5 ms·

Could you explain that a little more? I'm not disagreeing, but I'm not sure I understand what's so vital about preventing people from reading the data on my har

Could you explain that a little more? I'm not disagreeing, but I'm not sure I understand what's so vital about preventing people from reading the data on my hard drive after they've confiscated it.

sixtofour 15y ago
You have a fifth amendment right not to incriminate yourself, which the article mentions by noting that you don't have to give up your password when asked. In my mind (IANAL), if I don't have to give up information about myself, then I have the right to encrypt my information, and to not be presumed a criminal merely for having encrypted my information. Note that the 5th amendment is not about protecting your criminal activity, since you're presumed innocent unless convicted. It's a right that you have regardless of your character or activity.
- tptacek 15y ago
  You don't have a right not to leave evidence. If you did, destruction of evidence wouldn't be a crime.
  - DasIch 15y ago
    We are not talking about evidence here, we are talking about information that at some point may be considered evidence. That is a big difference.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    I'm struggling to figure out how this comment is related to the one that you responded to. Did you respond to the wrong one?
  - sixtofour 15y ago
    I was going to mention a similar scenario of cooking accounting books as a counter to my non-lawyerly argument.
- nirvana 15y ago
  You're right, but I posed this very question to Kevin Mitnick once. He had just recounted how, during his prosecution, he'd been forced to give up his passphrase. (This was several years ago, and so I might have some specific details wrong, and I'm also going to be a bit vague about it as a result.) I asked him why he didn't just plead the 5th. He said he tried, but that they moved him into solitary and they started abusing him in jail. (abuse is my word, I don't remember the specifics) and they they used every method they could to force him to give up the passphrase, including, I believe, holding him in contempt for not revealing it. Eventually he revealed it. It is my opinion, having read accounts of people being prosecuted by the government for various crimes over the past 20 years, that in many cases, the government does not hold itself within the bounds of the law, and that such prosecutions are often illegal themselves. Yet, they are able to get away with this, because, what prosecutor is going to destroy their career by pressing charges on cops, other prosecutors or judges? Also, in this day and age, asset forfeiture is extremely easy. The government can seize all of your assets, effectively denying you the ability to pay your legal counsel, forcing you to rely on the legal services they provide for you. Further, even if you can afford your own counsel, as an "officer of the court" they are subject to extreme pressure. I've read about a fair number of situations where lawyers would not even introduce constitutional arguments for their defendants innocence because it would result in recriminations against the lawyers by the judge. (e.g.: its "frivolous" to claim that federal drug laws are unconstitutional, even though to criminalize alcohol an amendment was needed.) I'm not a lawyer, of course, this is just my perspective.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    "He said he tried, but that they moved him into solitary and they started abusing him in jail. (abuse is my word, I don't remember the specifics)" Solitary itself could reasonably be described as abuse.
    - droithomme 15y ago
      Reading the description that was given, if it did go down as described, that sounds every bit to be torturing a prisoner until he confesses.
- timwiseman 15y ago
  I am not a lawyer either, but generally you can be compelled to reveal a password. It is generally seen as analogous to the combination to a safe or a key to a door. Compelling revelation of the password is not generally seen as a violation of the Fifth ammendment. While a ruling from a lower court, there is a good discussion of this at IN RE JURY SUBPOENA TO SEBASTIEN BOUCHER, Dist. Court, D. Vermont 2009 (which is available on Google Scholar)
- cpeterso 15y ago
  Someone could use a two-factor system that splits the decryption key into a memorized passphrase and a physical token. Even if the person reveals their passphrase, the data cannot be decrypted without the rest of the key on the physical token (something that could easily be destroyed).
  - greiskul 15y ago
    This is called destruction of evidence, and is a crime.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Your hard drive is probably not vital. But that's not necessarily true for others. I shouldn't have to provide specific examples, because you seem to basically be arguing that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear, but here are a couple anyway: My doctor has a laptop; I sure hope that any medical records pertaining to me that are on that hard drive are encrypted. Ditto for my lawyer, accountant, etc. I carry around business data and keys to various production servers as well that my boss wouldn't want exposed, too.
FooBarWidget 15y ago
I don't want my company secrets to be leaked out if someone steals my laptop. The same mechanisms for preventing thieves from reading my data also prevent the government from reading my data.
3pt14159 15y ago
First off: fuck them. That's why. You have a right to free speech, including speech in numbers, which is all that is. You also have a right to not incriminate yourself so they can't get your password. But a line for people suffering from pragmatism would be this: In many, many cases someone has a secret. Sometimes even the secret that he has a secret within a domain is secret. For example, a CIA agent if arrested for child porn. Does he give up his password to the disk drive violating his top clearance status or does he shut the hell up. Or what about someone involved with a psychiatry practice that is arrested for child porn. She is legally obligated to keep those records secret. Or what about someone that signed an NDA with a tech or defense company? The list goes on. Information is the most valuable resource on the planet. It's probably the most valuable resource in the universe. The most valuable information is the information that only you know. They do not have a right to destroy your wealth or to even know that you have any. I'd rather live in a society with a couple extra perverts.
- abalashov 15y ago
  Tangent: I am literally unable to understand why possession of digital child pornography images is, in and of itself, a crime. I'm surprised that this is regarded as a radical position. A digitised image is an arrangement of bits on a platter or a wire. It doesn't hurt anyone. Laws that criminalise consumption of child pornography on the theory that it aids and abets its production by routing material financial support to the source date back to a time when almost all child pornography was obtained in consideration of payment, usually by mail order. That time is long past. Free porn abounds on the Internet, and anyone stupid enough to pay for illegal porn probably deserves to get arrested. There is several orders of magnitude--literally--more child porn today than could have possibly been imagined in the wildest dreams of postal inspectors in the 1980s. As for the idea that there is a case for criminalisation of child pornography possession or transmission based on some statistical link between child pornography and actual child molestation, that directly contravenes millenia of legal thought. In other words, it should not matter at all whether there is any scientific basis for the allegation of such a correlation or not; it's beside the point. It doesn't matter if 99% of child molesters have child pornography. That shouldn't affect the underlying principle. And the underlying principle is this: You can't punish someone for something they could--conceivably, in some hypothetical set of circumstances--do, but have not actually done. I really find the idea that possessing a file is a crime, let alone a rather non-trivial one, to be literally unintelligible. It is one of the most incomprehensible things about contemporary life to me. I don't understand how it's possible given the intellectual pedigree of Western jurisprudence.
ttankaa 15y ago
It's so important because most seizures are fishing expeditions. A political rival can be targeted with searches to find something that can be used against them. This could be anything from a misplaced comment in a chat log: 'I am going to kill that guy', 'man, someone should give that policeman the same beating he gave the protestor'. Likewise, a browser caches all manner of material, you can easily find your way into the wrong forum topic, or some vandal tweets you a link to child porn, or even regular porn that would be illegal in a certain jurisdiction. I now see half way through posting that many other reasons have already been listed, so I'll end it at that. See the plight of Jacob Applebaum who works on the Torproject for a very specific example. I think it got to the stage where he had to replace his electronics when he travels because he couldn't trust what was returned, thats if he gets the equipment back at all from customs, or purchases fresh equipment in foreign countries to know they are 'clean'. I think he weighs is equipment too.

Could you explain that a little more? I'm not disagreeing, but I'm not sure I understand what's so vital about preventing people from reading the data on my hard drive after they've confiscated it.

sixtofour 15y ago

You have a fifth amendment right not to incriminate yourself, which the article mentions by noting that you don't have to give up your password when asked. In my mind (IANAL), if I don't have to give up information about myself, then I have the right to encrypt my information, and to not be presumed a criminal merely for having encrypted my information. Note that the 5th amendment is not about protecting your criminal activity, since you're presumed innocent unless convicted. It's a right that you have regardless of your character or activity.

tptacek 15y ago
You don't have a right not to leave evidence. If you did, destruction of evidence wouldn't be a crime.
- DasIch 15y ago
  We are not talking about evidence here, we are talking about information that at some point may be considered evidence. That is a big difference.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I'm struggling to figure out how this comment is related to the one that you responded to. Did you respond to the wrong one?
- sixtofour 15y ago
  I was going to mention a similar scenario of cooking accounting books as a counter to my non-lawyerly argument.
nirvana 15y ago
You're right, but I posed this very question to Kevin Mitnick once. He had just recounted how, during his prosecution, he'd been forced to give up his passphrase. (This was several years ago, and so I might have some specific details wrong, and I'm also going to be a bit vague about it as a result.) I asked him why he didn't just plead the 5th. He said he tried, but that they moved him into solitary and they started abusing him in jail. (abuse is my word, I don't remember the specifics) and they they used every method they could to force him to give up the passphrase, including, I believe, holding him in contempt for not revealing it. Eventually he revealed it. It is my opinion, having read accounts of people being prosecuted by the government for various crimes over the past 20 years, that in many cases, the government does not hold itself within the bounds of the law, and that such prosecutions are often illegal themselves. Yet, they are able to get away with this, because, what prosecutor is going to destroy their career by pressing charges on cops, other prosecutors or judges? Also, in this day and age, asset forfeiture is extremely easy. The government can seize all of your assets, effectively denying you the ability to pay your legal counsel, forcing you to rely on the legal services they provide for you. Further, even if you can afford your own counsel, as an "officer of the court" they are subject to extreme pressure. I've read about a fair number of situations where lawyers would not even introduce constitutional arguments for their defendants innocence because it would result in recriminations against the lawyers by the judge. (e.g.: its "frivolous" to claim that federal drug laws are unconstitutional, even though to criminalize alcohol an amendment was needed.) I'm not a lawyer, of course, this is just my perspective.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  "He said he tried, but that they moved him into solitary and they started abusing him in jail. (abuse is my word, I don't remember the specifics)" Solitary itself could reasonably be described as abuse.
  - droithomme 15y ago
    Reading the description that was given, if it did go down as described, that sounds every bit to be torturing a prisoner until he confesses.
timwiseman 15y ago
I am not a lawyer either, but generally you can be compelled to reveal a password. It is generally seen as analogous to the combination to a safe or a key to a door. Compelling revelation of the password is not generally seen as a violation of the Fifth ammendment. While a ruling from a lower court, there is a good discussion of this at IN RE JURY SUBPOENA TO SEBASTIEN BOUCHER, Dist. Court, D. Vermont 2009 (which is available on Google Scholar)
cpeterso 15y ago
Someone could use a two-factor system that splits the decryption key into a memorized passphrase and a physical token. Even if the person reveals their passphrase, the data cannot be decrypted without the rest of the key on the physical token (something that could easily be destroyed).
- greiskul 15y ago
  This is called destruction of evidence, and is a crime.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

Your hard drive is probably not vital. But that's not necessarily true for others. I shouldn't have to provide specific examples, because you seem to basically be arguing that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear, but here are a couple anyway: My doctor has a laptop; I sure hope that any medical records pertaining to me that are on that hard drive are encrypted. Ditto for my lawyer, accountant, etc. I carry around business data and keys to various production servers as well that my boss wouldn't want exposed, too.

FooBarWidget 15y ago

I don't want my company secrets to be leaked out if someone steals my laptop. The same mechanisms for preventing thieves from reading my data also prevent the government from reading my data.

3pt14159 15y ago

First off: fuck them. That's why. You have a right to free speech, including speech in numbers, which is all that is. You also have a right to not incriminate yourself so they can't get your password. But a line for people suffering from pragmatism would be this: In many, many cases someone has a secret. Sometimes even the secret that he has a secret within a domain is secret. For example, a CIA agent if arrested for child porn. Does he give up his password to the disk drive violating his top clearance status or does he shut the hell up. Or what about someone involved with a psychiatry practice that is arrested for child porn. She is legally obligated to keep those records secret. Or what about someone that signed an NDA with a tech or defense company? The list goes on. Information is the most valuable resource on the planet. It's probably the most valuable resource in the universe. The most valuable information is the information that only you know. They do not have a right to destroy your wealth or to even know that you have any. I'd rather live in a society with a couple extra perverts.

abalashov 15y ago
Tangent: I am literally unable to understand why possession of digital child pornography images is, in and of itself, a crime. I'm surprised that this is regarded as a radical position. A digitised image is an arrangement of bits on a platter or a wire. It doesn't hurt anyone. Laws that criminalise consumption of child pornography on the theory that it aids and abets its production by routing material financial support to the source date back to a time when almost all child pornography was obtained in consideration of payment, usually by mail order. That time is long past. Free porn abounds on the Internet, and anyone stupid enough to pay for illegal porn probably deserves to get arrested. There is several orders of magnitude--literally--more child porn today than could have possibly been imagined in the wildest dreams of postal inspectors in the 1980s. As for the idea that there is a case for criminalisation of child pornography possession or transmission based on some statistical link between child pornography and actual child molestation, that directly contravenes millenia of legal thought. In other words, it should not matter at all whether there is any scientific basis for the allegation of such a correlation or not; it's beside the point. It doesn't matter if 99% of child molesters have child pornography. That shouldn't affect the underlying principle. And the underlying principle is this: You can't punish someone for something they could--conceivably, in some hypothetical set of circumstances--do, but have not actually done. I really find the idea that possessing a file is a crime, let alone a rather non-trivial one, to be literally unintelligible. It is one of the most incomprehensible things about contemporary life to me. I don't understand how it's possible given the intellectual pedigree of Western jurisprudence.

ttankaa 15y ago

It's so important because most seizures are fishing expeditions. A political rival can be targeted with searches to find something that can be used against them. This could be anything from a misplaced comment in a chat log: 'I am going to kill that guy', 'man, someone should give that policeman the same beating he gave the protestor'. Likewise, a browser caches all manner of material, you can easily find your way into the wrong forum topic, or some vandal tweets you a link to child porn, or even regular porn that would be illegal in a certain jurisdiction. I now see half way through posting that many other reasons have already been listed, so I'll end it at that. See the plight of Jacob Applebaum who works on the Torproject for a very specific example. I think it got to the stage where he had to replace his electronics when he travels because he couldn't trust what was returned, thats if he gets the equipment back at all from customs, or purchases fresh equipment in foreign countries to know they are 'clean'. I think he weighs is equipment too.