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In discovery, if the hard drive is encrypted and you forgot the passphrase, what happens?

by elai 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago
If you genuinely forgot it, after having long encrypted it in good faith with the intent of simply accessing it more securely? Nothing. Otherwise: somewhat uncertain. You probably can't be compelled to testify against yourself, but you definitely can't deliberately use encryption as a defense against discovery anymore than you can destroy evidence by degaussing your hard drive.
- Natsu 16y ago
  > you definitely can't deliberately use encryption as a defense against discovery anymore than you can destroy evidence by degaussing your hard drive. The main problem with "forgetting" the passphrase is that they're unlikely to believe you and the judge may rule that the jury is allowed to hold it against you. You're absolutely right about that. That said, there's a more subtle problem with DRMed media: it's entirely possible to have large, random files on your computer that are, in fact, movies and such that you no longer have the rights to play. If you can't prove that the expired movies are just that, rather than encrypted files of your own, you might get in trouble. Hopefully, they'd notice that you had an account with whatever service and the movies in question were expired and they were in such-and-such a directory with the appropriate filenames and whatnot, but you never know. I mean, Sony hid a rootkit on a music CD. You never know what crazy things they'll try to put on your computer.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Word. I hope he encrypted everything before he published the key so it can't be said that he is obstructing justice by encrypting his disks before he hands them over.
- jarin 16y ago
  This is why things like TrueCrypt's plausible deniability feature are good. Just toss some embarrassing (but not illegal) scat porn on the "fake" encrypted partition and give them that password instead. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability

In discovery, if the hard drive is encrypted and you forgot the passphrase, what happens?

by elai 16y ago

In discovery, if the hard drive is encrypted and you forgot the passphrase, what happens?

If you genuinely forgot it, after having long encrypted it in good faith with the intent of simply accessing it more securely? Nothing. Otherwise: somewhat uncertain. You probably can't be compelled to testify against yourself, but you definitely can't deliberately use encryption as a defense against discovery anymore than you can destroy evidence by degaussing your hard drive.

Natsu 16y ago
> you definitely can't deliberately use encryption as a defense against discovery anymore than you can destroy evidence by degaussing your hard drive. The main problem with "forgetting" the passphrase is that they're unlikely to believe you and the judge may rule that the jury is allowed to hold it against you. You're absolutely right about that. That said, there's a more subtle problem with DRMed media: it's entirely possible to have large, random files on your computer that are, in fact, movies and such that you no longer have the rights to play. If you can't prove that the expired movies are just that, rather than encrypted files of your own, you might get in trouble. Hopefully, they'd notice that you had an account with whatever service and the movies in question were expired and they were in such-and-such a directory with the appropriate filenames and whatnot, but you never know. I mean, Sony hid a rootkit on a music CD. You never know what crazy things they'll try to put on your computer.
cookiecaper 16y ago
Word. I hope he encrypted everything before he published the key so it can't be said that he is obstructing justice by encrypting his disks before he hands them over.
jarin 16y ago
This is why things like TrueCrypt's plausible deniability feature are good. Just toss some embarrassing (but not illegal) scat porn on the "fake" encrypted partition and give them that password instead. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability