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Defendant Ordered To Decrypt Laptop Claims She Had Forgotten Password
wiedzmin writes "A Colorado woman that was ordered by a federal judge to decrypt her laptop hard-drive for police last month, appears to have forgotten her password. If she does not remember the password by month's end, as ordered, she could be held in contempt and jailed until she complies. It appears that bad memory is now a federal offense."
The article clarifies that her lawyer stated she may have forgotten the password; they haven't offered that as a defense in court yet.
... gaben ?
trivial workaround
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
xkcd.com/538/
Like this, only with less pain and more jailtime...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
If it works in a congressional hearing investigating potential ethics violations of the Attorney General, why not in a court of law?
How can this woman be charged with contempt? Is there precedent in law to ignore the Fifth Amendment?
No person shall... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I often can't remember my password after a week away from the office on holiday. (And we have quite lax policies regarding passwords, no time, lenght or content limits, so I have a fairly easy one I've been using for months....) I might be hard pressed to remember a password after a month, under dures.s
she honestly can't remember the password. How the hell are they going to rule on that???
http://www.gibby.net.au
If I were in her shoes, I'd claim the same thing. However, this is just going to be a justification for when technology let's "the man" truly read your mind to say there was just cause to do so in order to determine whether she really forgot or just pretended to and all the crazy ethical questions/arguments/fights that will ensue. These days I'm doubting ethics and philosophy can possibly keep up with the pace of technology. I hope I'm wrong!
...you should put all the juicy stuff in plain sight on your harddisk. Then encrypt the stuff you don't care about. When the authorities finally get the password out of you, at least you'll have the satisfaction of confounding them.
I was about to mod your post, but then I realized there's no "Obligatory" option.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Let me ask this (and display my ignorance): If I had a safe and a judge ordered it opened, and I claimed I'd lost the key, would I be held in contempt? Or would it just be forced open? Would this ever see the courtroom at all? Can lawful seizure require active participation of the accused?
If I claim to no longer be in possession of a piece of evidence, and don't know were it is, could I be held in contempt? Couldn't I plead the fifth? "You want to convict me? You go find it."
I'm trying to figure out the stare decisis on this topic (equal and consistent application of the law). It just seems so darn inconsistent.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Anyone who changes their passwords regularly - as we all do ... well should ... well forget to, will tell you that keeping track of them is difficult, and that under duress eg drunk, stoned, in court that they are well nigh impossible to remember.
One file is encrypted
The other one in plain text
If the cops / FBI / or whoever wants to confiscate my HD, the clues on how to decrypt that file is in the plain text file
But there is a catch --- Inside the plain text file I have a brief description and ten (10) urls, which are are links to online password generators.
And the brief description is as followed:
"Passkey is constructed from randomized password obtained from the below 10 urls, have a nice day !"
I did that to protect myself.
1. No matter what the judge ordered me to do, I point to that plain text file
2. I know I can never convince anyone that I forgot the passkey, so I won't tell them that. But I still have an escape clause --I simply can't remember a passkey which was made up from 10 randomized password generator by 10 different online password generators
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Is it now covered by the 5th amendment because giving it up now would be self-incriminating in the contempt charge?
Encrypting seems to be indicative of guilt or the need to hide something. The presumption of innocence suddenly does not seem to apply.
Production of documents under subpeona is a legitimate legal process, as is a search warrant to obtain relevant documents. For example, most companies have their documents on an encrypted database; they are still expected to produce relevant documents during discovery if a court orders them to.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Friends of friends often call me about computer problems, and don't know their admin password. They set it when they turn on the box the first time, and forget it. So if it was something like this, I'd actually believe it. If it was something she used every day, I'd be more skeptical. Although, I've heard of folks who temporarily forgot stuff due to traumatic shock. Maybe being in court has wigged her out?
There is one proven judicial method and means to find out if she really forgot it. It's aquatic with a board, but it is not surfing. And definitely no fun.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
she revealed that she, and only she, knew the password to the hard drive over the phone. so her claims she "forgot" are not very plausible. if she hadn't done that, i seriously doubt she would be in this predicament.
If you had a safe and there were reasonable grounds for believing it held incriminating information, then yes, the court could order that it be forced open. If you claim you've lost the key, then no harm has been done to your property as the safe is useless without the key, so you could not claim compensation. Of course, if the other side has evidence that your claim to have lost the key is a false one, then you are going inside for contempt or perjury.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Don't this implicate that police now can jail anyone as they like? Just generate a random file and demand that the accused shall provide a "decyption key". If not they can be held and jailed for contempt?
Just curious
How many Amendments are still left, for the people?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The password is sodium-amital.
The fifth amendment is perfectly clear, and he's violated it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
.....if she finally provided the password only for it to decrypt a bundle of further encrypted files.
This is why I don't believe in cryptography. There is an alternative.
The key thing is to remember that usually, what you want to protect is not so much the existence of the information itself, but rather its connection to you. The best work-around is to simply use computers that aren't connected to you.
If it was something she used every day, I'd be more skeptical.
I'm sure any student-facing IT admin at universities can attest to the sudden increase in password resets after semester breaks. Passwords are "use it or lose it"; unless you choose something horribly weak like your birthday or favorite colour.
...so if they throw her in jail for contempt, then doesn't the likelihood of her being able to remember the password decrease over the time of her incarceration, and with it, her ability to comply with the judges orders? If she rides it out for a few months, then isn't her inability to recall her password more credible? I think what this case demonstrates, is the need for a duress password. Enter it and bam. Unrecoverably locked. Then it would be for the prosecution to prove that you deliberately destroyed evidence.
In the olden days folks had to eat their notebook pages or hastily burn them as the secret police were knocking on the door. Nowadays that information is likely to be stored in encrypted files and event the best passwords are susceptible to the judicious application of baseball bats. Is it possible to come up with a genuinely destructible password that can be quickly and discretely destroyed forever. My best guess is some kind of keyfile but how could you be sure to delete it in a manner that couldn't be reconstructed?
If I really had something to hide, I'd use key files on a very old USB dongle (128 MB dongle or so). Truecrypt and Bitlocker support this. Then police will most likely raid your house during this whole action. But even if not, when asked to provide the key I'd simply say "this was in a USB dongle. It was laying on my table, so now you tell me where you've put it after messing up my whole house". Or "I had it with me and after my spontaneous arrest I had no idea where you made me forget it". Police might eventually find the donlge, but if they ask what that is, I'd say "that was some old key, no idea for what or what the decryption password is. The key you are looking for was on a new dongle.
Thing is, it is easy to doubt that you know something. But you can get naked and show that you don't have anything hidden between your legs.
I wonder if the "no self-incrimination" clauses could help here.
I am innocent of the allegations.
But my HD contains files which might incriminate me in ways not covered by the claims of prosecution.
By giving the password, I would open myself to prosecution on issues the prosecutor has no clue about.
Therefore I refuse confession that would cause self-incrimination.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The judge is in contempt of the US Constitution.
This is as good any way to start a civil war.
After all DHS said, anyone supporting the Constitution is a fucking terrorist.
The laptop was seized in 2010, the order to decrypt is from 2012. I have passwords long enough that I will have trouble remembering them after 2-3 months of not using them. (Happens very rarely.) Not using them for over a year could well make me unable to remember them at all. So I would consider this a real possibility. Not absolute certain, of course, but credible enough that asserting she does still know the password after not having used it for this long would be an unfair disadvantage to her, as she fundamentally cannot prove she does not remember it.
Now the way around this for future cases is key-escrow or requiring everybody to write down their passwords, with the attached huge negative effects. In any sane legislation you can just refuse to give a password. I am amazed that in the self-proclaimed "land of the free" this does not seem to be the case and hope this will just turn out to be a judge that does not understand the issue and will get fixed permanently by a higher court.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ive been playing with LUKS full disk encryption for a long time before it became a standard install option on the alternate Ubuntu. I must have about 20 encrypted operating system installs on SD cards. I know for a fact that I do not know the passwords for many of these systems sitting in a cabinet. There is some truth to the defence that one can forget passwords. One time I accidentally deleted the luks passphrase from an active operating system. That was bad because I had family pictures on that one I really wanted to keep. In all these cases, I could be just as liable as this defendant. I dont think the courts should be able to assume that memory is always a selective choice. People do forget and the courts just have to find a way to "trick" it out of her if they believe she is lying. Like installing hidden software to monitor keystrokes or otherwise just accept that there is some evidence that just may be to difficult to retrieve.
What if through some (magical) combination of hardware and software, after say two months, if you didn't log in, the contents became completely irretrievable? Then if you were arrested, you only had to hold out for two months before they would have to release you. Contempt of court means that they can only hold you while you can possibly give them what they need. If it is impossible for you to comply, which would be true after two months, they have to charge you with something else (obstruction of justice?) or release you.
The best work-around is to simply use computers that aren't connected to you.
Not an easy thing to do.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The password is R4ndumbG1bb3r1s# - but I stored the keyfile on megaupload.
Jack: Now let me hear you say the seven most important words in the American judicial system.
Frank: My client has no memory of that.
store strong passphrase / key file on USB media... if it all goes pear shaped, destroy USB media.
Now, how long do I get jailed for if the key is not retrievable? Surely "indefinite detention" is a violation of human rights somewhere/somehow? Murderers don't even get that.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
If I get caught, I'll tell them to decrypt it with rot13!
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The best work-around is to simply use computers that aren't connected to you.
If they want to track you, they can.
Your cellphone is a dead give away where you were and what time you were there, and how much time you spend at a given place
And then they can trace back which computer were at that place at that time
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You have a very long password you could not possibly remember of the top of your head. You wrote down on paper. You do not have the paper anymore. This at least makes it plausible that you have forgotten the password and removes the possibility you are lying. In practice this works well if the password was a passage for a book, a quote or a saying, or a shopping list, it could easily be overlooked by anyone rummaging through your bits of paper, not an obvious password. Even then only you would know what page and word and number of words to start from in a book for instance. You'd also pass a lie detector test if you had done this.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I presume you are referring to the original Bill of Rights. In that case, only one is left: the glorious Third Amendment!
The government has been apparently cowering in fear of the power of this timeless shard of crystallized liberty for over 222 years. In this amendment alone there has been no insidious attempt to chip away at the protections we, the People, have reserved for ourselves!
Countless millions of us have drawn a line in the sand: this far you may come, government, but no farther! You may have abridged all our other rights in myriad ways. You may have twisted the plain meaning of the Constitution via horrible injustices like Wickard v. Fillburn, but on this matter we will not compromise!
Over our cold, dead bodies will you billet soldiers in our homes during times of peace without our consent, or, if in times of war, contrary to the manner prescribed by law!
<single_tear_bald_eagle_superimposed_on_US_flag_and_Constitution.jpg>
since saying you don't know equals contempt of court
If saying that you do not know the password equals to contempt of court, then, tell the court that you know the way the password was constructed and tell them how you derive the password from
As for the actual password, you just can't remember
There is a distinct difference between what you do not know and what you simply can not remember, you know?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
He can put you in Jail until you purge your contempt by revealing your password.
Legally speaking (sic) you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Say that it's a 20 character password made up of randomly generated letters and numbers that you can never remember, which is why it was written on the yellow post-it note that was stuck to the side of the screen of the machine they seized. They can't find it ......... "Sorry your honour, all I can say is that it was stuck to the screen when they broke in and took the computer". They can then fruitlessly search the evidence room for the (non-existent) post it note. If they put you under duress, panic visibly and start rattling off related sequences "I'm sure it was BzG5K9b... err, something, something, KU7, something..... oh god".
"Your cellphone is a dead give away where you were and what time you were there, and how much time you spend at a given place"
Thank God! I thought I had been leaving my phone at home for no reason. Now I can just use it as an alibi!
All kidding aside I never remember to grab that stupid thing unless I'm going somewhere unfamiliar where I might get lost.
Sometimes I have created partitions that were encrypted and set up for a project or special purpose or even for an experiment. Then, as time passes and the project fails to hold my interest I do tend to forget the passwords. At least once a year i will tend to completely erase a hard drive and repartition and do an updated install. Before doing that i transfer some files to another drive for safety and then remove that drive from the PC until the new install is completed. I have also used a lot of quick change hard drive trays so I may lose track of where a encrypted segment is or on what drive it was on.
It is hard to imagine that any judge could punish simply because you could not recall the drive, the segment or the password that the court wishes to see. In twenty years time I have used hundreds of passwords and currently own about 15 drives. I have never done anything that would vaguely interested police.
I think they could start treating encryption like alcohol: if you kill someone while drunk, you can't use alcohol as defense. When you consumed the alcohol, you assumed legal responsibility for your future actions. And if you refuse the blood test, the court is going to assume the worst.
In other words, if you encrypt and forget the key, the court could, under suitable legislation, assume the worst and penalize you accordingly. You wouldn't have to incriminate yourself -- you'd be guilty of grossly negligent encryption, whose maximum penalty could be life without parole.
Think back. How many gangsters and bookies have been ordered to decypher their personal codes? None that I have ever read of or heard of. That's because they can not be forced to do so. And if I am correct than what is the difference between an electronic encryption and a personal cypher?
I think that before long it will be a crime to forget to celebrate the dear leader's birthday...
And I mean that for whichever country you might live in.
Surely forgetting your password is perfectly legitimate.
Ask any first line corporate helpdesk staff member what the most common problem is, and I bet it's users forgetting their passwords and locking themselves out. Virtually every website has a link to automate the reset process. People forget their passwords all the time.
OK, I accept it's less likely that you'll forget the password to access your home PC, but I've done that, been there, had to reboot from a recovery disk - if the data was encrypted I'd have lost access to it.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
I infer that you meant to type imply and not implicate.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Is two keys that can be used. One key, the correct key, correctly decrypts the drive. If the other is used it deletes all the data you really wanted to hide and replaces it with pictures of the american flag, patriotic banners, proposals for drafts for laws that will crack down on terrorism and piracy and other stuff like that. Then you say you kept it all encrypted because there are lots of crazy people out there that are against this sort of stuff and that you are really on their side.
If it was something she used every day, I'd be more skeptical.
If the laptop was conviscated a while ago, she wouldn't be using the password every day for a while.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Perhaps her password was "ICantRemember".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The law should require people to store their encryption passwords so they won't forget them. Preferably in an encrypted file.
no, I don't have a sig
Currently I don't have something, which really need encryption. However, should it ever be necessary I'd modify after each use the timestamps so it looks like the container was last accessed years ago. Within sensible limits, of course. It would be much more believable to have forgotten a password, when the last access was several month ago than when the timestamps says it was accessed last week or even yesterday.
What we have today is differing opinions among the different Federal circuits in the United States. In some circuits, it has been opined by the courts that a person cannot be forced to give up passwords, because doing so would violate their 5th Amendment Right against self-incrimination.
In this woman's circuit, the courts ruled that a person must cooperate with police in helping secure their own conviction.
SCOTUS needs to bitch-slap this court back to law school whole simultaneously setting a uniform standard throughout the land.
the one fact you did not raise.
In any armed uprising in the United States your bound to have many of those military and police on the side of those resisting the government. Having been in the military and know friends still in it, there is America and there is the Government. You serve the later versus foreign enemies, your serve the former at all times.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
All they have to say is "We believe this file is encrypted using stenography, give us the password"
Yeah, it's those stenographers and their suspicious-looking keyboards. They're bound to be up to no good. It seems like they've infiltrated every court in the land, too.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
How can the police tell the difference between an encrypted file and my collection of random numbers?
Since when is the "Ronald Reagan" defense against the law? It got that bastard off the hook for illegal arms and drug deals with a simple "I don't recall." I guess that is only allowed for the rich and powerful though, can't have us peeons getting those same rights and privilages. Sheesh.
Also, don't let them tell you Ronnie was anti-tax and a builder of industry, things were awful back then - and Ronnie raised taxes every chance he got too.
I have a very bad biological memory unit called a 'brain' it sometimes fails. *shrugs*
How about an encryption system that contains, say, two separate file systems: the first one is where you store some unimportant stuff (the honeypot), and another where you put all the real things. Systems allows you to use three passwords: when the first one is typed, the honeypot file system is shown to user. When the second one is typed, real content is revealed. The third one wipes everything. When the police requests a password, you can simply choose which one to tell.
You mean like the insurgents in Iraq who have killed about 5,000 US troops despite being out-gunned, out-numbered and not having the same training as our soldiers? You forget that many of the civilians in that "rag-tag militia" are also US military veterans and have the same training and even more combat exposure than many active duty soldiers. Many of our veterans have a hell of a lot more practical combat skills and experience than our police; the average infantry veteran is easily at the same level as a SWAT officer. In an open fighting, the police would get their asses kicked two ways to Sunday and back by armed veterans who meant business.
You have no requirement to interpret your documents handed over. If you're latvian, you don't have to translate it to english. If it's encrypted, the document is handed over. Encrypted.
The US government has been at war with somebody, somewhere in the world, every single year of the past 100 years. The 9/11 attacks hardly changed a thing regarding war and global militarization. 9/11 merely provided a brand new justification for yet even more war, yet even more power over the people, and (most imporantly) yet even more spending.
You don't actually believe it's about something other than money, do you? Money is at the root of everything government does.
That can easily tell if you know the password or not.
Seems strange that this showed up under it.slashdot instead of yro.slashdot. This itself seems an ominous sign of shifting trends. YRO category is becoming obsolete!
I type in the password to my computer at work every day, but after two weeks' vacation, I tend to forget it. Sometimes I forget it despite having used it the day before, for no apparent reason. Sometimes I even remember it again after an hour, still, for no apparent reason. To a court, that could easily seem like I was lying about forgetting it.
JUDGE: I demand you decrypt this file we found on your Linux computer. /dev/random file on your laptop. Police forensic experts swear it is a encrypted file that is huge in size, they have been copying it for 3 days now.
Defendant: I cant it's not a file.
JUDGE: I know it is a file. YOu are in Jail until you provide the password to your
JUDGE: Take him away until he gives us the password.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I know of a particular case where a person had used the alford plea. The judge ordered the defendant to handover all passwords to his personal computer. He claimed he could not remember the passwords. It did not turn out so great. He was charged with a Felony of unlawful access of computer equipment and sentenced to 5 years of probation. These things never turn out well due to a lack of understanding by the jury and the justice system. They even labled him as a hacker, all he did was work occasionally from home on his personal computer (there was no policy against this). She is in far worse shape due to the nature of her charge. They are going to probably make an example of her too, especially given the nature of what she is accused of.
And for every one killed, depending on what statistic you read, it can be anywhere form 20 to 300 dead Iraqi.
You are the only one I have ever met who seems to think that Iraq won the war, I think it is you who might have been under a rock for the last 10 years.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Ronald Reagan was allowed to conveniently "forget" how he betrayed our country by telling Iran to hold US citizens hostage until after he was in office, and how he then sold arms to Iran to fund a secret and illegal war against the Contras, which employed US soldiers, and about which Congress was never notified. That seems a whole lot more worth jail time than what this chick did.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
1) Defrauding down on their luck folks out of their homes
2) Setting precedent that will put folks who are honestly forgetful behind bars
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Surely if a defendant lost a key to a (real) lock, the court would order a deputy of the court to force the lock open. In this case, the court could ask an expert to try and decrypt the contents or "force the lock open".
Yes, most encryption is not really breakable in reasonable time limits, but what if that "real" lock was just as good? Can a defendant be made to produce a key that may no longer exist?
There is no difference between a "real" key and one that only exists in your head. If both are lost, a court can not reasonably "force" them to be produced.
Here is a real-world example of why ALL of our elected representatives MUST be proficient in the ways of technology. There are very real consequences to electing technological idiots to office.
-ted
Did they try hunter2?
My understanding is that the police do not need to know the difference. All a prosecutor needs to show is that there is reasonable evidence to assume that something illegal is there.
Police officers do not need to know the contents of your house to get a search warrant - all they need to show is reasonable evidence that there may be something illegal going on there.
-ted
Can anyone recommend an easy Mandarin online course?
I use a smart card. And I seem to have lost it.
I'm sure the reason they're being so harsh with her is that, for someone saying they can't remember their password but law enforcement needs to gain access to the computer, it's easy for themto use that as an excuse so that evidence cannot be uncovered. It just REALLY sucks for someone who truely can't remember their password. Someone could literally have nothing to hide on their hard drive but can't remember the password for the life of them and then have to suffer severe consequences.
....be sure to have plenty of emails to Symmantec (or a LUKS or GPG or whatever) user group / customer support asking how to decrypt a file to which you have forgotten the password to.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And it still isn't even clear who "won."
It is abundantly clear who won.
Hint: not the US.
(a) dont say sh1t
(b) get a lawyer
That's why we (US Military) are over there, to get valuable experience properly handling a revolution on the homeland.
Truly obligatory XKCD.
...because I have a terrible memory. If the protection of my civil rights, and my freedom from incarceration, are ever based on my ability to remember something, I am wholly screwed. There are a myriad of passwords I routinely forget, and am constantly asking for a password reset from whatever site I'm trying to access. I don't know if this person actually forgot the password or not, but I can tell you, from personal experience, it is very possible.
I store all my passwords on www.megaupload.com. Better move fast officer.
She shouldn't be forced to say or do anything. Like any other search warrant, the government has the right to the information and evidence outlined in the warrant. If she didn't have the key or combo to a safe, they would use brute force to break open the safe. Similarly, they should hold her in custody until they are able to brute force the encryption. I'd recommend using a Commodore 64, or one of the new Sinclair ZX's that there was a recent article about.
Didn't Oliver North get away with "I have no clear recollection of that" as an excuse?
I guess you're allowed to forget things if they're inconvenient for the powers that be, but not allowed to forget if they want what you've got.
This is a location of one encrypted file uploaded to Yahoo. That file holds, in turn, the location of another file which is itself encrypted. I have five layers of files so far. Each month I take my encrypted file from my HD and upload it to some service and create yet another file pointing to the previous file and encrypt it.
The last file is a copy of Civil Disobedience taken from Project Gutenberg.
I will gladly hand over any encryption key the police ask for, provided they have a warrant. If a judge thinks it's worth the court's time to find out what I keep in my files that is up to him
I keep legal or questionable documents with my lawyer. I am not an idiot.
Clearly all pedophiles are middle aged catholic priests who sideline as college football coaches.
But the prosecutor could argue that while she might not actually remember the whole password she could at least remember some of it. I know that for all my lost passwords I could remember several parts of it but not the whole. This might narrow the search down and make it less time-consuming, or am I wrong? She could for example say that it was 15 characters long (both upper and lowercase, numbers etc.) and that the first two letters are a2. That might help them to decrypt it faster.
Except those insurgents accomplished next to nothing in terms of strategic or tactical objectives.
The only thing they did was encourage the political discussions to go against them, which was due to a lack of consensus for an invasion of Iraq in the US.
Enough of the US didn't want to fight the war that that worked, if the circumstances were different, then that would have accomplished nothing.
You forget that the Iraqi's are massively outnumbered - in a US civil war, it would be the military who's outnumbered...not to mention that plenty of citizens in the US spend a LOT of time practicing and are very good shots.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Maybe your cellphone is. Mine is actually capable of being left on my dresser at home when I don't want to receive calls or be tracked.
Although we are probably too far down the rabbit hole for this to matter, I think a view on why we have the 5th amendment and what it supposedly protects us from is in order. It would seem that courts from the 15th-16th centuries, as I recall from history, were in the witch-hunt era. During that time the practice of placing the accused on trial and forcing them to admit to their crimes or face punishment was pretty common. The 5th amendment was directed at these trials I believe. That no person would be compelled to provide testimony against themselves. Since there is no way to foresee what could be used as testimony against someone, it was basically deemed that the defendant had the right to say nothing at all, placing the burden of evidence on the accuser, not the accused. While we argue gymnastics of legal precedence, the concepts of this password disclosure should really revolve around the right of the defendant to remain silent.
Decrypting any cyphertext into a noisy but innocuous plaintext (e.g. tiff, wav, mpeg). Essentially steganography in reverse.
Would this work?
If shit were to happen here, you can bet your butt the DoD would use tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of cold-blooded (even foreign) mercenaries, who have no sentiments worth preserving. NATO troops would almost certainly be involved and so could a UN "peace keeping" force.
ALl of these segments have been training, for two or three decades now, on American soil, and none of them would have problems killing Americans.
That's the point!
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
And when your family comes to your graveside, the US goverment can hit 'em with a murder drone, and there's no way you can stop this from happening.
As long as most Americans refuse to admit that we are now the Reaganista Empire, with an Imperial President who is totally above the law, we can't even start fixing it.
I believe one of two things will happen - either civil war, or people will start smashing the voting machines.
The point about veterans is an important one. But it also seems obvious to me that if the US military was ever ordered to fire on the American people in such a way as to constitute a revolution, the main force that would end up fighting against the US military would be a huge portion of defectors from within it. US soldiers are US citizens, and probably most of them have families of some sort or another. Things have gotten pretty shitty in terms of legislation, but I'm still a long way from believing that if asked to, the military would simply comply with an order to assault US civilians.
Torture isn't judicial.
Regardless of whether she forgot it or not, I think its wrong to even ask her to decrypt the drive. I agree with Justice Stevens,
"Fingerprints, blood samples, voice exemplars, handwriting specimens, or other items of physical evidence may be extracted from a defendant against his will. But can he be compelled to use his mind to assist the prosecution in convicting him of a crime? I think not. He may in some cases be forced to surrender a key to a strongbox containing incriminating documents, but I do not believe he can be compelled to reveal the combination to his wall safe - by word or deed."
Whether she "forgot" or not shouldn't matter; anybody in this situation would say they forgot. You should be protected under the 5th and shouldn't be asked to do so in the first place. This is no different than demanding that a possible murderer admit that he killed someone or be held for contempt. It defeats the entire point of the law process.
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I understand why the judge is holding her in contempt if she fails to decrypt. The fact is that he can't physically make her do it. But that simple fact should be a key reason why you can't order people to do it.
An unenforceable law is a stupid law. It's like laws against suicide... how are you going to stop anyone from doing it and how are you going to punish them after they did it?
It's a dumb law.
The real problem is how to do you catch bad people that have incriminating evidence locked by encryption?
You could make strong encryption illegal... but all of that seems unlikely to stand.
Its an interesting issue. I feel for the judge here... he's in an impossible situation.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Exactly, memory is extremely fickle. The brain tries to prioritize memories and delete anything that isn't important, so after she stopped using the password daily she very well could have just forgotten it. I've forgotten a password I used on Friday (and had been used daily up until) on Monday. Just gone.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
You've seen phase one. The courts are split on the issue of whether or not a person can be compelled to provide their password. That's what the arguments have been about, so far.
Okay. The Lady has been compelled. Her lawyer says that she doesn't remember the password. The burden is on the prosecutor to prove that she does remember. How is the prosecutor going to meet that burden without putting the lady on the stand and having her testify about her mental state (memory)? No question about it, that would be a BIG 5th Amendment no-no.
That is why software like truecrypt has option of making hidden encrypted drives, while showing unencrypted content.
The only problem I see with it however, is that under intelligent scrutiny (which the police may or may not have), it is discoverable, and at that point you have the same problem with contempt of court. You have to make it however more plausible that it does not exist.
So for instance you might be able to hide a 3MB crypt on a 2TB drive. However any amount of close scrutiny will find it. If you have 1.5TB hidden on a 2TB drive, it will be more apparent. You can spoof the OS to report incorrectly likely, but that would be more involved I would think. Also if you have multiple drives hooked up to your computer that are "unformatted" it may be enough evidence to suggest you actually have encrypted drives.
Anyway I am not expert, but I expect the best defense is them not even knowing or suggesting that you might have anything encrypted to begin with. Another possibility would be encrypted offsite storage in cloud... Though that has its own security issues. It has been suggested before however, to simply keep secure copies of whatever you need online (talk of industrial espionage), come into the country with a laptop containing no sensitive data, then once in country simply connect to your secure server, download and decrypt, use data and delete before crossing boarder again. If your really paranoid (a la the cryptonomicon) don't ever save anything to your hard drive, load it all into RAM and download and decrypt each time, blowing away the lot each time you turn off your laptop. Ease of use and laziness VS security is the usually ratio to be evaluated as to how important one is to the other.
popcorn
Well, they wouldn't be asked to assault US civilians. They would be told to assault crazy terrorists who, by the way, have been threatening their families and loved ones. The one thing we're good at is controlling information access for our troops. Sure there are a few that think the Iraq was a bad thing, but most are quite proud of what we've "accomplished" over there.
Remember Abu Ghraib, the only way that happens is significant informational and psychological conditioning to dehumanize the 'enemy'. That can happen for anyone they fight, anywhere on earth, including inside our borders.
It was a soldier who was ordered to kill a us citizen in a drone attack, and did so without hesitation.
I don't know about you, but when I was in the Military, it was painfully clear that I was smarter than about 90% of the applicants. Most of them are bound to kill themselves with a mortar or grenade, I seriously have no faith in my own military to really do anything other than royally fuck up a situation.
If a 5th amendment right applies then the judge has effectively imprisoned a person in violation of the due process right, what if any repercussion does he face if a higher court comes to that conclusion. currently nothing serious, just a "turned on appeal" on his record. Same goes for the prosecution. That might be part of the problem.
People argue that it is the prosecutions job to make the case, regardless of other considerations, that is completely false. Their job as clarified to them when they take oath, is to protect and defend the constitution of the united states, that is the paramount charge given to them, in this case like in many other they are attacking the constitution not defending it.
They would have killed a lot more were it not for the fact that marksmanship has faded from the arab world after their conversion to the AK47 and all it's clones. The russians were scared shitless of their marksmanship in Afghanistan, but now that skill is relegated to a very few of their snipers. The rest of them couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
Too bad she doesn't have actual medical proof as I do on memory problems. I have been tested many times by medical professionals and results are the same that I have severe memory problems. I have good days and bad days. It is the result of brain surgery for a brain aneurysm, then being over radiated three months later to my head and neck for cancer. Today is a good day for me so far, but I have had people ask me their passwords for when I worked on their computer a couple of years before...ye right lol I have people write their passwords down when I work on their computers, as many times I have to look at the password they wrote down every time I login to their computer. She may or may not remember the password, but they will have to PROVE she can't remember it. It is not contempt of court if they think they have evidence against her, it is up to THEM to provide it, not her. If she is saying 'If you think there is something there, you're welcome to it, but I don't know how to get into it' She is cooperating in the fact that in what they think is evidence, she has given it to them for THEM to determine if it is incriminating evidence. It is up to THEM to PROVE it, not her.
George Carlin explains your rights to you pretty well. The bit about your rights starts at 4:10.
they can just fMRI her brain while asking her questions and prove that she is lying. or they can polygraph her and say that she is lying.
either way-this is direct evidence we live in a police state.
when the law invades your personal space uninvited, they are crossing the line.
lets burn the witch! If she survives then she definitely knows the password!!! Alternatively we can just dunk her repeatedly into the river until she confesses, but not nearly as fun as the witch burnings of yester year.
LOL, captcha is "dippings", I think the robotic overlord agrees with the latter.
to kill about 5k military, the iraqis insurgents have seen a close to 100k casualties on "their" side (it is more complex, as insurgent probably are responsible for a fair share of the civilian casualties). http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
Anyway, even factoring in the factor, it is clear that insurgent are sustaining severe casualties to inflict minor damage to the organized military.
Then why not everyone else? think "I'm afraid I do not recall..."
Judge: give us your password
Me: I forgot
Judge: if you don't give me the password you go to jail for contempt
Me: so if I can't remember my password, I'm going to jail right?
Judge: yes
Me: Ok here it comes, is this being recorded?
Judge: yes you are being recorded
Me: Good. Since I'm going to jail no matter what I do, I just want to say that you can suck my ball sack you wrinkly old power tripping goatfucker. Maybe your dick stopped working because you were jacking off to family circus too much. There, now that is some contempt, take me away officer.
This reminds me of one day, my brother and dad went up to Fort Campbell in Kentucky to play some paintball. The only people playing were them, one 13-year-old walk-on, and a squad of troops. Now, my brother and dad have a lot of experience. So they took the walk-on and let the 8 troops play on the same team.
3 v 8
The 13-year-old was eliminated every match. So were the 8 army guys. Neither my brother nor father was ever hit.
It is hard to express how important experience is. In combat, it's strategy and nerves. I have no doubt that a bunch of 60-year-old vets would wipe the floor with 20-year-old people with less experience. They would have their shit together and would out-think and out-maneuver their opponent.
Am I the only one interested in what kind of encryption (ie, what product) is in use here? Because it seems to me that the fact that the government can't trivially crack it would be a selling point.
One of the side issues here is speculation about whether the FBI can't decrypt this hard drive. I suspect they can, and already have.
There is likely content on that hard drive that will likely incriminate this woman (who lives with her mother) and bigger players in the mortgage scam. I don't think the FBI would otherwise care so much about getting at this woman's data.
In order to use that content in court against these other players, the FBI can't so well make a case out of data THEY have decrypted. The defense could claim the evidence is invalidated by the decryption method employed by the FBI. So, it's important to lean on this person to properly decrypt the data so the FBI can use it in other cases.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Do NOT underestimate the training hammered into the members of the US military. They are so inculcated with submission to "legitimate civil authority" that they will by and large carry out any orders issued by the emperor^H^H^W president, via the chain of command. Heck, the strategic missile forces have been rigorously trained to carry out orders to blot out an entire foreign nation, even if that were to surely mean destruction of their own nation as a consequence.
And do I have to remind you of May 4, 1970, Kent State? Those weren't even highly trained elite forces. They were just National Guardsmen. And it wasn't just a handful of bullets fired; after a Sergeant opened fire with his .45, 29 of 77 guardsmen fired a total of 67 rounds, killing 4 and wounding 9.
Maybe you think we live in a completely different nation as compared to 1970. I don't think so. Since 9/11, the level of paranoia in our national government, filtering down through the ranks, has surged out of control.
Also understand that the US military is made up of volunteer civilians. Sure, some in the US military will be willing to fire on US citizens, but I seriously doubt that number will be more than half. While I don't expect a lot of grunts shooting their officers, I would expect an awful lot to not return from guard duty.
You left out the fact that it also tipped the scales leading to the complete, irrecoverable ruination of the domestic economy. While I agree it's not clear who if anyone might have "won", it's VERY clear who lost.
Nineteen hijackers and a couple of middle-aged rich kids with daddy issues managed to drag hundreds of thousands of highly-trained military personnel and a couple trillions dollars into a ten-year conflict that killed thousands of people, sent one country back to the stone age, destabilized another, and undermined the basic constitutional underpinnings of the most powerful country on Earth. And it still isn't even clear who "won." I don't think you can predict these sort of things based purely on the number of things or people on each side.
When I originally read of this woman's story here, it got me wondering:
If you are arrested for some material crime, is it common practice for the prosecution to force you to explain every key on your keychain, and to unlock the lock it to which it belongs?
What if you have a drawer literally full of old keys? Is the burden of proof on you to prove that the prosecutor's evidence isn't being secured somewhere and hidden by you, facilitated by one of those keys?
I think there's likely a simpler explanation for why this woman is being coerced - there is other hard evidence that she used that laptop and used encryption to secure the evidence that the court seeks. Perhaps a phone conversation, email or confession to that effect?
Still, it does beg the question as to whom is doing the prosecution's job.
If your intent in destroying it is preventing it from being used in court against you, it's destruction of evidence.
If you accidentally destroy it, there's no foul. Knowing that the feds might get nasty if they ever wanted a password, and zeroing them specifically to avoid any such nasty encounters, is destruction of evidence.
About the only thing he could legally do is mail the files to the feds, along with a signed statement to the effect that he does not have the password to decrypt their contents. Obviously, this would be pretty stupid, although there is a chance that they'd assume you really do have nothing to hide and leave you alone. And it could come in handy if they ever did grow an interest in your encrypted files - show them that the file hasn't changed and they weren't interested in it then, so why now?
Or, just continue doing what he's doing now - he's withholding evidence, but he's protected because he's not under any legal obligation to testify against himself.
I'm going to disagree here.
If you look at the battle of Mogadishu, for example, a team of well trained Marines and Army Rangers fought a somewhat organized militia many of whom were armed with Russian assault rifles and RPGs.
Kill ratio was between approximately 50:1 and 90:1. There were 14 American deaths to an estimated 800-2,000 Somali deaths.
Yeah, sure, picking off soldiers with roadside bombs is one thing, but winning an engagement in open fighting... is just not gonna happen.
The subject of the criminal case is mortgage fraud. Thus, keep your torrents and downloads on an encrypted disk drive. And use Linux. And... maybe move to a safer jurisdiction "copyright" wise. So far Russia seems safer, but don't keep your fingers crossed... sad sad sad world.
Vassili Leonov
Things have gotten pretty shitty in terms of legislation, but I'm still a long way from believing that if asked to, the military would simply comply with an order to assault US civilians.
... and yet, that's pretty much exactly what's going on in Syria today, with Basher el-Asshat's military and police forces pitted against Syrian civilians.
Can't happen here? Think again.
licet differant, aequabitur
Then again, if the military took up arms against even a small subset of the American populace, odds are good that enough of the U.S. wouldn't want to fight that war, either.... Just saying.
There's a fine line between freedom fighter and terrorist insurgent. As far as I can tell, the primary distinguishing factors are whether the person talking about you agrees with you and whether your side won or not. Neither one is a very good thing to be unless there are no other options remaining for securing liberty from your oppressors. Thankfully, at least in the U.S., we're nowhere near that far down the slippery slope in our descent into hegemony yet.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
... or some other system that has plausible deniability built in. You give them the fake password, it decrypts, the information is useless, and you are scott free.
And the brain doesn't really delete anything either. Usually, the memory is still there, you just can't access it.
"doesn't really delete anything" and "usually" kind of contradict each other.
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Glove Defense would actually be very practical here. As in "If the password don't fit, then you must acquit!"
The kill ratio of insurgents to American troops in Iraq was in the region of 20:1. That is, it took about 20 Iraqi deaths to take down one US soldier. Not counting civilians.
Maybe if all the military veterans in some part of the US agreed to get together, reached consensus on their goals, formed a well disciplined force and organized themselves as a paramilitary unit - they could pose enough of a challenge that the National Guard would actually have to break out the heavy equipment to stop them. But I don't see that happening. Veterans are not that different from other people, there's no reason to believe there is any issue that would unite them all like that.
Instant get-out-of-jail-free card. Priests don't have to testify. Become ordained by the universal unitarians or something.
Your cellphone is a dead give away where you were and what time you were there, and how much time you spend at a given place
Well, maybe it is a dead giveaway in what general part of the city you were in.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Defendants better forget the password for real. Otherwise, pretty soon we will have the ability to scan a brain and extract the password from it.
"Deleting" is a deliberate act. The brain doesn't actively delete anything, it just fades away if you don't access it for a long time. So the memory is usually still there, although not always, since it may have faded away.
What does any of this discussion have to do with my gaben comment ?
Funny how you just said the exact same thing.
If the brain doesn't delete anything, then the memory isn't "usually" there, its always there, just hard to access. But then you admit not always, that sometimes it can truly fade away, so that then means it CAN be deleted. Unless you're making some awkward distinction between "actively delete" and "fade away", which seems rather arbitrary. I think you put too much meaning in the word "delete".
For the purposes of this case, either a memory can be gone forever, or it can't. Unless you can prove or link to proof that we either can or cannot lose a memory forever, you haven't added anything worthwhile.
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Civilian casualties are irrelevant to the question of who won the war. Only a muddle-headed liberal thinker who doesn't understand that war is first and foremost about meeting a military objective, not a body count, would confuse the two. The insurgents succeeded in creating such a bad situation that the American people no longer supported it and wanted to pull out. Mission achieved, body account to achieve it irrelevant. To both sides, and that's what you miss, civilian casualties are just collateral damage.
You and I may not support such a pointless conflict on the grounds that the objective is not worth the cost in human life, but that doesn't mean anything from a cold analysis of whose goals prevailed.
When she gets to jail, they can Waterboard her until her memory improves. It's the American way.
Whatever happened to the right to not be compelled to incriminate yourself by any authority sanctified by the Magna Carta of 1215 and the US 5th ammendment?? out the window eh? There are always those who think their priorities are higher than the cause of liberty. They're called petty tyrants.
If someone came and confiscated my computer, by the time I got to trial (many months, years even), what are the odds I would remember that password? I travel abroad, and my laptop is encrypted with TrueCrypt. I change the pass weekly. If you grabbed my comp today, in a month I would have trouble remembering which password was in use at that time. In a year, no hope that I would remember it. I might, after a few hours of guessing and sparking memory get in... but if there is incriminating evidence on there... I would have even greater difficulty remembering.
Let's also not forget that some of those military people are actually going to uphold their oaths to support and defend the Constitution. Whole battalions could swing one way or the other depending on how their commanders see the situation. I sure hope it never comes to that.
In Reason We Trust
This isn't the first post on this particular case. The woman was overheard talking about specific documents that are on the encrypted hard drive. Therefore it changes the rules slightly. This isn't just a search to try and find things that might be there, the prosecution knows they're there and she is willfully withholding them by refusing to provide the decryption password.
So, in short, she isn't being asked to incriminate herself, it's not a 5th amendment issue. In fact, the judge specifically said that the act of providing the password could not be used against her. Meaning, the prosecution can't say, "She gave us the password, therefore these must be her documents that incriminate her."
I thought that was an option? :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE
more download links
http://donttalktocops.com/
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Forgetting a password isn't a crime - yet...
If you have sensitive data, you absolutely, positively, MUST protect it with the best encryption available.
The government will eventually demand the keys to all our locks, as in this case, but we don't have to give them to them.
If you're serious about truly secure passwords, use a process and a manager that will delete passwords automatically after a certain period of time. That way, nobody has the password, and demanding it from you becomes an absurdity.
I empathize with the bullies and the torturers that would prefer to have the ability to easily break all our locks, I just have no intention of colluding with them.
Not much point in holding someone in jail for years for "contempt of court", or in even bothering with utilizing "enhanced interrogation" techniques on people if they don't have, and never did have the passwords to begin with.
The brain doesn't delete memories to make room. There doesn't seem to be any practical limitations on the brain's capacity. To the contrary, knowing a lot of things seems to make it easier to remember new things.
If memories actually disappear, it's because they fade away from not being used for a long time, not because the brain makes an effort to delete them.
You're nit-picking semantics to a point I didn't even try to make.
Also, just because knowing more memories increases the ability to remember does not imply that the brain never actively forgets something it finds unnecessary. You're making a leap. It can still remove a few unused ones while overall increasing in total number. I don't think you have any science to back this up, just your gut feeling. If you've got sources, I'd be interested.
Not to mention that the password could have never been recorded in long-term memory, and she just remembered it for a few days at a time as a combination of short-term and muscle memory.
Not to mention a million other things. Again, you're nit-picking something none of us were arguing.
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I guess you reject my idea that the brain prioritizes memories, but that is absolutely true. Anything the brain thinks it has ready access to it won't memorize. Sometimes when I drive to work I get there and have no memory of the drive in between. I stopped at all the lights and I was paying attention, but i've driven the route so many times over and over my brain has decided that future memories of the same thing aren't vital. Similarly, things that are written down nearby and you know you can get access to at any time, your brain is much less likely to memorize.
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Aha, but there's a difference between failing to commit things to memory, and forgetting them. It's like the difference between a degrading VHS tape and not pressing the "Record" button at all.
Once something is committed to memory, the only way to forget it is to refrain from retrieving it for such a long time that it fades away. You (or your brain) can't do anything to forget it faster.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just clarifying my point, in case there's any misunderstanding.
Also, just because knowing more memories increases the ability to remember does not imply that the brain never actively forgets something it finds unnecessary.
It means it's unnecessary for the brain to delete memories, though. It's unlikely the brain would make an effort to delete something if there's no practical limit to the number of things you can keep in your memory.
I don't think you have any science to back this up, just your gut feeling. If you've got sources, I'd be interested.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity
If you were to save a keyfile on an sd card, which you flushed down the toilet to keep from falling in the hands of the FBI. You could own up to that. They can not force you to testify to the content you were hiding due to the 5th amendment and they can't hold you in contempt cause you don't have a capability to fix the access.
I guess they could still charge you with obstruction of justice, and although that shouldn't stick they may be tempted to make an example of you... So there is a risk...