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Judge Orders Child Porn Suspect To Decrypt His Hard Drives
An anonymous reader writes "After having first decided against forcing a suspect to decrypt a number of hard drives that were believed to be his and to contain child pornography, a U.S. judge has changed his mind and has now ordered the suspect to provide law enforcement agents heading the investigation with a decrypted version of the contents of his encrypted data storage system, or the passwords needed to decrypt forensic copies of those storage devices. Jeffrey Feldman, a software developer at Rockwell Automation, has still not been charged with any crime, and the prosecution initially couldn't prove conclusively that the encrypted hard drives contained child pornography or were actually Feldman's, which led U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan to decide that forcing him to decrypt them would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But new evidence has made the judge reverse his first decision (PDF): the FBI has continued to try to crack the encryption on the discs, and has recently managed to decrypt and access one of the suspect's hard drives... The storage device was found to contain 'an intricate electronic folder structure comprised of approximately 6,712 folders and subfolders,' approximately 707,307 files (among them numerous files which constitute child pornography), detailed personal financial records and documents belonging to the suspect, as well as dozens of his personal photographs."
Reading that made me ask three questions:
1) What kind of encryption did the FBI break?
2) Can they do it again, for any arbitrary encrypted data?
3) If 2), what kind of decryption should we use instead of 1) ?
Weasel-wording it like that makes me think it's probably random manga pictures from his browser cache and not real child pornography.
The Judge never said the FBI couldn't have a go at it, just that the suspect couldn't be compelled to hand over the decryption information because of lack of evidence.
Once the FBI had some success of their own and found evidence, then the judge changed his mind.
Where pixels of a certain colour arranged in a certain way on a screen and even the bits used to represent them are illegal. I hate kiddy porn as much as everyone else but feck it throwing people in jail for looking at pictures is taking the piss.
I see we're into the land of "Monster until proven Person" now...
Absent any proof there was child porn on the drives the suspect couldn't be compelled to decrypt them to provide that evidence.
The FBI however was free to try and decrypt the drives.
After proving that drives at least contained some child porn it was no longer possible.
Imagine the same scenario with a house. The police think you have a grow op. But they don't have any actual proof of a grow up. They have a power bill, show up at your door and you say 'sorry, I run a server farm, not a grow op, no you cannot come in'. The police not believing this story keep snooping around, they watch you bring in lamps and fertilizer and numerous suspicious people bringing packages out. Eventually they get some sort of valid evidence that you have at least one growing illegal plant in your house. Now they can get a warrant, and you have to let them in.
You don't have to provide the police a key to your house, unless they can convince a judge there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door. Then you're boned.
It's a kinda roundabout way of saying, "You can't [or at least don't need to] give or show them the secret spell, but you better perform it and release the rune for the witches to see, or may they rain hell on you from every applicable plane of existence."
(Magic analogy, because car analogies are so passé.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
You don't have to provide the police a key to your house, unless they can convince a judge there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door.
This is the crucial issue, which you are glossing over. You DON'T have to provide the police a key to your house, even if they can convince a judge that there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door. If the cops show up to your house with a warrant, there's no requirement that you unlock the door for them. If you don't, they'll just break the door down.
What's happening here is quite different. The judge is compelling this man to assist the police who are trying to incriminate him. This is like issuing a search warrant where you are compelled to tell the police where your hiding places are.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
He should have made his password or passphrase be
"I do not have the password"
Then, when asked for the password, he could truthfully state that his answer is "I do not have the password". Of course, a few weasely questions that he may be required to answer truthfully could shake this, but hey, why not for a first step?
Or possibly:
"I don't need no stinkin' password"
"This is not my drive."
"I forgot my password" as the passphrase!
"I assert my fifth amendment rights"
"I respectfully assert my fifth amendment rights"
"Fuck you" (J_1: what is your password? R_1: fuck you J1:Que? Off to jail! R_1: I answered fully and truthfully!)
Pedophiles are animals, and don't deserve rights.
You are an idiot, and I doubt if you even understand what pedophilia is. Most pedophiles are not child molesters. Most child molesters are not pedophiles. Pedophilia is a psychological condition that causes someone to be sexually attracted to prepubescent children. But most people that feel this attraction do not act on it (since to do so is a serious crime). Most people charged as child molesters, on the other hand, are not pedophiles. They are not attracted to prepubescent children. Instead they are attracted to teenagers that are legally children, but biologically most certainly are not.
But the defendant in this case has not been accused of either pedophilia (which is not a crime) nor child molestation. He has been accused of possessing child pornography, which is a crime even if no actual children are involved. Computer generated animation, or even a pencil sketch can get you arrested. You want to castrate people for drawing pictures?
Forgot to check the AC checkbox?
Because if they get caught (which would be fairly likely) no one would ever buy anything from them again and they would face more law suites than you could count. That why not.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Yeah pedophiles and their pictures of half naked 16 year old girls are sick. I reported my brother yesterday for taking pictures of his daughters football game, sick fuck, doesn't he know there are half naked 16 year old girls bouncing around down there?
What a monster.
From what I'm reading, if the judge doesn't believe him, he'd just find him in contempt of court and detain him until he remembers.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/what_happens_wh.html
Let's say you killed 5 people with 5 different guns and you put each of those guns in a separate safe. The government comes along and unlocks one of the safes and inside that safe is the purchase receipt for all five safes with your name on it (thus proving you own and have access to all the safes). By your logic, they've got a good case for murder on the basis of what they found in one safe, so they should just leave the other four alone.
What the judge is saying is that now that the government can show that you own (and have access to) the other safes and now that they can show it's likely they'll find the other four guns in those safes, there's no longer a Fifth Amendment question since you're not self-incriminating (by providing previously unknown or unprovable evidence against yourself). Rather, it becomes an issue of restricting access to evidence the government already knows about. In other words, the judge can't force you to open a random safe that may or may not be your's, and you can't be ordered to produce a murder weapon you may or may possess or have access to, but you most certainly can be forced to provide access to an area or container which is provably your's and which is likely to contain material evidence of your crimes.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
No it just proves he's anal-retentive in categorizing his porn.
> "a software developer at Rockwell Automation,"
My first thought: ooh, a software job is opening up at Rockwell.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm one hour away from full decryption and sellout of the entire USA economy, and you can't stop me.
No, but your mom can. She just called down the stairs that your Hot Pockets are done.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?
Could they not simply prosecute him based on just what they have so far? That way there would be no 5th Amendment violation, and they would (should?) have sufficient evidence so far to successfully prosecute him anyway.
[ Realize up front that I think people like they are accusing the defendant of being should probably burn, not in Hell, but in the here and now ... ]
I imagine it's to set a precedent.
If the demand is not successfully defended against, they are more likely to be granted a future order without expending "considerable resources". The next time, they will be able to argue "we could expend considerable resources and crack this drive too, but since it's going to be decrypted one way or the other, you might as well have him hand over the keys now". It's a really thin wedge, given that the FBI claiming someone owns a drive when they don't claim ownership, so 5th amendment considerations would likely still attach, but they might be able to find an agreeable judge to push the precedent a little further.
Using the sparing sector list as part of the key might confound decryption, if the encryption is drive level rather than all in user space where it could be fed a false set of sparing sectors, so it's possible that future SanDisk products (among other SSD vendors) might be immune from use of forensic copies.
I think though, that 5th amendment issues might still attach, if they can't demonstrate that he actually has the keys. It'll be interesting to see if the defense tries to play it that way, and what results, if any, come from that angle.
The "it's manufactured data" angle would also be interesting, since presumably they could have obtained pictures and financial data from other sources to make it appear that way. Given that the FBI has "considerable resources" to expend on this type of thing, it's not that unreasonable to ask how those resources were expended: decrypting the drive, or manufacturing evidence which can only be disproven if the drive is decrypted with the keys he may or may not have in his possession, since if it's manufactured, it might still not be his drive.
I'm glad the court ruled against the forced decryption initially, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out, and whether the FBI gets their wedge, and if so, they are successful in using it to leverage further erosions of 5th amendment in a future case, or not.
No. Besides, she looks like she's 17, not 7.
But child pornography, in most instances is not depicting sex with children, but sex with underage minors, for instance, a 17 year old, or someone who looks like they are 17.
Yes, people who want to have sex with children is wrong, but the law is expanded far beyond this and people get crazy with the CP label because the law is far too wide. Just like peeing in your back yard can get you slapped with a "sexual offender" label for life, so can publicizing photos of your 25 year old girlfriend who looks 17 get you labeled as a CP distributor.
This is why I don't jump off the deep end and call this guy a monster. For all we know the CP he enjoys looking at is 20 year old women that look young. I sure wouldn't fault him for that. If it is photos of kids, then I agree, he is one sick bastard. But we don't know that, because the law is too broad, so why assume? it just gets you worked up. If you were a juror, that is exactly what they would be going for, too.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm guessing it's this part of it that protected him:
"nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"
There's no clause in the fifth amendment that says "...but if we have good evidence you're guilty, then you have to tell us what we need to know in order to get more evidence."
The police put you in a room and say "CONFESS", and you refuse. Judge says "that's right--you don't have to confess to anything. In fact, you don't have to say anything at all. You can remain silent."
Later, the police find some evidence that suggests you really did something illegal. And really socially repulsive.
Judge thinks for 2 seconds and realizes "Who's going to defend a kiddy diddler? I can rule however I want against this guy and get almost no political backlash. But if I "defend the constitution", I'm a liberal judge letting a monster get away on a technicality." Not a difficult decision for a pragmatic public servant. "Let the beatings begin.".
First they came for the child rapists and I said nothing because everyone would think I was one, too.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
especially when they think they are doing the right thing.
Most real LEOs don't understand the whole concept of right or wrong. At best they might understand the difference between legal and illegal.The idea that LEOs care about right and wrong is a myth based on Hollywood screen writers who've probably never actually met a real cop.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.