4 ms·

I don't understand what's being defended here. The guy already admitted what's on the computer. Like, the EFF saying > "We store a wealth of deeply personal i

I don't understand what's being defended here. The guy already admitted what's on the computer. Like, the EFF saying > "We store a wealth of deeply personal information on our electronic devices. The government simply should not put individuals in the no-win situation of choosing between disclosing a password—and turning over everything on these devices—or instead defying a court order to do so." This is deeply baffling to me as applied to this case. The personal information being ‘protected’ is not his property.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sebow 7y ago
>The personal information being ‘protected’ is not his property. Care to explain a little bit further?What exactly is not his property? I might be wrong but it clearly says it was his computer,thus his property.Information is not something magical,it has a technical basis in reality and can be attributed to something that exists and has an owner. The password exists both in the suspect's head and in his computer.Him giving his password would be comparable to giving the keys to his property,which from what i understand legally falls under the protection of the stated amendment.
mirimir 7y ago
Yeah, this is an extreme case. I mean, he reportedly said: > It’s 64 characters and why would I give that to you. We both know what’s on there. It’s only going to hurt me. No fucking way I’m going to give it to you. It seems like a totally dumbass thing to say. The standard advice is politely declining to answer, and requesting an attorney. But at least he didn't lie. And yes, it's true that the content isn't likely his, in the sense that he generated it or that it's about him. But it would -- as he admitted -- incriminate him. And the court affirmed that he has the right to not incriminate himself. What's especially interesting is that the court didn't agree that "We both know what’s on there." didn't moot protection against self-incrimination.
- mkoryak 7y ago
  I bet he did lie and its not 64 characters. He was probably saying that to make them not try to break his password12345.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    But they haven't broken it. And I assume, not by failing to try.
  - octosphere 7y ago
    Worse still is the threat of quantum computers that will make cracking his vault trivial. Apparently in 20-30 years people will be able to fit a quantum computer into a laptop form factor and break certain types of crypto at will, regardless of the keysize or key complexity.
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      > quantum computers that will make cracking his vault trivial Disk encryption tends to use something like AES. Key derivation is usually built on top of hash functions, but a 64-character password has more bits than most people use for AES, so key derivation might not matter. The implications for AES aren't known yet, beyond effectively reducing the key length[1]. You're probably thinking about prime factoring and RSA, which will be weakened by quantum computing. [1]: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/116596/will-quantum-computers-render-aes-obsolete https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/116596/will-qua...
    - 3PS 7y ago
      At the moment, quantum computers have only been shown to give exponential speedups over classical computers on problems that can reduced to the special case of the hidden subgroup problem for finite abelian groups [1]. This is only really an issue for public key crypto at the moment (RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and ECC) since secret-key crypto tends to need less structure in the underlying problem. The best you could do to speed up cracking AES with modern quantum algorithms would probably be Grover's algorithm, which only gives a quadratic speedup (an O(N) search becomes O(sqrt(N)) instead). [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_subgroup_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_subgroup_problem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm
michaelmrose 7y ago
What's being protected is the contents of his head and only tangentially his computer. If the computer required a physical key he would be forced to provide it.
Aeolun 7y ago
> The personal information being ‘protected’ is not his property. The information being protected isn’t the pictures. It’s everything else on the PC. Though I guess in this case it’s about providing information in his head?
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  And in the case of the pictures, what if you manage to memorize the hex codes of the pictures and just retype them if the computer data is lost? That is difficult, but some people might do such things.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sebow 7y ago

>The personal information being ‘protected’ is not his property. Care to explain a little bit further?What exactly is not his property? I might be wrong but it clearly says it was his computer,thus his property.Information is not something magical,it has a technical basis in reality and can be attributed to something that exists and has an owner. The password exists both in the suspect's head and in his computer.Him giving his password would be comparable to giving the keys to his property,which from what i understand legally falls under the protection of the stated amendment.

mirimir 7y ago

Yeah, this is an extreme case. I mean, he reportedly said: > It’s 64 characters and why would I give that to you. We both know what’s on there. It’s only going to hurt me. No fucking way I’m going to give it to you. It seems like a totally dumbass thing to say. The standard advice is politely declining to answer, and requesting an attorney. But at least he didn't lie. And yes, it's true that the content isn't likely his, in the sense that he generated it or that it's about him. But it would -- as he admitted -- incriminate him. And the court affirmed that he has the right to not incriminate himself. What's especially interesting is that the court didn't agree that "We both know what’s on there." didn't moot protection against self-incrimination.

mkoryak 7y ago
I bet he did lie and its not 64 characters. He was probably saying that to make them not try to break his password12345.
- mirimir 7y ago
  But they haven't broken it. And I assume, not by failing to try.
- octosphere 7y ago
  Worse still is the threat of quantum computers that will make cracking his vault trivial. Apparently in 20-30 years people will be able to fit a quantum computer into a laptop form factor and break certain types of crypto at will, regardless of the keysize or key complexity.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    > quantum computers that will make cracking his vault trivial Disk encryption tends to use something like AES. Key derivation is usually built on top of hash functions, but a 64-character password has more bits than most people use for AES, so key derivation might not matter. The implications for AES aren't known yet, beyond effectively reducing the key length[1]. You're probably thinking about prime factoring and RSA, which will be weakened by quantum computing. [1]: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/116596/will-quantum-computers-render-aes-obsolete https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/116596/will-qua...
  - 3PS 7y ago
    At the moment, quantum computers have only been shown to give exponential speedups over classical computers on problems that can reduced to the special case of the hidden subgroup problem for finite abelian groups [1]. This is only really an issue for public key crypto at the moment (RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and ECC) since secret-key crypto tends to need less structure in the underlying problem. The best you could do to speed up cracking AES with modern quantum algorithms would probably be Grover's algorithm, which only gives a quadratic speedup (an O(N) search becomes O(sqrt(N)) instead). [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_subgroup_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_subgroup_problem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm

michaelmrose 7y ago

What's being protected is the contents of his head and only tangentially his computer. If the computer required a physical key he would be forced to provide it.

Aeolun 7y ago

> The personal information being ‘protected’ is not his property. The information being protected isn’t the pictures. It’s everything else on the PC. Though I guess in this case it’s about providing information in his head?

zzo38computer 7y ago
And in the case of the pictures, what if you manage to memorize the hex codes of the pictures and just retype them if the computer data is lost? That is difficult, but some people might do such things.