

The legal system in the UK recognizes several rights against self-incrimination, but there is a carve-out for the per se crime of failing to disclose a key to encrypted information - punishable by years in prison. How is this different than refusing to tell where you've buried the bodies? Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?

And perhaps more importantly, it becomes a de-facto crime to ever forget an encryption key. People forget the passkeys to crypto wallets all the time, losing millions. How can the police effectively prove that someone remembers the passcode? What if someone, after a few months in prison, says they've reconsidered and are willing to comply. They try to decrypt it but fail and subsequently say they the stress of incarc…

Right. I stopped using hardware encryption after I forgot the password to my IronKey and had to throw it away.
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