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As this story illustrates: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989

by robmcm 13y ago

joering2 13y ago
+1. First, I wish to know what technology he used. Is TrueCrypt sufficient (with similarly strong password). Not because I have to hide anything, of course, just my wife wants me to encrypt our spicy photos, in case :) Second, I am not sure I understand the judge decision. If the man truly forgot it, or lets say the files on USB got corrupted (can happen) and the password he is giving out does not work, then how can you continue to jail him (for that reason)? Is this something specific to UK, or are similar US cases out there?
- aper 13y ago
  What if I have just erased my USB-stick with good dose of /dev/random and haven't actually formatted it to any filesystem yet. Good encryption is indistinguishable from randomness, so could they blame me for not giving up password and jail me for carrying randomness in my pocket?
  - robmcm 13y ago
    I think they will use that to put you away, if they don't believe you...
  - acdha 13y ago
    In many countries they can jail you for failure to disclose encryption keys – for example, in the UK you could spend two years in jail unless you could convince the court that there was in fact no encrypted data on that USB key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingd...
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
    If they did arrest you for that, but you aren't really Jack Bauer you could at least get points on hn for writing the story of "How I was arrested for carrying random data on my usb stick"
- robmcm 13y ago
  Send me your photos and I'll encrypt them for you! I think the law is very vague due to the people writing it now knowing much about it. I imagine they have a use case of this guy and want jail for anything other than seeing some incriminating evidence. I guess it doesn't help that it turned out he did know the password and it had a load of incriminating stuff on.

As this story illustrates: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989

by robmcm 13y ago

As this story illustrates: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989

+1. First, I wish to know what technology he used. Is TrueCrypt sufficient (with similarly strong password). Not because I have to hide anything, of course, just my wife wants me to encrypt our spicy photos, in case :) Second, I am not sure I understand the judge decision. If the man truly forgot it, or lets say the files on USB got corrupted (can happen) and the password he is giving out does not work, then how can you continue to jail him (for that reason)? Is this something specific to UK, or are similar US cases out there?

aper 13y ago
What if I have just erased my USB-stick with good dose of /dev/random and haven't actually formatted it to any filesystem yet. Good encryption is indistinguishable from randomness, so could they blame me for not giving up password and jail me for carrying randomness in my pocket?
- robmcm 13y ago
  I think they will use that to put you away, if they don't believe you...
- acdha 13y ago
  In many countries they can jail you for failure to disclose encryption keys – for example, in the UK you could spend two years in jail unless you could convince the court that there was in fact no encrypted data on that USB key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingd...
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
  If they did arrest you for that, but you aren't really Jack Bauer you could at least get points on hn for writing the story of "How I was arrested for carrying random data on my usb stick"
robmcm 13y ago
Send me your photos and I'll encrypt them for you! I think the law is very vague due to the people writing it now knowing much about it. I imagine they have a use case of this guy and want jail for anything other than seeing some incriminating evidence. I guess it doesn't help that it turned out he did know the password and it had a load of incriminating stuff on.