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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.
"thousands of images of adult pornography and animation depicting adult and child pornography."
I know that TFA is about encryption and the rights to passwords but I think the phrase above is far more interesting. That quote could be misleading, but what if the Border Enforcers didn't find any photographs or videos(hell, any evidence at all)of real human child exploitation?
:)
If they are able to legally get the key and crack the drive, and all they found was animation, then maybe they should just give him a warning and and call him a "perv"...especially if he has "thousands" of files and not a single one is "real".
By the way, those of you who fantasize about your wife or girlfriend in a schoolgirl outfit are also pervs
Border guards testify that they saw child pornography on the defendant's laptop when the PC was on
wow, so cops testify that it's true? that's good enough for me!
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Turn *off* your laptop before going through customs.
Turn off the GRUB menu and change the default key combination to have it come up.
Have a WinXP install to boot up into and set it as the default boot option.
Strong cryptography is lovely but it is not for idiots.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In any case, it is good to see judges in the US (or anywhere else) making into the news for taking the right stand regarding governmental search limits.
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.
From TFA :"Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department prosecutor who's now a law professor at George Washington University, shares this view. Kerr acknowledges that it's a tough call, but says, "I tend to think Judge Niedermeier was wrong given the specific facts of this case." "
The phrase "given the specific facts of this case" gives me chills in this context. As we all know, kiddie porn is, along with terrorism and drugs, one of the three Prime Evils of American jurisprudence and public opinion, the unholy trinity that justify any and all measures in their eradication.
In short: Why, why does our potential landmark 5th amendment case have to be a kiddie porn case? I'm no fan of child pornography; but it would be an absolute disaster if, thanks to the vociferous moral condemnation that such a case always involved, we end up setting a dangerous precedent concerning the 5th amendment and crypto keys/passwords.
I think it involves no hyperbole to say that the crypto key issue is probably the most important 5th amendment related question that technology has yet raised(mindreading tech will probably top it, when it becomes available). I'd hate to see this be yet another decision chiseling away at our constitution, just because some punk likes kiddie porn.
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.
Seriously, are the editors asleep?
This story from last December had the exact same article. This was noted in the firehose entry, and somehow this still got posted. I thought that kind of thing was a major purpose of the firehose?
WTF
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.
Period. End of discussion. They cannot compel your testimony. Not one word can they force you to utter. It is your choice to stand mute and that cannot be used against you.
Anything more than this, compelling you to utter even a single syllable in order to prove your own innocence or guilt, and we don't live in the land of the free anymore.
The good of this is obvious. In the US, we're guaranteed a certain set of rights, which often get trodden on in the name of justice under the noses of judges willing to look the other way (FBI wire-tapping, anyone?) This will allow for a more guaranteed level to the protection of privacy.
The bad to potentially come of this is when you *know* someone has done wrong, but their rights are protected to keep such things secret. I'm think terrorism, laundering of money, etc, falling into this group.
Last, there's the ugly. There's the pedophiles, rapists, etc, that are able to hide their wares and get away with it. I'm not implying they don't have the same rights, but you've gotta figure there's other potential ill-deeds going on.
Given all three, it's still a right I feel strongly about, and a right thousands of men and women are willing to give their life to protect (crazy looney at the helm, or not). What I'm curious about is whether this would have any affect on the legality of breaking into an encrypted file/filesystem when the owner has denied access.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003
I knew that I read this somewhere... Prohibits computer-generated child pornography when "(B) such visual depiction is a computer image or computer-generated image that is, or appears virtually indistinguishable from that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; (as amended by 1466A for Section 2256(8)(B) of title 18, United States Code).
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.
Considering that the constitution provides that he shouldn't be forced to incriminate himself, it is definitely good news that the Judge didn't try to rewrite the constitution. It's high time that we start holding the judges who disagree with this concept accountable.
With a locked trunk, you don't have to give them the key, they can break it open. This same applies to the encrypted data. It's their problem if their tools to break it aren't good enough.
Well option 'c' is always open, even if it's illegal it's like you said "After all, waterboarding leaves no marks so it would just be his word against theirs". I guess you just have to learn how to not give up your rights under moderate torture. (or quit being a pedophile)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No kidding. Any decent defense attorney should be able to nullify these guards' testimony.
"So Officer Smith, you testified that the images you saw depicted children. Exactly how old were they? Oh you're not sure. (Display a picture of a model who's 18 and is made up to look 12.) How old is this model? Take a guess. Sorry, no, she's 18, and here's her birth certificate to prove it. Since you can't accurately identify the age of this model, why should the jury assume you could identify the age(s) of other models?"
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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.
Yeah, the guy was so horny he couldn't stop watching his kidde porn even when he approached the border guards. I find that hard to believe. especially that the guy obviously is not stupid (he encrypted his drive for god's sake - how many smart people do you know who know how to do this?). These border guards are full of it - but you know what - if the guy is headed for jail it'd be smart of him to give them his pass to show them he's got no kiddie porn. if he withholds that then he must have something to hide that would get him more jailtime than kiddie porn.
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
Good things like this only happen to bad guys because that's where the infringement on rights starts. You don't infringe a soccer mom's right to privacy, you infringe the creepy mexican guy who likes to watch child pornography. Once his rights are infringed and the courts have set a precedence, then you can infringe the soccer mom's rights all you want, it's now legal! Defending society's rights requires defending them for every member, the scum included.
You don't think ordering him to reveal his key under threat of being jailed for contempt of court counts as force?
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
You'd probably get thrown in jail for that, and it'll probably stick. Refusing to divulge your passphrase is protected by the Fifth Amendment, but if you give them a self-destruct phrase and tell them it's the passphrase, you have just destroyed potential evidence that is in their possession, and I'd be surprised indeed if that is not against one or more laws.
If only you thought to market it to pedophiles! :(
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
First of all, let's stop pretending that this has anything at all to do with "child pornography".
The justice department was just trying to get some case law saying an individual could be forced to relinquish his password, and by using "child pornography" they thought they could bully some judge into betraying the Constitution. It's a good sign that those sons of bitches lost, too.
And ultimately, torture doesn't work. Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall, and often (but not always) the perpetrators end up on the other end of the see-saw. Then, it becomes harder to find people who will obey orders to torture. We in America will eventually learn that it was a huge mistake to forsake our principles and become a torture regime. But, I can only hope that Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and others will face the music. There's no guarantee that justice moves quickly enough to give that kind of satisfaction. But move it does - and inexorably.
You are welcome on my lawn.
> 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.
It's worse. I fail to understand how a court can't order the asshole to produce the data. We have protection against unreasonable search. We have a right against self incrimination. But neither apply here. Nobody is going to argue that a judge can't issue an order for you to cough up documents whether on paper or a computer. Our whole system of law would collapse were law enforcement unable to obtain evidence, even with a court order.
Drop all the cyber bullshit and imagine this as a meatspace problem. Imagine you have a fortress of doom that it would be totally impractical for law enforcement to gain entrance to without the key. (perhaps you have crazed killbots inside, or whatever) If a judge issued a valid search warrant you would indeed be required to produce the key or be held in contempt. Why is it different because computers are involved?
Even better example. Judge issues warrant for you to produce paper files. You are the only one who knows where they are located. If you try saying that telling the court where they are would be self incrimination and thus you are invoking the 5th you should not be suprised to find yourself in a cell.
This case is going to come down to two sworn officers asserting they saw kiddie porn on exhibit A, the laptop. Almost any jury is going to be willing to accept that as proof beyond a reasonable doubt considering the defense could rebutt by simply unlocking the laptop and proving their innocence. This isn't a case of guilt until proven innoccent, this is two officers vs a suspect who refuses to allow anyone to see the evidence he claims would free him. Hell, I'd convict on that.
Democrat delenda est
No, not because he agrees with me. Because he knows something all these other people apparently don't; that the laws in the US have changed, and while it was true that it was not previously illegal, it has been since 2003.
I'll be man enough to admit that I thought it had been illegal for much longer, and so the various "you're wrong" responses to my post were also quite enlightening, but they seem to have missed this crucial change in American law.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
>I guess it's merely pointless, then; you're saying, for example, that if I had a combination lock on my house, I wouldn't have to give it up even if
>there were a warrant, but then the police would just break down the door.
Yes, indeed.
Good luck with that 2048-bit Diffie Hellman thing though. If you have a warrant, you are certainly welcome to try, officer.
My attorney's name is (... ....), he is on the board of the Texas Bar Association and thus easily reached. I shall now invoke my right to remain silent.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The real reason that this doesn't happen is because its pointless. The first thing that a data forensic team does is mirror the original drive, and store the original away as evidence. They then work on the mirrored image.
So, you go and give the self destruct key, and it renders the data on the copy useless. Big deal. They just go and mirror the original again, and you are back at square one.
--Brian
In short: Why, why does our potential landmark 5th amendment case have to be a kiddie porn case?
Because the prosecutors ALWAYS go after the least-sympathetic scumbag they can find (or create the appearance of) when trying to establish a break-the-bill-of-rights precedent.
In the case of trying to clamp down on new forms of speech, press, or association this is USUALLY a child pornography or child molestation case.
Once they've got the precedent in place they can go after the real target: Anybody they don't like.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Or
d) Under the pressure to solve a single case, the US Government could collapse in on itself, causing a new despotic regime to overtake what was a storied and noble system of checks and balances. The defendant's entire extended family would be flayed alive in front of him out of sheer spite since he already gave up the information the government wanted under mere threat of what was to come. And then the nukes.
Wait, what were we talking about?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
There's no way to recover the missing passphrase from a PGP-encrypted partition, Linux or not. When PGP encrypts data, it uses the passphrase as the parameter to generate an encryption key, which is used to modify the data in a way unique to that key. The key is never stored on the drive, and neither is the passphrase.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
For about a year I've noticed that the growing rhetoric in the mass media outlets is that encryption is something only paedophiles or criminals use . If you can't force people to disclose the passphrase you can sure make people who do use encryption look like criminals.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
First of all, let's stop pretending that this has anything at all to do with "child pornography".
Thank you Pope Ratzo!
Any time the government wants to remove one more right from you, the test case will always be a charge of child pornography or terrorism. But it's not like the precdent will be "only for accused terrorists" - it will be used for anyone. Even if it were, accusing your political opponents of being pedophiles or terrorists in order to use the "special case" laws against them has been done throughout recorded history. It's not exactly hard to put encrypted child porn on a seized laptop after the fact, if you're willing to break a law to get a conviction!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm fairly certain the definition of torture doesn't change simply upon decree of the Bush administration. Just because they issue a statement that "waterboarding is not torture" doesn't make it true.
The US "doesn't torture" only because it asserts that it doesn't. It also asserts that inflicting pain would not be considered torture unless it caused "death, organ failure or permanent damage."
Even the current Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, considers waterboarding to be torture, saying, "it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Potâ(TM)s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today."
Besides, many consider any form of pain compliance, for forced information extraction, to be torture. Waterboarding is essentially forced drowning with a medic in attendance, to revive the "patient" in case his/her vitals falter.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
The reason to want to be anonymous is not cowardice. The reason is that the repercussions are not acceptable.
This myth was dispelled long ago, one example is gorilla warfare. Europeans thought it cowardly to hide from your opponents instead of facing them openly on a field of battle. It wasn't cowardly, it was tactically sound.
The same is true of avoiding prosecution by unjust government and preventing those whom you are criticizing from discovering your loved ones.
The difference between the AC and the non-AC? The AC legitimately believes there are people out there fear. The non-AC just likes to talk conspiracies.
Personally, I just think our government lacks the resources to track individual slashdot posters on a routine basis... so far.
You do not have a right against self-incrimination. You have a right to remain silent.
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.
Never mind that your diluting the meaning of the word "torture" beyond measure. This is not torture at all, a much more accurate description would be "not respecting privacy of a criminal suspect". Causing direct and extreme physical or psychological pain in order to extract information is torture
Had you read the posts above you, you would know that he's talking about waterboarding. And I'm pretty sure that that qualifies as torture...
However, on reflection, I have to say you probably have the correct distillation of what that means. Because criminals incriminate themselves all the time. Fingerprints, DNA, fiber traces...
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
This myth was dispelled long ago, one example is gorilla warfare.
Freakin monkeys with freakin laser guns!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No this has nothing to do with the 5th amendment. If you have a big safe in your basement and the police have reason to suspect you have cocaine in it, then they can order you to open it. If you have something in your car trunk, the police can demand you unlock it for a warrented search. This is NO DIFFERENT except that it is new and that while we can force open safes and car trunks, its harder to brute force decryption.
The 5th amendment says "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". That means you dont have to comply with the demand for an admission of guilt. It does NOT mean you dont have to provide the court with objects and/or information that is directly or indirectly related to the case. If you were really going to stand on that then you could refuse to be searched when you are under arrest because the gun in your pocket would be a "witness" against yourself.
Last I checked, a witness is a PERSON.
He is not the one being an idiot, you are. Do you know ANYTHING about the law?
"Don't be an idiot. Enforcing would be done exactly as it is done in any other case of someone refusing to comply with an order issued by a court. You hold them in contempt of court and lock em up until they obey or they can get a higher court to reverse. No rubber hoses required."
Not so. Physical compliance is one thing. Compelling someone to speak is something entirely different. They are different areas of the law, and covered by different parts of the Constitution. Further, once again: this has to do with the 5th, which prevents compelling someone to testify against himself. AND, as I mentioned elsewhere, there are MANY perfectly legitimate reasons why someone would not want -- very much not want -- the "authorities" to access their files, even if there is nothing illegal in them!
("Gee, let's see... I am a border guard, and I have this bogus "do not fly" list, consisting largely of people who are political activists... let's accuse him of child pornography and see what's in his secret files!")
If you think that scenario is unrealistic, then you have not studied your history.
"But since the testimony of two sworn peace officers will almost certainly convict beyond a reasonable doubt in the absence of any defense, going that route is a sure fire path to a "pound me in the ass" federal prison."
Bullshit. In order to convict on "say-so" only, the two witnesses would have to be VERY credible. If I were a juror, it is unlikely I would vote to convict without physical evidence. And as for being credible witnesses, especially when it comes to identifying children on grainy video... heck, it's a stretch even calling most border guards "law enforcement"!
By the way, I should mention that a couple of years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that in order for something to be judged "child pornography", it must be proven that (1) it is actual pornography, and (2) that the subjects are actual children. Good luck proving those with no videos. Do you think the guards recognized those particular children? Do you think that they names and addresses were flashed on the screen? I doubt it.
"Basically this guy is saying "That laptop over there doesn't have anything illegal on it. Those pigs are just lying ignorant bastards who wouldn't know a playboy bunny shot from japanese tentacle porn. But you guys on the jury are just going to have to trust me on that..."
Yep. And that is enough, legally and Constitutionally. As it should be. You don't seem to appreciate how horrifically "the system" could be abused, if we did not have such safeguards. History is full of such stories... are you going to be one of those people doomed to repeat history because you did not bother to learn it? I hope not.
-- "That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." - Benjamin Franklin
"Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall..."
Historically speaking, the societies that have violated basic human rights lasted far longer than those that did not.
A state run society may be bad for an individual, but it's often pretty good for the stability of the society as a whole.
The president of what?
Well there's your problem. You used an amateur. Try getting a professional to do it. I guarantee you'll change your opinion.
So how was your visit with the secret service?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I'm not *really* talking about swimsuit photos, either, really. I'm sure at some point, some of them were wearing swimsuits, but that was well before the photos were taken. ;)
I think you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare. As for Gorilla Warfare, I am sure you can excuse the poor gorillas for fighting the good fight
Historically speaking, the societies that have violated basic human hygiene lasted far longer than those that did not. Does that mean we should all stop bathing?
May I speak for all of us when I say "We wish you the best of luck!"
zosxavius photography
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"?
Which is a pity because using encryption is one of the best mechanisms we have to secure ourselves against Identity Theft.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
But are you a bad enough dude?
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Waterboarding is essentially forced drowning with a medic in attendance, to revive the "patient" in case his/her vitals falter.
Actually, it's not drowning at all. If they wanted to force drowning all it would take would be a kitchen sink. For waterboarding, the subject is placed at a slight head-down angle and the cloth over the face prevents aspiration of any meaningful quantity of water, so drowning is actually mechanically impossible. It just gives a thoroughly convincing sensation of drowning. al Zarqawi lasted almost 2 1/2 minutes (a superhuman feat) before he gave in and agreed to talk--- which means he wasn't drowning. This is the reason the technique is used. Asphyxiation due to drowning limits one to as long as it takes for the subject to pass out, then requires medical attention. Waterboarding, it can go on and on....
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I find it sad that most everyone discussing this topic feels compelled to add in a condemnation the pornographers as if otherwise people would suspect them of being one. We can discuss murder and other heinous crimes without needing a disclaimer.
Not that I'm defending child pornographers in any way.
Security is irrelevant. Citizenship is irrelevant. The only thing relevant here is "shall not", and for the Government those words drown out every other concern under the sun until they are rubbed out.
You say the border should be under the sole jurisdiction of Congress. That's all well and good. But Congress is under the jurisdiction of the people of the United States of America, who have set its boundary conditions, which include those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. It is thus impossible for Congress to have jurisdiction of anything without the Constitution as amended having jurisdiction of it; the Constitution as amended has jurisdiction over Congress. Since always.
Or do you argue that the border is outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Government entire? If so, I can accept that the rights as enumerated in the Constitution may not be protected by the anarchy present there. But then, at that moment of dissolution of the Federal Government's power, the laws of Congress cease to matter either, and your measures of security must be enforced by the barrel of a gun. At that moment, any action by the Government would be unilateral and outside its charter, and thus cease to be an act of the Government as instantiated and legitimized by the will of its citizens. At that moment, rights have nothing to do with it. Only might.
A is A. Either something is a right or it is not. And no-one should expect less privacy from an organization than the leader of that organization has deemed the minimum. Until that leader - until the people themselves - change their minds and in doing so change the charter, the Government is incapable of exceeding the boundary conditions specified there without ceasing to be the Government, ceasing to be legitimate, and sublimating back into the form of some thugs on the border, acting on their own whims, who'll let you through if you do as they tell you.
And if we find that this leaves a legitimate instantiation of the Government with insufficient power to protect us from our enemies, we must decide whether we value that protection over a bit of extra liberty on the border, and change the charter accordingly. Until then, we'll be protected only by an illegitimate Government, or illegitimate agents of the Government - and I'd rather be unsafe from outside than be guarded by false guards.
Sorry for making you read all of that. I'll shut up now. >_>
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2004/10/29/livejournal-blo.php
Here in the U.S., we don't have to prove our innocence, the cops have to prove that we are guilty.
/usr/games/fortune
Try getting a professional to do it. I guarantee you'll change your opinion.
Especially if the professional wants to hear to something "Hubbel" doesn't know or believes isn't true.
Not only will he change his opinion, he'll probably being making stuff up to get the torturer to stop.
Which is why torture is not an effective means of interrogation - you can't trust the information you get from it.
Waterboarding's not so fucking bad, eh? Then why is the US even using it? And if amateur/non-hardened terrorist types like you and your buddies are able to easily withstand it, then what good is it as a form of torture? (Note that John McCain flip-flopped and voted *for* waterboarding even after he denounced it.)
Regardless, torture is considered a lossy means of extracting information from interrogation subjects. Because with the threat of imminent death (e.g. repeated waterboardings, with the drowning response telling your body that you're about to die), you'll do anything to save your life, won't you? Like making shit up. (Of course, making shit up is just what the US did to get us into the Iraq war in the first place.)
I'd be unsurprised to learn that waterboarding is a kind of red herring - there are many far more simple, painful and damaging techniques that our rendition and torture outsource partners (and let us not forget contractors) are all too willing to employ. That's what you can do when you partner with dictatorships in a war on terror.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
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
This myth was dispelled long ago, one example is gorilla warfare. Europeans thought it cowardly to hide from your opponents instead of facing them openly on a field of battle. It wasn't cowardly, it was tactically sound.
Me still thinks those gorillas was darn cowards.
There is a BIG f*cking difference there,hoss. if you refuse to open a safe,then they can whip out a blowtorch. refuse to open the trunk,make a call to the locksmith. In this case it is them saying "Open this box so we can put you in jail forever,and if you don't we'll put you in jail forever." See how either way you go it ends with "put you in jail forever"? That was the WHOLE POINT of having the fifth,so we wouldn't be put in positions like that.
And do you think that,oh I don't know,they just happened to get lucky in finding a perv without the password? Do you honestly think they haven't run into this situation in the past with a drug runner or gun smuggler? Of course they have. They didn't try this sh*t because they knew it wouldn't fly. Pedo is the commie of the 21st century,don't you know that? Because they know they can pull sh*t that would get shut down with any other kind of criminal,but guys like you will yell "Get the pedo!" and let them do whatever they want to the perv.
I have a buddy in the state police and have helped him out from time to time. Believe me,these guys? not real hard to catch. They crave that nasty crap like I crave my first morning cigarette. Do you honestly think if they let this guy go that he will NEVER look at little kid pics again? Or that it would be hard to get a judge to sign off on monitoring his Internet connection based on the testimony of two border cops? Of course not,but that isn't what they want. A precedent doesn't have a "only useful on pedos" clause,and after FISA and warrantless wiretapping do you REALLY trust the bozos in power with even MORE?
I don't give a diddly damn if he has the greatest pervo collection in the entire history of pervs,forcing someone to give them the rope to hang them with is just wrong,which is why the founding fathers put the fifth in there in the first place. But go ahead,scream "get the pedo!" all you want, because with crap like the FBI setting up fake kiddie pron sites and not bothering to check referrers,all it takes is one rickroll and folks will be screaming for YOUR head on the pike. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Judge is an idiot, not the point of the fith amendment. To protect you from FORCED FALSE testimony, that is why we have the fith ammendment. Testimony under duress was not to be trusted, and people could be forced (or even signatures forged) to sign confession documents that are false. When FALSE testimony can be ruled out, for example if the encryption key works or not,the fith ammendment should not apply. The Judicial branch is lucky the executive and legislative branch have not used a creative interpetation of "treason" to target activist judges.
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
Here in the U.S., we don't have to prove our innocence, the cops have to prove that we are guilty.
You're thinking of the U.S. as it was decades ago. Things have changed lately.
They tell you that, but in actual fact it's closer to having to prove you guilty of being suspected of ...something. Then your entire life is put under the microscope until they find some evidence (real or circumstantial) of some level of wrongdoing which then gives them the mandate to lock you up until they can find/misinterpret something to keep you pretty much indefinately.
Oh wait, you were talking about the US, not the UK. I'm sure that your law enforcement agencies are far more responsible and less petty than ours. I mean we can't both be ruled by security services that act like playground bullies can we?
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Actually, it *is* pretty much drowning. The main advantage of it is that you can handwave and pretend that you aren't slowly drowning someone.
Have you seen
Christopher Hitchen's experience of waterboarding?
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.
The child porn case was just a convenient tool for them to attack the Constitution.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually it's not the cops that have to prove that we are guilty, it's the prosecutors. The Police only gather evidence and when they have enough, that warrants an arrest. From that point on, it's all up to the prosecutors. But no, I disagree thannine, we are innocent until proven guilty with a fair trial which still exists in the U.S. Justice System. Even if the person is despicable and obviously guilty, they still deserve their right to a trial.
That's like saying you locked your buddy alone in a room for a while and he came out fine, so solitary confinement isn't so bad.
I suspect you probably didn't do it right (where did you learn torture techniques?) but even if you did, there is a world of difference between what you did -- or what soldiers do when they train each other in how to resist torture by doing this to each other -- and a real torture situation. In your case, or in training, you did this with close, trusted buddies, you did it once, and you were certain that your buddies were not in fact trying to kill you. In real torture, people are tortured by sworn and brutal enemies, repeatedly and unendingly in many different ways, with plenty of softening-up beforehand, and most importantly, they know that they could in fact be killed at any moment and no-one in the outside world would know. The victim of waterboarding both knows that he could die at any moment, and feels as if he is about to die.
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.