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> In a work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government called the printou
by ZoFreX 13y ago
> In a work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government called the printout “illegible” and the court ordered Levison to provide a more useful electronic copy.
How illegible? I'm really curious about this part.
- jlgreco 13y agoI'd say that depends on the printer. Was it a nice laser/toner deal, or an HP 'inkjet' they found behind a dumpster 10 years ago?
- riggins 13y agothis made me chuckle.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoThey go on to say that it was 2,560 characters. That many chars at 4pt type should not have taken 11 pages. That is roughly 233 chars per page. Even at normal point size, 1 page will hold more than 233 chars. at 4pt I would expect it to all fit on one page. Am I missing something here?
- secabeen 13y agoWe don't know how many characters per line there were. A page contains about 130 lines at 4 point font.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoThat is what I don't get. If 4pt gives you 130 lines per page, you would only need to fit 20 chars per line to fit the entire thing on one page. With 2560 chars on 11 pages means 233 chars per page at 130 lines per page, we end up with roughly 2 chars per line. We already know he was basically giving them the middle finger by printing it AND printing it very small. He would clearly need to do something extra odd to make it do this.
- generj 13y agoYou can see how he did it on the court documents (it's attachment A on page 145-150). He might have done some less efficient encoding, like Base-16.
- zmmmmm 13y agoYes. It's interesting that the feds didn't just apply their surely sufficient technical skill to decode it and type it in. Even manually with a magnifying glass one could do it in a day or two of work. Hardly significant in the context of the wider investigation they were engaged in. It makes it seem to me like they'd basically decided at that point to make it a point of principle - they demand not just compliance but proper complete submission to their authority.