3 ms·

Being forced to decode written notes to incriminate yourself is about equal to producing the password that decodes the encrypted data. In both cases you use a

Being forced to decode written notes to incriminate yourself is about equal to producing the password that decodes the encrypted data. In both cases you use a secret and some procedure to derive readable information from some other information. And in both cases, it is generally impossible to prove you are able to!

cookiecaper 10y ago
The difference is that if a defendant is forced to decode a unique cipher they've made up, there's no independent way to verify its contents. You can't prove that an investigator didn't say "Look, the only way you're going to ever get out of here is if you 'decode' this and make sure it says that you committed the crime." Whereas with a well-understood, industry-accepted cipher, you can use the key and obtain the evidence exactly as it sits independent of the defendant's disposition and without requiring any unique or special tooling to be provided by the defendant. There is no opportunity to influence the contents of the decrypted disk. Ultimately, encryption may end up strengthening the prosecution's case because it can't reasonably be argued that any evidence tampering or manipulation occurred prior to decryption. When the defendant either discloses the passphrase or enters it to unlock the disks for the police without disclosing it, the disk will either decrypt or not, and when it decrypts, it will either contain the evidence or not. Nothing said to or done by the defendant since the evidence was seized can have any influence on the contents of the disk. That means the Fifth Amendment's purpose of preserving a prosecutorial justice system dependent upon the use of objective proof rather than individual manipulation remains intact. It would be interesting to see how this would've played out if Rawls had been using something like TrueCrypt's hidden container encryption, which uses steganographic techniques to allow the user to generate distinct blocks of cleartext from the same block of encrypted data. In that scenario, theoretically, there is no way to prove that the hidden container exists and that you have not fully complied with the police's request to decrypt.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13636040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13636040

cookiecaper 10y ago

The difference is that if a defendant is forced to decode a unique cipher they've made up, there's no independent way to verify its contents. You can't prove that an investigator didn't say "Look, the only way you're going to ever get out of here is if you 'decode' this and make sure it says that you committed the crime." Whereas with a well-understood, industry-accepted cipher, you can use the key and obtain the evidence exactly as it sits independent of the defendant's disposition and without requiring any unique or special tooling to be provided by the defendant. There is no opportunity to influence the contents of the decrypted disk. Ultimately, encryption may end up strengthening the prosecution's case because it can't reasonably be argued that any evidence tampering or manipulation occurred prior to decryption. When the defendant either discloses the passphrase or enters it to unlock the disks for the police without disclosing it, the disk will either decrypt or not, and when it decrypts, it will either contain the evidence or not. Nothing said to or done by the defendant since the evidence was seized can have any influence on the contents of the disk. That means the Fifth Amendment's purpose of preserving a prosecutorial justice system dependent upon the use of objective proof rather than individual manipulation remains intact. It would be interesting to see how this would've played out if Rawls had been using something like TrueCrypt's hidden container encryption, which uses steganographic techniques to allow the user to generate distinct blocks of cleartext from the same block of encrypted data. In that scenario, theoretically, there is no way to prove that the hidden container exists and that you have not fully complied with the police's request to decrypt.

Natanael_L 10y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13636040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13636040