Slashdot Mirror
US Judge Rules Defendant Can Be Forced To Decrypt Hard Drive
A Commentor writes "Perhaps to balance the good news with the Supreme Court ruling on GPS, a judge in Colorado has ordered a defendant to decrypt her hard drive. The government doesn't have the capability to break the PGP encryption, and 'the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents' of the defendant's computer."
"Sorry your honor, I used a very long password made up of computer-generated, random characters: one that I could not possibly remember. I had it written on a scrap of paper on my desk and would only need to type it in on the infrequent chance that I had to reboot my computer. .... You should ask the detectives to re-search through the evidence they collected as the scrap of paper is likely in what they took."
Using it will scramble the disk beyond ANY recoverability.
And then you've committed the crime of tampering with evidence / destroying evidence. Good luck evading conviction for that.
No, your only hope is to set up a random password whose mnemonic is something the *police* will destroy when they search your premises, as in "Your honor, my password was recorded by the order in which I kept Skittles on my desk but the act of collecting these Skittles destroyed my record of my password. It is irretrievably lost due to the actions of the police. I would help if I were able but my memory is wholly inadequate, and the only record was destroyed by the police."
I can see the fnords!
I don't think we do. We have a law which makes it an offence to fail to provide the decryption key, which in my opinion is far worse. I use the anecdote of TrueCrypt container with no hidden partition:
"Excellent, thank you for the key to the container. Now, give us the key to the hidden container."
"I didn't use one. There is no hidden partition."
"There is nothing incriminating on the container we can access; Just bank statements and a password file. You must have incriminating evidence in the hidden container."
"I didn't use a hidden partition."
"We'll see who the jury believes."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
What you need instead is a hidden volume. The idea is you have a normal OS and a hidden OS where your dirty secrets reside. You are prompted for a password at boot time and the password you enter determines which volume is booted into.
What you need instead is two hidden volumes. The idea being that when you decrypt the normal OS with a tool that supports a hidden volume and people find it squeaky clean, they'll tell you "ha ha now tell us the other password" so you have a hidden OS where your porn resides, and a hidden OS where your dirty secrets reside. Ad nauseum depending on how nauseous your dirty secrets are.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.