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UK Court Rejects Encryption Key Disclosure Defense
truthsearch writes "Defendants can't deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled. The case marked an interesting challenge to the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which in part compels someone served under the act to divulge an encryption key used to scramble data on a PC's hard drive. The appeals court heard a case in which two suspects refused to give up encryption keys, arguing that disclosure was incompatible with the privilege against self incrimination. In its ruling, the appeals court said an encryption key is no different than a physical key and exists separately from a person's will."
Memorised encryption keys exist outside of your will?
I'm sure the number exists somewhere out there, good luck finding it by brute force.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Suppose some incriminating evidence exists but it is hidden in a secret location. Can you be forced to disclose that location?
If not, then why not store your encrypted data on a huge partition of random data. To get it you need both the key and the location of the data. The latter you can simply refuse to disclose.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Why these jokers didn't say i forgot i will never know.
I mean how hard is it to NOT self-incriminate oneself: Say you forgot. Just like every other government official says after losing a laptop full of Witness Protection persons or intelligence officers, etc.
They can't compel you to recall something you don't remember.
Simply say "iam sorry i can't remember: my memory is a bit hazy from all the manhandling the cops did, your honor."
What's the worst? Gitmo? I don't think so (although Britain has a track record of renditioning suspects to US).
At a time when courts and the government make a combined assault on our privacy and rights, while being more secretive themselves, it is up to us protect ourselves. Call me paranoid, but am the Burt Gummer type.
The Government has NO right to force me to divulge my self-secrets just like i can't force a government of the people, by the people and for the people to divulge its dirty secrets.
I can't be transparent when the Government wants to be opaque.
After all it has been proven that the Government cannot be trusted even with the most basic secrets.
What is the criminal penalty for jokers who lost various laptops holding government secrets and OUR data? NONE.
What is the financial and criminal penalty the Government will pay if it causes me harm by leaking my secrets? NONE.
Until the Government pays for its mistakes(and heavily), am not going to divulge anything more to it. After all the Government am not trusty enough to know about its secrets, so why should i trust Government.
Ben Franklin, Hamilton and Mark Twain were absolutely right: You CANNOT and SHOULD NOT trust the government, if it doesn't trust you.
You can take my keys from my cold dead hands.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
How is locking somebody up for a full year in a prison cell because they do not give up the encryption key, claiming they don't know it, other than torture?
In short, how is it different?
The US has already ruled you can't be forced to give out an encryption key.
It's nice having a Bill of Rights, ain't it?
Laugh at all the British who say such a thing is unnecessary.
If I'm the defendant, I'm simply going to assess which is worse:
1. The punishment you'll get for not divulging your encryption key
2. The punishment you'll get when you divulge your encryption key and they find 18 gigs of child porn on your computer
Depending on the encrypte data in question, the decision whether to divulge your key could an easy one.
Our country doesn't make the same promises about liberty in a single document which all our countrymen regard as some kind of holy scripture. It is the American attitude of how you are all in the "land of freedom, better than all other nations in every way" that makes your massive overreaction to one terrorist attack so ironic. It's like a kid vowing to never go back to school again because a bully once stole his lunch money.
I don't mean any disrespect to those who died in 9/11, but people are dying all the time from accidents, disease and natural disaster. Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb. If you go around spending billions attacking everyone that you feel slightly threatened by, you'll end up in financial meltdown... oh, wait...
Is there a system which will allow the use of a 'duress' key? If the duress key is given instead of the real key the encrypted data is erased. This would be easy enough to defeat by a suitably motivated investigator, but they'd have to have figured out what was going to happen first...
A warranted police search of your meth lab does not require any consent on your side - that's what the warrant is for. they will just break down the door and go on with the search.
same with the safe in your lab: you can either give the police the code for your safe, or refuse and watch them breaking it.
Why is your encryption key any different from the safe/door you have?
An encryption key is separate from a physical key, because no one can reliably prove if I still have it or not. Physical keys I may have hidden or swallowed can be found or the locks picked open. But for strong encryption, this is not feasible and the defendant might very well have forgotten the passphrase and never remember it.
What will They do when the defendant claims to have forgotten their key? (capital "They" intentional for Them being Orwellian monsters) - No one can ever prove or disprove that the passphrase still exists in the defendants brain cells, not the accuser and not the accused.
And then? Sleep deprivation? Torture? Guilty unless proven innocent? In dubio contra reo?
Releasing the defendant is under this view obviously unfeasible, because otherwise EVERY defendant would claim to have forgotten the passphrase, which would render this judicial scheme moot. But NOT releasing a possibly innocent defendant because they really have forgotten their passphrase - and no one knows whats inside the encrypted files - is a serious crime in itself.
I doubt there's a possible solution to this problem. Keeping people in prison for even one day because of abstract words that *possibly* exist in their minds (and only there) is pretty laughable - and pretty dangerous.
Something that no human and no machine can reliably prove or disprove cannot be the basis of a prison sentence. In the Western civilized society after the Renaissance era anyway.
Also, this is stuff from the darkest dystopian novels and can be misused in thousands of ways. We've all heard rumors about cops who place contraband in a defendants pocket or house. But that takes at least physical access to a contraband item.
But encryption keys that may not even exist anywhere? It is ridiculously easy to incriminate people that way, say for example to create a file containing several megabytes from /dev/random. Name it "pre-teen_volume_320.7z" and send it via mail to the defendant with a fake note "here's the 320th delivery of your stuff, you pervert and the password is the same as last time. the photos of your kids were nice, too".
And then? No one can distinguish between random data and well-encrypted data. No one can prove the defendant does NOT know the "password" to this "encrypted" file. Will They let them go or will they be imprisoned and tortured forever until they "remember" the nonexisting password or simply confess to having had intercourse with the devil?
*cough*Gitmo*cough*
What about when there's no key to hand over?
For context, click Parent.
Yeah, we'll laugh at them as soon as we're through laughing at the US for letting their bill of rights be trampled in the name of security.
Freedom must not only be won, it must be protected. Fail to do so and what's coming to you is solely your own fault.
> Why is your encryption key any different from the safe/door you have?
It isn't. I'll just stand back and watch them break my 256-bit AES...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Your logic is flawed, my locking/hiding the door to my dungeon where I keep my daughter is to stop me incrimincating myself by her being found. ALL criminals hide data from the sight of others to stop them from showing their criminal activities.
If you accept that the police under the rules of law can demand access to things then this includes digital data. I have always been loath to see the internet and computers in general as some kind of new world where we can have a different set of rules. If I can be ordered to hand over my swiss bank account number (just a number for a service) then so can I be ordered to hand over the key to my encrypted files.
If you want to change it, chance ALL the laws related to the gathering of evidence. No cyber laws, just laws.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It gets worse. /dev/urandom > file
Theory: with a good encryption program any encrypted data should look random.
That truecrypt volume should be impossible to tell from a file I've created with
cat
So you could type that very command and 5 years later they ask for your encryption key...
Key?
To jail with you!
same goes for any random/semirandom data you have which has so mime type.
Now I'm willing to bet there are programs which can take a photo album and hide an encrypted volume in the least significant bit of the pixels, how would law enforcement deal with that?
"GIVE US THE KEY!"
"but but but... what do you want the key to..."
Long story short, if you live in the UK and own an electronic data storage device you can now be thrown in jail for no reason at all.
I read a while back about mandatory biometric scanning of tourists
I'm really hoping you aren't a US citizen as getting into the US now requires the scanning of all your fingers and of course the answering of the 7 stupidest questions in the history of questioning.
The bio-scanning stuff is a pain in the arse, but its unfortunately not a UK invention, it started in the US for "Security" reasons. You also now have to have a printed out copy of your itinerary (like that would be hard to fake) as an electronic copy on a PDA or laptop just isn't good enough.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Can I interpret that as being a valid defense if my encryption keys are all derived from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0..
It's nice having a Bill of Rights, ain't it?
Laugh at all the British who say such a thing is unnecessary.
Who are all these British who say such a thing?
Britain has got a 'Bill of Rights': the Human Rights Act, which guarantees free speech, right to a fair trial (including the right not to incriminate oneself), etc, etc. This act formally enshrines rights that we've had under common law for centuries (eg, Habeas Corpus).
The fact that this court (not the highest in the land, mind) has chosen to interpret an encryption key as not covered under the right not to self-incriminate does not alter the fact that we also have constitutional rights.
So laugh away at your mythical British who say they don't need anything like the Bill of Rights.
Disclaimer: I think Britain is royally fucked anyway.
This is a genuine distinction between passphrases and other information they might want you to reveal.
This is not a distinction that should ever come into play however. Punishing a person for not doing something that might be completely impossible for them to do is wrong.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
My thoughts exactly. People seem to get all pissy when I say something like "if you don't have the balls to protect your freedoms, you don't deserve them". I'm not a regular protester at any events or anything like that, but I'd rather be shot for defending my freedom than live to see it gone. Not that I believe privacy exists anymore. The whole world was too slow to act in learning about and defending their privacy in a new technological age. Sure, there were a few technologically aware people with a small voice that was easy to push aside. Too late, privacy's gone. Only way to get it back is to lay your own global network in secret and hope the governments of the world never hear about it.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
It's amazing how many of the draconian, rights-reducing laws drawn up by democratically elected representatives get knocked back by the House of Lords, an un-elected body.
The Lords can alter Bills before Parliament, but are also the last appeal court (before going to the European Court of Human Rights).
Let's hear it for a benevolent oligarchy!
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
anyways don't more people die every year due to NUTS than terrorism?
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" ... sadly very true... So now we have two UK Big Brother bits of news in one morning. Oh what a time to live in the UK. But in the end, it doesn't just affect the UK. It will eventually apply to every country, because...
... My point is, the names in history change and the names of their ideologies change. But what remains is basic human psychology and that doesn't change. The lack of empathy of the ones in power over their powerless minions never changes. For all their words, its only their actions which count and millions now face loosing their jobs and millions are treated unfairly by the ones in power. In such a world, its no surprise that the ones in power would want to watch their minions very closely. After all, people could start to complain its getting all to unfair. But we cannot have that. We need ever more laws to protect the ones in power and ever more laws to keep the minions down and away from power.
Unfortunately most people fail to see the connection between lists and any danger. The lists are being made to influence people who speaking out against the ones in power. But most people fail to see the danger of giving the power seekers ever more data to mine on everyone. Knowledge is power and the ones in power seek the use that knowledge to prevent people standing against their point of view.
With ever more detailed lists on peoples views, soon we end up with people fearful of what they say on the phone and in emails, for fear of their views could even just risk being taken out of context and in any way critical of the people in power. At that point, the ones in power are influencing people directly.
At that point, we live in a police state, where freedom is gone and replaced by fear of the ones in power. Problem is, we are getting there now, and from here on out, its simply a matter of consolidation of ever more detailed data mining. The central reason why centuries ago votes were made in secret, was to prevent the ones in power, from seeking to influence the voters. Yet the power seekers are forever seeking to game the system to gain ever more information on peoples opinions. Now the ones in power are building automated systems to influence people.
Throughout history its been shown time and time again that the ones in power become ever more corrupt over time without any feedback on how they are behaving. Its been show so many times through history.
Most people don't realise the game people in power are playing. People in power are not so interested in individuals. The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
The lessons of history have not been learned by enough people. Looks like the world is seeking to repeat the mistakes of the past. Freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain. Its just a matter of time and how far we are going to let them all game the system to push the excesses ever more unfairly in their favour. After all, its not as if they are robbing hundreds of billions of tax payers money to keep their rich lifestyles while millions risk loosing everything.
Anyway, if the millions of people can't buy bread, then let them eat cake.
The world will never change until everyone worldwide realises that people who constantly seek power over others have a recognisable cluster B personality disorder. All cluster B personality disorders are ultimately driven by fear. And the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear. (There are multiple fears, two examples are lack of a
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
I don't see the difference between refusing to turn over an encryption key and refusing to let the police in your house when they have a valid search warrant.
It is much more like refusing to tell the police where in your house the contraband is hidden, or if there is contraband at all, and being put in jail because of your refusal.
I gotta disagree there. In the article it states:
>>>In its ruling, the appeals court said an encryption key is no different than a physical key and exists separately from a person's will.
If a presumed-innocent person drops an actual key into a hole-in-the-ground, and refuses to divulge its location, the police can't incarcerate him simply because he refuses to say where it's located. That's loss of liberty without due process. They have to let him go.
And they can't use torture to try to force the hidden location out of him either. The man might be completely innocent and have no clue where a key exists, and therefore unable to reveal the location, even under threat of one year imprisonment.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
You seem to grossly miss a point: a password might easily be really forgotten. Ever happened to you?
How would you, as a lawmaker, fairly address this situation?
Put everyone in jail, just to be sure to catch the deceitful villain, too?
Exactly.
It's just a power grab.
1:Encrypted data can be hidden within random data.
2:Encrypted data can be hidden within normal data such as the least significant bit of your family photos.
3:Encrypted data can be hidden on a seemingly "empty" drive.
4:It is impossible to prove with certainty any of the above situations as opposed to 1:the data actually being random, 2:there being no data hidden within the normal data, 3: a drive really bing empty.
5:If the police think you have encrypted data you must give up the key or go to jail.
Result:If you live in the UK and own any form of electronic storage you can be jailed at at time.
Them claiming that hey dont need it is exactally why it becomes nothing and the court can step all over it like in this instance.
Where are these British people who claim they don't need a Bill of Rights?
In my experience, British people fall into one of three camps:
I have never heard a British person claim they don't need a Bill of Rights. I lived in Britain for 37 years.
One of the things that upholds the US constitution is its terseness, saneness, and closeness to the chartering of the national government itsself, although certainly its constant defence is the most critical.
[my italics]
I absolutely agree, and despair at the lack of outrage in Britain. If you could compare the justified anger on the Brits behalf here on Slashdot with the deafening silence in Britain you would be amazed.
If the british in this thread and in general dont respond to such a claim then is it any differnt than them not having a Bill of Rights in the first place?
I responded. I think that is one more person than has claimed that Britain doesn't need a Bill of Rights.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan openly supported Al Queda training camps used to prepare for the 9/11 attacks. The original Bush Doctrine (you know, before there were 30 of them) stated (more or less) that a government that supported a terrorist organization is as illegitimate at the terrorist organization itself. This was a Good Reason for removing the Taliban, and indeed we did so with strong support from the civilized world. (After 2001, of course, we threw logic out the window, but that's a different tale.)
By your logic, spending money to find a cure for a rare disease is "pretty dumb", since a lot more people die from other causes. I believe that your logic is faulty. It makes sense to address all of the causes of harm, as cash permits. To a person of my Libertarianesque perspective, that means the causes for which people are willing to spend their own cash, of course - including cash taken in taxes - but not my grandchildren's cash. A government that is trillions of dollars in debt ought to be horsewhipped and put on a very tight budget until they pay their debts - but again, that's a different tale.
"New" Labour, Old Communist party
Yes, keep on using this term "communist" willy nilly. It lets you tar any lefties at the same time as you tar the repressive policies of Labour. New labour are in social and economic policies a centrist-right party, very far from "socialist" or "communist".
Their policies on detention, warrantless searches, etc. are, however, quite repressive.
Since they protect the status quo and the interest of the wealthy, they are far more facist than communist.
Unless the passphrase is the incriminating data.
America, Home of the Brave.
It is not different. If they have a warrant, they are free to forcefully break down the encryption, just like they are free to forcefully break down the door to your house.
Lucky for us Americans, a subpoena can not force you to testify against yourself. It's a Constitutional right written in black ink and cannot be revoked by any mere subpoena.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
A duress-key that wipes data is no good. Any serious investigation will take a complete copy of the data as the first step, so wiping does you no good at all.
What you can do, and which is done, is to have "plausible deniability". Truecrypt does it like this:
You have a 1GB (for example) file that contains an encrypted filesystem that contains 500MB of files.
The free space (500MB) *may*, or may not, contain a second encrypted filesystem. There is no way to tell without knowing the second "inner"-key.
So, if pressed to give up the key, you give up the outer key, giving access to 500MB of perhaps mildly embarassing, but ultimately harmless stuff. If asked about the "inner"-key you say there isn't one. The default operation of Truecrypt is for there NOT to be one.
So, it's plausible you're telling the truth; could be the volume is larger than the filesystem simply because you wanted space for more files. It's not as if a half-full filesystem as such is suspicious.
It's unlikely they could force you to give up certain information without even showing a likeliness that the information EXISTS.
That's "plausible deniability".
You can say: "There is no second key", and there is no way of figuring out if that answer is truthful or not.
It is also about avoiding catch-22s. The problem with requiring self incrimination is it can lead to a situation where they can lock people up for no reason. They charge you with a crime and say "Confess to this crime," you say "I didn't do it," they say "Refusal to testify against yourself is against the law, we are going to lock you up until you confess." So that is one important reason for the 5th amendment, it avoids situations like that.
Well encryption keys fall in that category. There are three important cases I can think of:
1) You forgot the password. This happens. I deal with many password reset requests a year and this is for computer/e-mail accounts that people use on a regular basis. If these people can't remember that, I find it extremely reasonable to assume they'd forget the password to an encryption volume they don't often use. Well, if you can go to jail for refusing to disclose your key, then you can go to jail for being forgetful.
2) A file that isn't yours. Your computer gets hacked, or someone you know uses it without your permission. Whatever the case, an encrypted file gets stuck on your computer that isn't yours. You can't had over the key, you don't know it. However there's no way to prove that so you go to jail.
3) Random data. Good crypto is nice and random. You can't distinguish it from other random or pseudo random noise. So you have a random file on your computer, or maybe just random data that there is a deleted file record for (as in there was a legit file there, it got deleted, it's space has now been overwritten by garbage). You can't prove it isn't encrypted data so you go to jail.
So I see encryption keys as very relevant under 5th amendment protection. We do not want a catch-22 situation where police can lock you up indefinitely just because they find something that looks encrypted.
You seem to grossly miss a point: a password might easily be really forgotten. Ever happened to you?
nope, because 'biscuit123' is really easy to remember, and totally secure, because letters and numbers == strong, plus no-one would ever think of it.
See, some of us have the clevers.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
... my encryption key consists of a complete confession of my latest crime plus GPS coordinates of where I've buried the evidence. I'd definitely be incriminating myself by divulging it, so I won't.
A lot of things were lost when the use of the SSN was required in order to participate in the financial system. Interestingly enough, when the system was brought about, people protested that very thing and it was written into law that the SSN could only be used for the purposes of tracking your social security account. The IRS ignored it (though you can request a tax ID) employers ignore it, banks ignore it, the whole system ignores it.
This isn't technology at play. It's something else.
Now you can't have a normal life without participating in this system; without allowing your transactions to be tracked.
Now that's a good idea.
Evildoer:"my password your honour? you're asking for my password?"
Judge: " Yes, give me your password now!"
Evildoer: "ok, the judge can suck my cock, all lower case."
Judge: " What? I'm going to throw you in jail for contempt!"
Evildoer: " No that's my passphrase, then the second one is " The faggot judge likes to lick prisioners underwear, with a capitol T on the."
Judge: " How dare you!...."
Evildoer: " you want my email passphrases too?"
If you think you're ever going to jail, make the passphrases something that will be your own version of shock and awe in the courtroom.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's why it's far better to create hidden, encrypted containers, using Truecrypt's plausible deniability. If the cops see your whole HD is encrypted, it's pretty obvious, and they will want to see what's on it because then they start suspecting you have something to hide. But if you have a file called C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\kb2357334.dat which is in fact a hidden Truecrypt volume, first they'd have to find the file, and then think that it may be encrypted, which is a chance in a million, so you're so much safer.
I prefer a password of "I'm sorry, I can't remember it!".
So when the cops ask, I can tell them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Over here in Sweden TV8 showed "The Anti-American" talking about how various european saw at USA. They talked with people in Poland, France and the UK. Maybe there was some italians or something to.
Very interesting and it somewhat made me feel bad for saying stupid things about USA sometimes. Then french people was the most funny one talking about how everyone in USA except in NY was rasists and also how to keep the american culture and english words and influences out of their country.
Yeah right, because french people are so open minded when it comes to influences themself? And they don't think everyone should learn french? Hillarous.
The polish people really liked you and looked up against you, seeing america as the saviour against everyone invading poland. And the UK as your strongest ally obviously like you to except they want to be the imperial worlds #1 force and not just follow lead as it is now :)
Sure we complain about your wars and playing world police, but in the end us europeans and everyone else always wait to long and do to little so I guess it's good that USA step in and fix up the crap, even if it's not a really democratic decision.
The sad part is that you just step in where you have something to gain from stepping in, so problems in countries where you don't gain anything from interfering nothing will happen. But that's fairly understandable in general to.
Oh, and they talked about how Europe, china (?) and especially japan needed the oil from the middle east region much more than USA but didn't helped to keep it political stable and keep the oil flowing. We just took the benefit without helping. Japan can always blame it on how they are pacifists. And also how you could have got the oil real cheap anyway so they argued that wasn't the factor, at least not egoistic and just for your own sake.
Anyway, interesting program.
only if you care about civilian casualties.
as for finding terrorists, they're too useful. I don't mean in a conspiracy theory doing the governments bidding way. I mean they can be used to raise political capital.
Lets take a the example of ETA in the basque country of Spain. Every time there's a scandal or some big fuckup by senior government officials there just happens to be a crackdown on ETA members shortly after. Oil tanker disaster = crackdown. Senior official sex scandal = smaller crackdown. with lots of headlines about all the ETA members arrested pushing the sandals off the front page.
It's well known that the authorities in Spain keep tabs on most of the organisation and could probably round up most of them overnight if they really wanted.
The heavy handed way they treat it only serves to increase the number of recruits, the organisation would have faded away to almost nothing if the Spanish government didn't intern people and fuck up their lives as part of this.
Now I wonder if there are any parallels with how the US runs it's own war on terror...
Want to hold on to political power? don't even dream of getting rid of the terrorists, they're a minor threat but you can use them to demand a great deal of power.
I'm not a regular protester at any events or anything like that, but I'd rather be shot for defending my freedom than live to see it gone.
But that's not how it works nowadays, is it? By and large you're not going to be given the chance to martyr yourself for liberty. You just get to watch basic freedoms slowly erode away while most people don't give a damn. Your options are either to try to effect change through the political system (good luck with that, you godless nihilist), to start an outright armed revolt (good luck with that, you godless terrorist) or to simply quietly secede and disregard the authority of "your" government to rule you. The last option will pretty much inevitably lead you into conflict with law enforcement, and ultimately you'll be faced with either giving up or taking up arms (good luck with that, you godless nutcase).
So either you're quiet and no-one notices or you're loud and your actions are used to further justify the need for increasingly draconian law enforcement.
It's probably the extremely rare case where encryption keys kill people.