11 ms·

He shouldn't have to decrypt his hard drives, and I support his decisions. The problems with this are numerous. First of all no one has any duty to provide th

by AckSyn 10y ago

He shouldn't have to decrypt his hard drives, and I support his decisions. The problems with this are numerous. First of all no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection. It's not a "right" for the police at all to have. Imprisoning someone for failure to disregard their constitutional rights is absurd. They have no evidence to hold him period.

BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
But I bet something led police to the hard drive in question in the first place. I wonder what "that" something was. In the U.S. you can be arrested and held for Reasonable Suspicion (or Probable Cause)
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Not indefinitely
- onion2k 10y ago
  Whatever that was it clearly wasn't a criminal act or he'd have been charged for whatever it was. No further evidence has come to light after 16 months. That's far beyond "reasonable suspicion." If the police can't find evidence of a crime then this guy should be released, even if he's the reason they can't find it.
  - chatterbeak 10y ago
    Which means he probably just downloaded something. Not even resent it out.
  - sjy 10y ago
    Incorrect – the defendant had an iPhone which contained indecent recordings of his niece, and had previously admitted to family members that he had a problem with child pronography, showing them a large collection on the computer that was connected to the hard drives he now claims to have forgotten how to decrypt. This is explained in government brief[1] which was linked in the article. [1] https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsrawls.pdf https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsrawls...
- grogenaut 10y ago
  Not indefinitely
- al_chemist 10y ago
  Article mentions Freenet traffic detected at his computer. AFAIR Freenet is like BitTorrent, except nobody knows what you are downloading.
  - vorticalbox 10y ago
    Doesn't mean it was illegal. Protecting ones privacy and data is not illegal and is no cause for suspicion. Just because they detected freenet or even tor that wouldn't be enough for a warrant. I wonder what evidence they did have for that warrentbin the first place.
coldtea 10y ago
>First of all no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection. Apparently all these amendments are open to all kinds of BS interpretation by courts, with loopholes like "you don't really expect privacy when you send snail mail", "some random gun freak is the same as a well armed militia", "corporations are people" and other such shenanigans.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Yes. That's the problem with the whole "this is a government of laws, not men" idea. The laws are always, always interpreted by men. They are enforced (or not) by men, at their discretion. It's much like the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Bible. It's there in black and white, and about as clear and simple as you can get. Yet plenty of Jews and Christians kill, and often do so eagerly and joyfully, even thinking they are doing God's work. As the old saying goes, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." Or "Onward, Christian soldiers!"
  - throwanem 10y ago
    > It's much like the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Bible. That's an erroneous translation, although I concede it is very common - but rarely if ever found within a Bible as you claim; both the KJV, which I prefer for the music of its language, and the NIV, which is much more common these days, instead correctly render it as "Thou shalt/you shall not murder". I can't speak for Torah, but I doubt it differs there. The laws of men distinguish mere murder from killing in general, whether it be manslaughter, justifiable homicide, the conduct of warfare, or any of sundry other nuances. Why, then, should the law of God overlook the same distinction?
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >The laws of men distinguish mere murder from killing in general, whether it be manslaughter, justifiable homicide, the conduct of warfare, or any of sundry other nuances. Why, then, should the law of God overlook the same distinction? Because that's old testament morals that have been deprecated by Christ. That's the whole point of getting a NEW testament. And Christ is quite clear about the "not kill in general" part.
droithomme 10y ago
"no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection" I like that idea. However, the 5th amendment's protection is something different: "No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Consider the case of someone running a drug lab or counterfeiting press in their residence. Police show up with a warrant based on probable cause to search the residence. The person is required to unlock the door and let the police in because the police have a warrant. The person is not testifying against themselves, they are unlocking the lock to allow a warranted search. If they do not unlock the door after being presented with a warrant then that is a new crime they can be charged with, and the police will come in anyway. In these cases with encryption the courts have consistently been finding that the password is comparable to unlocking the door to a house to which the police have a search warrant. It has also been counterargued that speaking or writing down a password is a form of testimony, one that can be self-incriminatory, and therefore is protected by the Fifth. Most courts have not been sympathetic to this argument, though there has been one exception. In this case the man is in possession of a lawful order from a judge to facilitate a search and he is refusing to cooperate. Thus the judge jails him until he decides to cooperate with the lawful order from the judge. This is how it is done.
- baobrain 10y ago
  > In these cases with encryption the courts have consistently been finding that the password is comparable to unlocking the door to a house to which the police have a search warrant. I thought it was the exact opposite, where things such as a lock combination or a memorized password could not be compelled, whereas things like a fingerprint or a key can be since they are physical possessions. _DISCLAIMER_ (IANAL and above is IIRC) Edit: clicked some links in the article [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/27/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/27/case.html [1]https://www.wired.com/2012/02/laptop-decryption-appeal-rejected/ https://www.wired.com/2012/02/laptop-decryption-appeal-rejec... So it's a mixed bag. [1] was never enforced because authorities got the password from elsewhere.
  - droithomme 10y ago
    This case has typical arguments compelling disclosure and dismissing the arguments against. BTW, I don't agree with this stuff, I'm just summarizing how courts for the most part are presently handling these cases. http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=GELFGATT&hl=en&as_sdt=2006&case=13313310379620456644&scilh=0 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=GELFGATT&hl=en&as_s...
mildbow 10y ago
What happens if he says he doesn't remember his password anymore? ie: sits down, and seemingly tries to decrypt, but tries 1( or 50 times) and says "Oh shucks, I forgot"?
- mattnewton 10y ago
  That's a real concern after 16 months, assuming the password was obscure enough. And I doubt a judge would be amused, raising the specter of indefinite detention without trial.
- angry_octet 10y ago
  Any significantly genuine attempt to remember the password will reduce the entropy to such an extent that your rpi could crack it. The fact that in our brain the fragments are hopelessly jumbled and you forgot if you added 1999! or 1990? to the end does not mean a computer cannot achieve a significant shortcut. In fact I cracked one of my own filevault v1 passwords, from a Powerbook G4, using this technique. I had a muscle memory for part of the password, and that was enough to make it tractable. Cf vilefault, https://github.com/libyal/libfvde https://github.com/libyal/libfvde
- sjy 10y ago
  That's precisely what happened, and the judge didn't believe him, partly because he declined to say on oath that he had forgotten the password.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Can he appeal this judge's decision to imprison him? Or is he trapped given the lack of a conviction?
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  They are appealing, but it's not on any rushed schedule so the appeals court is just leaving him in there.
  - vivekd 10y ago
    It's not as unjust as it seems because he does have the option of applying for a bail pending appeal which would release him until his appeal date. Unfortunately to do that you have to show that you have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and he doesn't have that. He's going to lose the appeal and he's going to stay in jail until he divulges the info or the judge releases him. Just to give a bit more info here, this is not an unsophisticated defendant, this guy is a cop he knows the system and he knows what he's doing. He knows that he's better off going to jail for contempt of court than he is going to jail for kiddie porn. He's making a calculated decision to keep himself out of trouble, he's no martyr.
Kostchei 10y ago
I think the idea of 16 months for contempt is legally ridiculous. However, they have some evidence. I presume their de-construction of freenet will have given them some insight. The technical issue that concerns me, and I'm not sure if they have addressed, is how freenet stores data and whether the material they allege is his or a 3rd party's. Last time I looked into freenet it was doing the equivalent of storing chunks of other people's data, encrypted of course, on your machine. Like being a torrent server and storing some of the actual data the torrents refer to. A peer to peer data network, not just a reference library. Yes that sounds crazy, but that was the state a few years ago. No wonder it ran like treacle.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Yes, it's a bit crazy the way Freenet works, like mad scientist crazy. > Freenet not only transmits data between nodes but actually stores them, working as a huge distributed cache. > While users can insert data into the network, there is no way to delete data. Due to Freenet's anonymous nature the original publishing node or owner of any piece of data is unknown. The only way data can be removed is if users don't request it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet#Distributed_storage_and_caching_of_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet#Distributed_storage_an... You allocate a certain amount of space on your machine to an encrypted cache, that you can't even decrypt yourself or even know what it contains. So there's no way to prove that someone even accessed a certain chunk of data, unless they saved it unencrypted to their machine, which I guess is what the Feds need to prove.
jonathanstrange 10y ago
Your reasoning is perfectly fine and in line with most jurisdictions word-wide. This is just one of many cases where people elsewhere shake their heads in disbelief. How the US and UK deal with this matter is a big exception and considered both immoral and illegal in much of the rest of the world. These two countries are 'special' in many regards, and you cannot and ought not take their sense of morality and their system of law as a basis for anything.

by AckSyn 10y ago

BigChiefSmokem 10y ago

But I bet something led police to the hard drive in question in the first place. I wonder what "that" something was. In the U.S. you can be arrested and held for Reasonable Suspicion (or Probable Cause)

michaelmrose 10y ago
Not indefinitely
onion2k 10y ago
Whatever that was it clearly wasn't a criminal act or he'd have been charged for whatever it was. No further evidence has come to light after 16 months. That's far beyond "reasonable suspicion." If the police can't find evidence of a crime then this guy should be released, even if he's the reason they can't find it.
- chatterbeak 10y ago
  Which means he probably just downloaded something. Not even resent it out.
- sjy 10y ago
  Incorrect – the defendant had an iPhone which contained indecent recordings of his niece, and had previously admitted to family members that he had a problem with child pronography, showing them a large collection on the computer that was connected to the hard drives he now claims to have forgotten how to decrypt. This is explained in government brief[1] which was linked in the article. [1] https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsrawls.pdf https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsrawls...
grogenaut 10y ago
Not indefinitely
al_chemist 10y ago
Article mentions Freenet traffic detected at his computer. AFAIR Freenet is like BitTorrent, except nobody knows what you are downloading.
- vorticalbox 10y ago
  Doesn't mean it was illegal. Protecting ones privacy and data is not illegal and is no cause for suspicion. Just because they detected freenet or even tor that wouldn't be enough for a warrant. I wonder what evidence they did have for that warrentbin the first place.

coldtea 10y ago

>First of all no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection. Apparently all these amendments are open to all kinds of BS interpretation by courts, with loopholes like "you don't really expect privacy when you send snail mail", "some random gun freak is the same as a well armed militia", "corporations are people" and other such shenanigans.

pmoriarty 10y ago
Yes. That's the problem with the whole "this is a government of laws, not men" idea. The laws are always, always interpreted by men. They are enforced (or not) by men, at their discretion. It's much like the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Bible. It's there in black and white, and about as clear and simple as you can get. Yet plenty of Jews and Christians kill, and often do so eagerly and joyfully, even thinking they are doing God's work. As the old saying goes, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." Or "Onward, Christian soldiers!"
- throwanem 10y ago
  > It's much like the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Bible. That's an erroneous translation, although I concede it is very common - but rarely if ever found within a Bible as you claim; both the KJV, which I prefer for the music of its language, and the NIV, which is much more common these days, instead correctly render it as "Thou shalt/you shall not murder". I can't speak for Torah, but I doubt it differs there. The laws of men distinguish mere murder from killing in general, whether it be manslaughter, justifiable homicide, the conduct of warfare, or any of sundry other nuances. Why, then, should the law of God overlook the same distinction?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >The laws of men distinguish mere murder from killing in general, whether it be manslaughter, justifiable homicide, the conduct of warfare, or any of sundry other nuances. Why, then, should the law of God overlook the same distinction? Because that's old testament morals that have been deprecated by Christ. That's the whole point of getting a NEW testament. And Christ is quite clear about the "not kill in general" part.

droithomme 10y ago

"no one has any duty to provide the police with evidence as a 5th amendment protection" I like that idea. However, the 5th amendment's protection is something different: "No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Consider the case of someone running a drug lab or counterfeiting press in their residence. Police show up with a warrant based on probable cause to search the residence. The person is required to unlock the door and let the police in because the police have a warrant. The person is not testifying against themselves, they are unlocking the lock to allow a warranted search. If they do not unlock the door after being presented with a warrant then that is a new crime they can be charged with, and the police will come in anyway. In these cases with encryption the courts have consistently been finding that the password is comparable to unlocking the door to a house to which the police have a search warrant. It has also been counterargued that speaking or writing down a password is a form of testimony, one that can be self-incriminatory, and therefore is protected by the Fifth. Most courts have not been sympathetic to this argument, though there has been one exception. In this case the man is in possession of a lawful order from a judge to facilitate a search and he is refusing to cooperate. Thus the judge jails him until he decides to cooperate with the lawful order from the judge. This is how it is done.

baobrain 10y ago
> In these cases with encryption the courts have consistently been finding that the password is comparable to unlocking the door to a house to which the police have a search warrant. I thought it was the exact opposite, where things such as a lock combination or a memorized password could not be compelled, whereas things like a fingerprint or a key can be since they are physical possessions. _DISCLAIMER_ (IANAL and above is IIRC) Edit: clicked some links in the article [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/27/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/27/case.html [1]https://www.wired.com/2012/02/laptop-decryption-appeal-rejected/ https://www.wired.com/2012/02/laptop-decryption-appeal-rejec... So it's a mixed bag. [1] was never enforced because authorities got the password from elsewhere.
- droithomme 10y ago
  This case has typical arguments compelling disclosure and dismissing the arguments against. BTW, I don't agree with this stuff, I'm just summarizing how courts for the most part are presently handling these cases. http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=GELFGATT&hl=en&as_sdt=2006&case=13313310379620456644&scilh=0 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=GELFGATT&hl=en&as_s...

mildbow 10y ago

What happens if he says he doesn't remember his password anymore? ie: sits down, and seemingly tries to decrypt, but tries 1( or 50 times) and says "Oh shucks, I forgot"?

mattnewton 10y ago
That's a real concern after 16 months, assuming the password was obscure enough. And I doubt a judge would be amused, raising the specter of indefinite detention without trial.
angry_octet 10y ago
Any significantly genuine attempt to remember the password will reduce the entropy to such an extent that your rpi could crack it. The fact that in our brain the fragments are hopelessly jumbled and you forgot if you added 1999! or 1990? to the end does not mean a computer cannot achieve a significant shortcut. In fact I cracked one of my own filevault v1 passwords, from a Powerbook G4, using this technique. I had a muscle memory for part of the password, and that was enough to make it tractable. Cf vilefault, https://github.com/libyal/libfvde https://github.com/libyal/libfvde
sjy 10y ago
That's precisely what happened, and the judge didn't believe him, partly because he declined to say on oath that he had forgotten the password.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Can he appeal this judge's decision to imprison him? Or is he trapped given the lack of a conviction?

nikdaheratik 10y ago
They are appealing, but it's not on any rushed schedule so the appeals court is just leaving him in there.
- vivekd 10y ago
  It's not as unjust as it seems because he does have the option of applying for a bail pending appeal which would release him until his appeal date. Unfortunately to do that you have to show that you have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and he doesn't have that. He's going to lose the appeal and he's going to stay in jail until he divulges the info or the judge releases him. Just to give a bit more info here, this is not an unsophisticated defendant, this guy is a cop he knows the system and he knows what he's doing. He knows that he's better off going to jail for contempt of court than he is going to jail for kiddie porn. He's making a calculated decision to keep himself out of trouble, he's no martyr.

Kostchei 10y ago

I think the idea of 16 months for contempt is legally ridiculous. However, they have some evidence. I presume their de-construction of freenet will have given them some insight. The technical issue that concerns me, and I'm not sure if they have addressed, is how freenet stores data and whether the material they allege is his or a 3rd party's. Last time I looked into freenet it was doing the equivalent of storing chunks of other people's data, encrypted of course, on your machine. Like being a torrent server and storing some of the actual data the torrents refer to. A peer to peer data network, not just a reference library. Yes that sounds crazy, but that was the state a few years ago. No wonder it ran like treacle.

brokenmachine 10y ago
Yes, it's a bit crazy the way Freenet works, like mad scientist crazy. > Freenet not only transmits data between nodes but actually stores them, working as a huge distributed cache. > While users can insert data into the network, there is no way to delete data. Due to Freenet's anonymous nature the original publishing node or owner of any piece of data is unknown. The only way data can be removed is if users don't request it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet#Distributed_storage_and_caching_of_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet#Distributed_storage_an... You allocate a certain amount of space on your machine to an encrypted cache, that you can't even decrypt yourself or even know what it contains. So there's no way to prove that someone even accessed a certain chunk of data, unless they saved it unencrypted to their machine, which I guess is what the Feds need to prove.

jonathanstrange 10y ago

Your reasoning is perfectly fine and in line with most jurisdictions word-wide. This is just one of many cases where people elsewhere shake their heads in disbelief. How the US and UK deal with this matter is a big exception and considered both immoral and illegal in much of the rest of the world. These two countries are 'special' in many regards, and you cannot and ought not take their sense of morality and their system of law as a basis for anything.