PGP Ruled as Relevant For Criminal Case

waytoomuchcoffee writes "A Minnesota appeals unamimously ruled in a child porn case that "the existence of an encryption program" on the defendants computer could be admitted as evidence of criminal intent. The article doesn't mention if this can be taken into account for sentencing too."

Comments

After I had my laptop stolen, I lock it down more

[steve_l]

My laptop got stolen from my own house last year; in hibernate state.

Revoking SSH keys took as much time as killing card info, There is so many places sensititive data could end up (like your bank login/card info), such as
-hibernate file
-pagefile
-browser password store
-browser page cache
-directory where I save PDF shopping receipts
-mailbox

Now I lock a lot of the system down. Not just my home dir
-temp
-browser cache
-various program directories.
This is win32, where the EFS stuff doesnt encrypt filenames, just the contents. Its known that EFS is breakable (just reset the login password or something), but to make it harder

1. laptop needs a bios password.
2. that password is also used to enable the HDD
3. My winnt EFS private key is stored in the laptop TPM module.

#3 is interesting. I know TPM is associated with 'evil-DRM-Trusted-computing-stuff', but I use it as an unbreakable store of my sensitive keys. If what the inventors say is true (I work with some of them), you'd have to be a stronly motivate government to stand a chance of getting stuff off the TPM, so implicitly, off this hard disk.

Does this make me a criminal? I dont think so. The police told me off for not bios-locking my last box. Their view is the less usable stolen laptops are, the less valuable they are, so theft reduces all round. It is every laptop owner's duty to lock down their boxes so nobody can get at them!