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Judge Rules Man Cannot Be Forced To Decrypt HD
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In Vermont, US Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier has ruled that forcing someone to divulge the password to decrypt their hard drive violates the 5th Amendment. Border guards testify that they saw child pornography on the defendant's laptop when the PC was on, but they made the mistake of turning it off and were unable to access it again because the drive was protected by PGP. Although prosecutors offered many ways to get around the 5th Amendment protections, the Judge would have none of that and quashed the grand jury subpoena requesting the defendant's PGP passphrase. A conviction is still likely because prosecutors have the testimony of the two border guards who saw the drive while it was open." The article stresses the potential importance of this ruling (which was issued last November but went unnoticed until now): "Especially if this ruling is appealed, US v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach."
Update: 08/19 23:49 GMT by KD : Several readers have pointed out that this story in fact did not go unnoticed.
Update: 08/19 23:49 GMT by KD : Several readers have pointed out that this story in fact did not go unnoticed.
Here, we have a story which is not only over 8 months old, but is also a dupe. That has to be some kind of a record.
IANAL, but if my memory serves me correctly, Customs and "border guards"aren't constrained by the same laws that other law enforcement is. That's why they can search your vehicle, personal effects, body cavities, etc. when you enter the country without a warrant.
I have a constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures once inside the United States, but not while entering it. The judges decision sounds nice, but I don't think it will stand.
Have gnu, will travel.
Plug for TrueCrypt 6.0's Hidden OS feature. This allow one to give a password (not the "real" password) and have the system boot to a hidden OS which is not your real installation. Moreover, there is no way to prove the "real" OS exists. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-operating-system
Well, the fact that "they"'ve gone to all this trouble, and have fallen flat on their faces suggests there really aren't any backdoors in PGP at least, or that they aren't open to people at that level, which is nice.
-- All your booze are belong to us.
I also doubt that a "conviction is still likely", unless they have some other material to show. Convictions in these cases are almost always due to the shock value created by showing the dirty films and pictures to the jury. If they cannot recover the images and movies, they will actually have to cover their burden of proof a lot more than prosecutors are used to in this case, and the defense might actually have a shot.
If the jury actually thinks about the fact that the only evidence is what some cops say they saw, but can't prove. If the prosecution somehow gets to show "similar images" or some such nonsense, the defense is hosed.
Actually I used to write disk encryption software(For NT/9X) and that was one of our (minor) features. We figured when we wanted to sell to military it might be cute to have a duress passpharse that would shred designated files but boot the OS as if nothing had happened. Alas we never had anyone who was interested.
I know a lot of people who were getting very nervous about even *visiting* the USA. Think they're overreacting and melodramatic? Think again - all we hear are stories of how foreigners, with no rights, detained by customs, forced to incriminate themselves, forced to give up encryption keys on threat of indefinite detention in stateless legal no-mans-land .. how reasonable it is to worry about it all *that* much is questionable but it's undeniably been a bad trend for a long time.
This, though - an unequivocal restoration of the right to silence, at a border no less - is a *very* welcome development. Let's hope it's the first in a long run of "restoration" decisions as the pendulum swings back from the terrorism bubble.
Really happy to see this. I'm not American, but I was taking no joy whatsoever in watching the previous slide. I'm feeling pretty joyful to see this kind of thing, though - separation of powers worked in the end!
Here's to a few more key decisions like this. Go USA.
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
It seems there is some logical flaw in the entire process. Does a civil service exam make a person impossible of being a pedophile? If so, let's all take a civil service exam and then there could be no pedophiles. The only result of having a separate category of 'good' person who can do no evil is that they will become the only possible source of evil. I think crimes against children are horrible and twisting their minds to say that freedom is oligarchy is a crime against children itself. I think screwing over everybody is a sex crime also.
I mean that.
This post is not a joke and I fully expect to be down modded for being off topic or whatever. I want level4 to know that his/her actions is appreciated.
That is all.
In parts of eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century it was common for >14 year old girls to be married off to any financially stable (read older) man. The rationale behind it was simple, women just didn't live very long and to keep families from dying out the female reproductive cycle had to start ASAP (as soon a biologically possible). Clearly sociological/cultural norms mean more than some Bible-toting tub-thumper's, TV evangelist pseudo-moralizing looking for some free press.
My grandmother was married to my grandfather when she was fifteen (she died at twenty eight) and he was in his thirties, his second wife was seventeen at the time of his marriage to her (he died at seventy nine).
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
So what if I made my pass phrase the confession to some minor crime and then confessed the fact? Wouldn't that make it a more clear-cut fifth amendment issue as revealing my pass-phrase would be directly incriminating?
-Dave
Letek: "They adorn themselves with gold, a despicable use of the valuable metal. And they shamelessly clothe their females..."
Mordoc: "...Inviting others to unclothe them, the very depth of perversion."
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Threaten to kill the president and you'll quickly find out how capable the US government is at tracking individual slashdot posters.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm going to kill the president.
My other car is first.
Your passphrase could be phrased to be an admission to a crime. That gives it automatic protection. Something like "I have defaced US currency" or "I jaywalked last Saturday at 3pm"
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Nevada. Fallon to be exact. My wonderful home town.
The local military recruiter was having sex with 2 high school girls. All he could be charged with was taking pictures of them having sex.
Arrest:
http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/article/20050528/NEWS/105280010&parentprofile=search
Going to trial:
http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/article/20050924/NEWS/109240017&parentprofile=searchGoing to trail
And found not guilty:
http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/article/20070825/NEWS/108250051&parentprofile=search
Even in this hick town, the jurors had some common-sense. Because the females were active participants, they were not 'victims.' So even though taking, and having pictures of females under 18 having sex is a crime, they decided this situation was different'
and it's not bad at fucking all if you have it done by friends who you know will stop
Fixed. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
al Zarqawi lasted almost 2 1/2 minutes (a superhuman feat) before he gave in and agreed to talk
Nope, al Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike. You are thinking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). And nobody has released how long he was waterboarded. I have heard multiple numbers from 20 seconds to 57 seconds to your 2.5 minutes. It always seems to be getting longer. The "superhuman feat" line is just al Qaeda propaganda trying to make people believe that jihadists can somehow train themselves to resist waterboarding. The truth is nobody can train for it since no amount of willpower can prevent the drowning reflex from kicking in. It is highly unlikely that he lasted longer than any normal torturee.
The core of the 5th amendment is that you CAN NOT be required to make a sound, motion or issue any utterance during your trial.
You can plead the 5th and remain totally silent and you cannot be held in contempt for this unless you have voluntarily chosen to take the stand in your own defense and uttered an oath that you will tell the whole truth.
There simply is no way to compel someone to SAY something. It's not part of our legal system.
China, Cuba, Iran, and more... Those are a few of the cases where I am not seeing the wheels of justice fixing the violations of human rights very quickly. If we look at the Middle East we can see city/states/regions where such practices have gone on for what seems like forever.
Your statement seems so absolute. I have to wonder if there will be a balance, ever. My faith in humanity is not so strong I suppose.
What we tend to see as inalianable human rights aren't always viewed by the rest of the globe as being rights - perhaps because they don't view all people as equal. Some pigs are just more equal than others I suppose.
Side note: I really have no idea what the solutions are. The cultural values that I'm familiar with are completely different than those in other countries. We uphold our's as the moral standard just as they seem to.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So how was your visit with the secret service?
There won't be one. Now that our beloved Internet gives assholes like him the ability to, well, spread their asshole essence, there simply aren't enough agents to check out every faux-brave attempt to poke the Secret Service in the eye. Even if someone here reported him, since it's a brief statement, they'd probably ignore it. They simply have too many other possible loonies to deal with. So the asshole up there gets think he's being courageous without consequence.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I disagree, Mr. President.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, the prosecutors who are trying to force a legal precedent to require citizens to relinquish their password are the conspiratorial sacks of shit.
Even if they got that precedent how would it actually help them? A blatant refusal to hand over the password would obviously be contempt of court in such a scenario but I'm wondering exactly how they would respond to someone who pulled out the Bush administration line of "I don't recall".
Would it be contempt of court to forget a password?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.