15 ms·

I have a question... Suppose the suspect Alice only has a portion of the key. Someone else (Bob...) has the remaining key bits. Alice is busted, and 'compell

• saycheese 10y ago
  Using the same two-key method, attorney–client privilege might be of use, though not sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney–client_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney–client_privilege
  • gresrun 10y ago
    IANAL, but it would fail to meet the basic criteria, as the communication was not for the purpose of securing legal advice and, the prosecution would argue, the communication was made for the purpose of committing a crime.
    • Retr0spectrum 10y ago
      IANAL, but what if the same keys were also used to encrypt client-attorney communications?
      • MichaelBurge 10y ago
        They compel you to release everything, but don't allow the client-attorney communications to be used as evidence.
• externalreality 10y ago
  Doesn't this boil down to the "I am willing but unable" situation? The man in this case was the "unwilling but able" situation. My question is wouldn't the man be shifted into the former situation if he just claimed to be now willing but to have forgotten his keys.
  • Filligree 10y ago
    He did claim he'd forgotten the keys. Maybe he changed his mind on that later, but I haven't seen any statement of the sort.
    • obstinate 10y ago
      This is a gambit that is often tried by folks in this situation. There is a famous case where someone was held in contempt for decades that you can read about on Wikipedia. At first he refused to turn over ordered monies, but later he had "lost" the money. So, I'd say, if you're going to try to go with the "I forgot" defense, you'd better be very sure not to give the court a reason to doubt your honesty (e.g. initially refusing then changing your story).
      • longerthoughts 10y ago
        Agreed. I also think it's hard to make the "I forgot" defense without demonstrating an effort to comply. "I tried to help but can't remember", while still suspect, is more compelling than "I can't remember and I don't feel like trying". Although that makes me wonder if there's any legal incentive not to attempt to comply if you're not confident you remember. Maybe there's some greater legal vulnerability if the failed attempt is interpreted as deceit and treated more seriously than refusal.
  • branchless 10y ago
    The one bright spot is this leads me to hope they can't decrypt at will via some non-public method.
    • 10y ago
• zik 10y ago
  Not just unethical. Illegal. Indefinite detention without charge is against the law.
  • adventured 10y ago
    What's the current status on §§ 1021-1022 from the 2012 NDAA bill? [1] Did that become law as it was written, and is it still active? It made provisions for the US military to indefinitely detain US citizens without due process. I've found these things difficult to keep track of frankly, with so many egregious laws from just the last ten years. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-d...
    • sschueller 10y ago
      Obama quietly signed the following in January: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2943/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/294...
      • PostOnce 10y ago
        Quietly? is that a necessary or even applicable verb here? It's public record, he was the President of the United States, and it's a major budgetary act for the biggest military in the world and covered by hundreds of news agencies. Are you quite sure he signed it quietly?
        • PostOnce 10y ago
          Well I can't edit my now-0 comment, but the point is, slipping in words like "quietly" assigns an intent which may not be present. As though Obama were trying to sneak the NDAA past everyone. It's hard to covertly sign any legislation as the president, notwithstanding secret courts and laws (fisa, patriot act secret interpretations, etc). Just saying, we don't need to try to make people think a certain way by guiding them with weasel words, people can read facts and make a judgement, without trying to subtly assign some bias in either direction.
• libertymcateer 10y ago
  > A possible answer to the first question: Alice is not compelled to provide the key. She is compelled to decrypt the drive. Obviously she can't do that without Bob. Alice is screwed and will spend the rest of her life in prison. Yes, and in this scenario she would not be held in contempt, so your hypothetical does not apply. You can only be held in contempt for refusing to comply with court orders, not for the failure of a desired outcome. Let's put it another way: you are totally misunderstanding why this fellow is in jail. It is not because the hard drive remains encrypted - it is because he defied a court order to decrypt it. Granted, if the drive were decrypted by other means he would likely be let out of prison because the point of holding him for contempt would be frustrated - but that does not mean that he was put into jail because the drive was not decrypted. Contempt is solely about defying court orders. If Alice gave over her half of the key, she would have complied with the order, therefore, there would be no grounds for contempt.
  • cwilkes 10y ago
    How far can court orders go? Let's say he was a crooked accountant and the police couldn't understand his spreadsheet. Is he obligated to show him what he was doing? To me this is what the disk encryption is like. The cops can't understand how to read the disk. Is he obligated to help them? What if the pictures in there are encoded using a weird format? Should he be forced to produce a program to read them?
    • danellis 10y ago
      How does the Fifth Amendment apply here?
  • dangerlibrary 10y ago
    From the article: "Rawls, the government argues, (PDF) "repeatedly asserts that the All Writs Act order requires him to divulge his passcodes, but he is incorrect: the order requires no testimony from [Rawls], and he may keep his passcodes to himself. Instead, the order requires only that [Rawls] produce his computer and hard drives in an unencrypted state.""
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• belorn 10y ago
  I co-authored a project that works on Debian that do unattended reboots of encrypted disk drives which allows for scenarios where Alice don't know any part of the key. Every time the machine boots up bob get a request on the network and he can chose to approve or deny. Bob in turn could be in a different country which would make coercion a bit hard. (Project called Mandos)
  • dijit 10y ago
    I think I remember you giving a talk about this at SmashTheStack in Malmo, Sweden. I believe I asked then about maybe having support for non-debian systems and eventually something like Windows in the distant future.. What kind of support would you need for it to be worthwhile investing in that?
    • teddyh 10y ago
      (Other co-author here.) We did do that, yes. (I’m not sure what support or investing would mean in this context.) A Windows programmer could probably port the server side program (which holds the passwords) relatively easily, since it is currently implemented as a normal daemon in Python, and could therefore conceivably be ported or re-written to suit any Internet-connected platform, and the network protocol is fully documented. The client program (which receives the password and uses it to de-crypt the disk), on the other hand, is not so simple to implement. But the problem is not the network protocol; that is relatively simple. The hard part is instead running in the limited environment which exists before the password is available. In Debian, this means writing a program to run in the initramfs system where a kernel is available, but no networking is configured, and no standard system services are available. I have no idea what this would mean in a Windows context. I have toyed with the idea that it might be technically possible to re-write the client to run in the EFI environment, but I have not looked into it – it may or may not be feasible; would one have to write one’s own ZeroConf library? How about a TLS library supporting OpenPGP keys (as per RFC 6091)? How would one even provide a password for unlocking the disk to, for instance, VeraCrypt? Would one have to write the whole thing as a kind of module in VeraCrypt, if such a thing is even supported? I haven’t the foggiest notion of any answers to these questions, and I’m not a Windows nor a macOS programmer, and we implemented it on Debian since that is what we used at the time (and still do). Also, I’m gainfully employed full-time, so I’m not really looking for more work. To sum up, I would not personally be very suited for this kind of work due to inexperience on other platforms, nor could I take it on even if I were, due to personal time constraints. However, I would gladly support (by being available on the Mandos development mailing list) anyone doing this kind of work.
• MertsA 10y ago
  >Alice pretends that Bob exists, but actually he does not, but police cannot prove that. What then? Well it's pretty obvious what happens then. The police claim Alice is lying and hold her in contempt indefinitely. The man from the article claims that he doesn't remember the passwords anymore and can't possibly comply, he's still being held in contempt even though there's nothing concrete to show that he still knows the password.
• elcct 10y ago
  Alice has created a file containing random data. Authorities think it is an encrypted volume and wants Alice to give up the key. Alice has no way to prove it is just a file with random data and is imprisoned indefinitely for essentially having a file with random data =]
  • triplesec 10y ago
    Alice is able to switch the tracks on a trolley hurtling towards the encrypted only copy of the rest of her key towards a track where Clive, the only person who knows the key to that secondary encryption, is tied...
  • amelius 10y ago
    So typing the simple command cat /dev/random > filename can actually get you imprisoned. Good to know.
  • heptathorp 10y ago
    Mallory has created a file containing random data and planted it on Alice's drive. Then Mallory phones in an anonymous tip to the police...
    • type0 10y ago
      Nice, even in times of Stalinistic oppression things weren't as easy...
  • pdpi 10y ago
    Interesting thought experiment, but ultimately flawed. For this to make any sense, you first need to answer a question: Why are the authorities looking at Alice's computer in the first place? Also, it's extrapolating a lot from a case that's actually a fair bit less sinister than what you're suggestion. Facts of this particular case here are that: 1. The guy was a suspect to begin with, and they had enough evidence of him doing something wrong (from the Usenet side of the operation) that they got a warrant to search his computer. 2. The disks are encrypted with off-the-shelf OS-provided full-disk encryption, which is relatively easy to verify, rather than some "purely random data that might or might not be encrypted". 3. At no point has he denied having access to the keys (at which point it would essentially stop being a 5th amendment case). Now, I'm actually of the opinion that he should _not_ have to decrypt those disks, but that's strictly a fifth amendment thing, rather than the more convoluted scenario you're suggesting.
• amelius 10y ago
  Alice can also just embed the message into the noise of a JPEG file. A noisy image can be used for plausible deniability.
• amelius 10y ago
  Or Alice can just claim that the random file is the key to another encrypted file :)