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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.
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.
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 !
Encrypting seems to be indicative of guilt or the need to hide something. The presumption of innocence suddenly does not seem to apply.
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.
You mean for the corporation people or the people people?
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?
1. It is and always was possible for a police officer to be a criminal, and a criminal police officer could always forge evidence against you. Nothing new.
2. The police would not only have to generate a random file, they would also have to convince a judge to give them a warrant with a good reason to search that particular file; a concrete reason why it would be likely that this file holds evidence. And the reason would have to be good enough not only to convince the judge who signs the warrant, but also the judge in the court case, with your lawyer present.
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."
wish the myth of changing passwords regularly would die.
A search warrant does not require participation of the defendant. Neither would them cracking the encryption. It crossed the line into a constitutional violation when you begin to threaten people for not aiding their own prosecution: such as requiring someone to disclose the location of incriminating documents, or giving up passwords to encryption keys.
This is little different than demanding that someone accused of a murder disclose the location of the body, or be held in contempt of court: you cannot win either way. Therefore, it is unconstitutional, not a "legitimate legal process." Even were it considered such by the legal system - which it is not - it would still be unconstitutional and a violation of civil rights in need of correction.
You might consider it reasonable, but I think the fact it is possible to easily forget something like a password makes it unreasonable even if there were any sound arguments for violating the 5th.
Great Intellect...
Yes, but due process includes requiring that the evidence subpoenaed exists and is under the control of the recipient. People forget things all the time. Just ask any helldesk person how frequently people forget passwords, even in cases where they have been duly informed that irrevocable data loss will result. If you've forgotten it, it is not under your control.
There exists no way to prove or disprove a claim that a person does not currently remember something. Even the most advanced (and unproven, non-admissible) technology only claims to be able to say if a person is familiar with something they are actually presented with during the test. Even then we can't say WHY it seems familiar. Given that stress and fear are great blockers of recall, it's quite believable.
I have no idea if the defendant REALLY can't remember the password or not. The only person who could possibly know for sure is the defendant.
...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.
If this stands it means that anyone can be detained indefinitely without trial. All they have to say is "We believe this file is encrypted using stenography, give us the password" and since saying you don't know equals contempt of court tada! Instant disappearing person. Hell with most geeks they wouldn't even have to go that far, how many of you have truecrypt on some disc somewhere? all they'd have to say is "The defendant has truecrypt in his possession and we believe he has a hidden volume, give us the password' and tada! Bye bye geek. don't say it couldn't happen because it wasn't too long ago most of us would have never believed the USA would have free speech zones and rendition taxis either.
Kinda sad that after we spent all those years supposedly fighting the USSR because of freedom the wall falls only for us to slowly but surely become like the USSR.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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 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.
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.
Goddammit, I'm undoing my mods to post this since you're just blatantly misinformed - and I know you're not the only one. With the exception of a few highly restrictive states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and the non-state of D.C., you can own pretty much anything you want (though due to the Hughes amendment, machine guns must be made prior to 1986). It's a common misconception that silencers, real assault rifles (meaning that you can select between semi-auto and full auto and / or burst fire), machine guns, explosives, rocket launchers, etc are illegal in the US. They're not, you simply have to jump through some hoops to get them, but if you can legally buy a gun, you can legally obtain an NFA (read: restricted) item just fine. It just requires more paperwork, a $200 fee to the ATF for a tax stamp certifying that you legally own the item, and waiting a few months for the ATF to drag their feet on processing the paperwork. Silencers are pretty cheap even - it depends on the caliber, but $800 is a pretty common price. Machine gun prices / real assault rifle prices are artificially inflated by the government though due to the post-1986 ban so a gun that should cost about $2,000 will end up costing more like $15,000 due to the artificial scarcity. Hopefully we can get that fixed one of these days....
Oh, as for "No one sane is going to take on anything with a semi-automatic rifle", the majority of the time the military doesn't even flip their rifles (well, usually carbines to be exact) to burst fire / full auto because it's very hard to control and you burn through your ammo a lot faster without being more effective. As for US citizens being able to fight back against the military? The US military has roughly 3 million soldiers (this counts desk jockeys and members of the reserve as well as the coast guard and national guard) and we'll round up and say 1 million police officers / federal agents (again, counting desk jockeys). The LOW estimate for the number of gun owners in the US is 40 million people with about 90 guns in private hands per 100 people in the country (that includes children), so not only is there a large abundance of weapons and ammo in private hands, but private citizens who own guns outnumber the police and military by around 10 to 1. Sure, they have tanks and bombers, but unless they REALLY wanted to destroy their own infrastructure and a lot of non-combatants on their own side, they wouldn't use them (because even if they won, the country would be totally FUBAR'd for decades).
Note: I'm not promoting or hoping for any conflict between citizens and the military - merely stating some facts regarding the number of people on each side (assuming gun owners all sided together) and how well equipped they are.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
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.
Ok, I'll approach the issue from a different direction then. Can a defendant be ordered to take the stand in any case? If the prosecutor wished to establish a timeline, could they force the defendant to testify about events surrounding the crime? Wouldn't anything the prosecutor asked potentially make the defendant "witness against himself"? Is there any question on the stand that a defendant can't plead the fifth to, because it undoubtedly would be used as testimony against him?
Unless you can find a significant exception to the above (and explain it), how can that not extend to criminal discovery? How can someone be compelled to tell a cop where they buy their ammo? Stored their gun? Provide financial records? Can't all of that wind up in court as testimony against you? How can the fifth possibly not apply pre-trial?
If you're still with me, how can a defendant ever be compelled to act against himself in a criminal proceeding? I can see how he might be cajoled or enticed... but court ordered? The very premise seems unconstitutional to me.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
No, if they could prove that you knew the password, you could be held in contempt. When you are in court, you are required to present requested evidence. For example, if they know you have the body, you can be compelled to present it. Of course, if they knew you had it, that'd mean they knew where it was, so they wouldn't need to ask for it.
A better analogy would be legal documents which were lost. They knew you had them at one time, but how can they really prove you still have them? Obviously, you can't produce something if you are no longer in possession of it, and they can't hold you in contempt for that.
But since you are in possession of an encrypted file and you won't tell whats in it, you must have done something wrong; search and probing granted...
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.
Perhaps her password was "ICantRemember".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
In any conflict of such an magnitude, where the US military is outnumbered, things like logistics, troop movements and proper command structure will play a MUCH more important role than what guns the each side has. You can't really argue that a rag-tag militia can compete with a trained army in these aspects.
Now, guerilla warfare is a completelly different matter, of course.
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.
Yeah, they don't care. You can play your stupid games in a jail cell while they wait. There's no time limit on contempt, so if you don't remember, that's fine, you'll just sit in jail literally the rest of your life.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
well, even you cooperate to the fullest to get your property/equipment/data back there are MANY MANY stories of police refusing
to return things, or when finally forced to do so, the equipment has suffered mysterious inexplicable damage.
any equipment/data confiscated by police must automatically be assumed lost.
offsite backups are wise for many reasons, this is one.
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.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
I wonder if you can be charged with destruction of evidence before you have been informed by the court etc that some thing you have is evidence.
- Raynet --> .
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.
UPS + diesel generator...
- Raynet --> .
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.
Drill a hole, then you'll see it.
They don't need to "win." The US military isn't going to simply destroy its own entire nation to "win." There only needs to be enough resistance to force the government to significantly change policies, and that would be relatively easy given the level of armament in private hands.
If you've been using an encrypted hard drive regularly for years, forgetting the password the very day the police seize it may be technically possible but it's not reasonable doubt. Nothing can ever be proved beyond doubt, just beyond reasonable doubt.
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The punishment for contempt is open ended, and can be whatever the judge wishes. Its already been mentioned, but here is the case of a man jailed for 15 years on contempt of court, based solely on testimony from his ex-wife: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beatty_Chadwick
You also assume that the police will always be on the side of the government. I don't care who pays me, I'm not killing my grandma!
There is a super shitload of ammunition in private hands. Citizens won't have to worry about supply because they've been stocking up already and because they won't be using a lot of suppressive fire, which is how you burn through it quickly. There's a lot more guns in private hands than the official estimates, too, because so few are registered and so many have come into the country by unofficial channels, like every other country :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can't really argue that a rag-tag militia can compete with a trained army in these aspects.
That's exactly what General Gage said!
(Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.)
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
This is not a matter of "producing" the documents -- the prosecution has them, in the form of an encrypted hard drive. This is a matter of helping the prosecution decypher the documents.
To put it another way, suppose there were only two possible documents on the hard drive, one incriminating, the other exonerating. Given only ciphertext for one of those documents, the prosecution cannot say which document was encrypted. Given ciphertext plus a passphrase, the prosecution can make a case that it was the incriminating document (assuming it was). Demanding the passphrase from the defendant is like demanding the defendant explain difficult to understand parts of the document, which is unquestionably demanding that the defendant testify against themselves.
Oh wait, it is involves super-duper-secret-spy-stuff (cryptography) and magical computers, so we are supposed to dispense with logic and rely only on bad metaphors that help the prosecution's case. That poor, poor prosecutor, whose case is weak without violating the fifth amendment.
Palm trees and 8
Yes because discipline, training, a strong command structure, and clearly better equipment never won a battle against the odds.
The US military would win against its citizens at odds 100/1, 10/1 would not even be a real fight. Within a day the entire country would be under military control.
The only chance would be long drawn out guerilla warfare.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Isn't it just way simpler to divide the nation into 2 ideological factions and raise enmity between them to avoid a unified front against organized forces?
oh wait...
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
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.
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
I love how you persist in this idiotic delusion.
Judge: Show us the partition we're asking for.
Taco Cowboy: They're encrypted using a password that was derived from a very interesting algorithm using multiple...
Judge: I find you in contempt. See you in a few days. If you don't present it then you'll stay in contempt.
TC (being carried away): But but but but the algorithm!
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Perfect logic only applies in the world of perfect theory, where silly things like common sense need not apply.
Yes, by having the encrypted drive, the prosecution does technically possess the documents. Of course, they do not possess the documents in any usable form.
The point of discovery is to bring everything, incriminating or not, before the court, after which the prosecution and the defense will offer theories of what happened, supported by the evidence. It's not the actual possession of a physical document that matters. It's whether the information it contains is shown to the court. Refusing to show information to the court, regardless of whether such information is incriminating or not, is itself a criminal act, namely one of not following the legal process. Similarly, resisting arrest is a separate crime, because you're not following due process.
demanding the defendant explain difficult to understand parts of the document, which is unquestionably demanding that the defendant testify against themselves.
That's questionable. A testimony is a statement of truth regarding a matter, and the defendant is not necessarily making any such statement. Let us follow the hypothetical case of a bombing. The defendant in the trial is a chemist, asked to explain a shopping list of chemicals. The defendant chemist explains that the chemicals named would, when properly combined, explode. That is an explanation, but the chemist is not testifying against himself. There is no assertion that the chemist wrote the list, or purchased the named chemicals, or assembled the bomb.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
....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.
Machine gun prices / real assault rifle prices are artificially inflated by the government though due to the post-1986 ban so a gun that should cost about $2,000 will end up costing more like $15,000 due to the artificial scarcity. Hopefully we can get that fixed one of these days....
Serious question: Why would you want to get that fixed? I am quite fine with very few people being able to obtain assault rifles and machine guns. In fact, I'm profoundly thankful for it. I fully support the rights of being able to own guns, but an assault rifle has only one real purpose: Firing at human beings. And there are definitely people out there that would use them for that purpose in because their nuts. With hand guns, rifles, and shotguns, they can't mow down a crowd because they think differently. Besides that, you even state that the automatics are generally used sparingly because of ammo usage and aim issues. So why would untrained civilians need them in a time of revolution/riot/uprising/whatever-you-call-it?
A gun that can fire so quickly and do so much damage should not be readily accessible. People may have a right to bear arms, but every person has a right to live.
I think he is stating the problem that I myself have: ancient media that contains encrypted data that is languishing in my office (the cellar is too moist, and I don't have an attic). I no longer remember the passwords for those disks, since I haven't used them for years now. A judge out to screw me over could use this to have me held in contempt if for any reason they would be confiscated as evidence, regardless of the merits of the case.
They don't need to "win." The US military isn't going to simply destroy its own entire nation to "win." There only needs to be enough resistance to force the government to significantly change policies, and that would be relatively easy given the level of armament in private hands.
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.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I swore this over 16 years ago, and once more since then, and still believe it.
I, (name redacted), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
Any member of govt that decides they are above the constitution in my eyes, is an enemy of the constitution.
I'll wait to be detained, I'm sure it will happen soon.
Yes, but will you kill my grandma?
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.
I have to reset my password every time I try to log into my ISP e-mail, because the passphrase is stored in my mail client normally. In theory, I could be using the account every day, and not remember the passphrase. Similarly, I can't remember my netflix passphrase. :(
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.