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U.S. District Judge: Forced Decryption of Hard Drives Violates Fifth Amendment

Posted by Soulskill on from the bowling-for-scotus dept.

hansamurai writes with an update to a story we've been following for a while. Jeffrey Feldman is at the center of an ongoing case about whether or not crime suspects can be forced to decrypt their own hard drives. (Feldman is accused of having child pornography on his hard drives.) After initially having a federal judge say Feldman was protected by the Fifth Amendment, law enforcement officials were able to break the encyption on one of his many seized storage devices. The decrypted contents contained child pornography, so a different judge said the direct evidence of criminal activity meant Feldman was not protected anymore by the Fifth Amendment. Now, a third judge has granted the defense attorney's emergency motion to rescind that decision, saying Feldman is once again (still?) protected by the Fifth Amendment. Feldman's lawyer said, "I will move heaven and earth to make sure that the war on the infinitesimal amount of child pornography that recirculates on the Internet does not eradicate the Fifth Amendment the way the war on drugs has eviscerated the Fourth Amendment. This case is going to go many rounds. Regardless of who wins the next round, the other side will appeal, invariably landing in the lap of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and quite possibly the U.S. Supreme Court. The grim reality facing our country today is one where we currently have a percentage of our population behind bars that surpasses even the heights of the gulags in Stalinist Russia. On too many days criminal lawyers lose all rounds. But for today: The Shellow Group: 1, Government: 0."

4 of 417 comments (clear)

  1. My goodness by niftydude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An outbreak of common sense. I can scarcely believe my eyes.

    Now to see if it holds.

    --
    You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
    1. Re:My goodness by Hatta · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Bin Laden's stated goal was to goad the US into a prolonged and expensive war that would cripple the US. He achieved that.

      "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    2. Re:My goodness by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is what happens when a nation fail to educate its citizens.

      Without a doubt, this is the most important point you can make in the whole thing. I think the school system here is entirely lacking in educating people about the importance of freedom, what it is, how it comes to be, how it gets eroded, and the effects of that erosion. Sure we make kids read 1984 and Animal Farm, but IMO this doesn't nearly go far enough. There is absolutely nothing more important in our society than preserving freedom. We should have entire classes devoted to the subject. I know we teach history and civics et al.. but in my experience it's mostly just fact-learning -- dates, people, etc.. Not enough critical analysis of how all those people and events affect freedom, not enough education about what it's like to live in a non-free society. I don't think Americans in general have any idea how bad it can get, and how easily that badness can seep in, and how hard it is to get it back

  2. A way to genuinely be unable to decrypt your HD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Here's what you do:
    1. 1) Get a stack of ~50 non-sequential, well-used one-dollar bills.
    2. 2) Shuffle them into a random order. Store them in the desk drawer next to your computer.
    3. 3) Your password to your TrueCrypt drive is the 100-digit number formed by taking the two least significant digits of each bill in order. When you find yourself starting to remember the password, shuffle the bills and change your TrueCrypt password. For maximum randomness, make sure you have 50 unique sets of digits.
    4. 4) What are the odds that a cop who finds a small stack of unmarked bills will allow them to enter into evidence? Much more likely, they'd simply vanish in the search.
    5. 5) Should they enter into evidence, what are the odds that they'll stay in order?
    6. 6) If the bills vanish, you have 10^100 possible passwords, a ~300-bit number. If they make it into evidence but scrambled, you have 50!, a ~200 bit number, as long as you made sure you had no duplicate digit sets.
    7. 7) You can always plausibly claim that either (4) or (5) happened, and thus you can't give up your password, as much as it pains your sense of justice to be unable to help the prosecutor.