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Man Jailed For Refusing To Reveal USB Password
judgecorp writes "Syed Hussain, already serving time for helping to plot attacks against UK targets, got another four months for refusing to divulge the password of a USB stick the police and GCHQ wanted to examine. The USB was believed to contain data about a suspected fraud unconnected with national security, and Hussain claimed to have forgotten it under stress, He later remembered it and it turned out to be a password he had used on other systems investigated by the police."
Yeah...
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
No, just an ordinary fraudster, not terrorist.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Don't get caught.
No, just an ordinary fraudster, not terrorist.
Hmm, not what the article says. I'm not sure what compelled you to post that.
Yeah, those libtard founding fathers and their prohibition against self-incrimination. What a bunch of moonbats.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Another point of the story. Don't reuse passwords :D
The password was $ur4ht4ub4h8 - as Bruce Schneider said a few weeks ago - encryption is still on our side. Regardless of the NSA /GCHQ revelations, they cannot break AES yet. That's why the British police resort to section 49 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/16/password_refusal_earns_terror_suspect_extra_jail_time/
In not so many flamebait words, yeah.
He knew the password, the police had probable cause, and he intentionally impeded an investigation. I can't speak to British legal procedure, but in America that'd almost certainly be enough to be charged with obstruction of justice.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The password he used was the same as one that he had previously divulged, but the incompetent investigators at GCHQ and the police didn't think to try it.
Chalk said the USB contained material linking the defendant to an alleged fraud. He added that it was only when investigators told Hussain he was being investigated for fraud that he gave up the password. Investigations into the alleged fraud are ongoing.
The memory stick did not contain any information on potential threats to national security.
It's right there in the article summary:
Human beings are capable of doing multiple things, and thus getting multiple criminal charges against them, at once. He may well be a terrorist, but this particular story deals with fraud.
Actually, when they requested the password, the USB stick was believed to contain information related to "national security" (he presumably didn't reveal it then so as not to alert police to the alleged fraud). But when they began to investigate him for fraud he did reveal the password (he presumably thought that once they were investigating coming clean would be the best possible thing to do). In doing so he destroyed his previous plausible deniability that he couldn't provide the password. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25745989)
What makes you think they hadn't it all cracked, but just wanted to have him spend more time in jail while they prepare the other stuff they will hit him with ? What if he really had forgotten the password ? Beside he had already given them; why would not they have tried all other passwords they had received ?
Or they don't consider these cases important enough to reveal that they can break it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I would consider it his fifth amendment right not to be forced to self incriminate. It's the prosection's duty to prove his guilt, so make them do their job. I don't care if he's guilty of other charges; he still has the same rights as everyone else.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
This is in the U.K.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
FTA: "Syed Hussain had already been jailed for his part in a cell that had discussed an attack on a Territorial Army base in Luton using a bomb attached to a remote control car"
He has been jailed for discussing something?
They also accounted for warranted searches. It's not self-incrimination to surrender your shed keys when you've got a naked co-ed chained inside.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
We are constitutionally protected against self-incrimination. While you are correct that in America, he'd probably get charged with obstruction of justice, that would just show how far outside its constutional authority the US government operates.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You're wrong about America. The law is far from settled, but in some jurisdictions probable cause is hardly enough to compel a suspect to reveal an encryption password. Actual knowledge of the drive's contents may be necessary to compel a person to decrypt it, as otherwise it would violate the suspect's right against self incrimination.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Sorry, but it's more like they didn't want to bother. The story makes it probable (not quite certain) that they already knew that it was the password to other devices that he had used.
Also, was he a terrorist? Could be. The story says he was serving time for planning attacks on the UK, but that could be fraud as easily as violence. If I were interested enough, I'd look it up, as it is I'm just commenting on the slipshod nature of reporting (which I'm assuming matches the original story without checking). I did note that an earlier post asserted that he was a terrorist, while another asserted that he was just a fraudster, and that BOTH assertions were reasonably compatible with the summary.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yeah. It's too bad that US Citizens don't enjoy that prohibition anymore:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57364330-281/judge-americans-can-be-forced-to-decrypt-their-laptops/
There is no 5th amendment by in the UK.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
They also accounted for warranted searches. It's not self-incrimination to surrender your shed keys when you've got a naked co-ed chained inside.
That is different though. In the case you posit someone is in imminent danger of harm, in this case though there may be people who have suffered financially revealing the password will not save anyone from harm merely serve to incriminate the suspect further.
Indeed. As the US government operates outside of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered a criminal organization.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Pertinence Check:
"founding fathers" "self-incrimination" don't come into play here.
It seems you're confusing USA with the UK.
May I suggest: http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Pages/homepage.aspx - to see what GCHQ is and what country is involved. (sorry for the link to an asp site, ugh)
In the UK, he can be jailed for life for refusing to cough up a password under RIPA.
The dialog goes like this:
Judge: "Password, please".
Defendant: "Sorry, no."
Judge: "That is another three years, password please."
Defendant: "No can do."
Judge: "That is another three years, password please."
Until the defendant has a life sentence without even a single trial.
A key is a thing I have, not a thing I know. That may be enough to make the difference. Actual knowledge of the co-ed's presence can also make the difference.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I'll be in trouble if I'm ever raided -- I have several USB devices and CD-R's that I used in the past to make a backup of something, and have lost or forgotten the passwords.
I wonder what the penalty would be for someone that filled a device with random data, and the authorities are convinced that it's encrypted and demand the decryption key.
In the USA there is a constitutional right against self incrimination, and the right not to answer questions from the police has been the subject of many movies, both fictional and non-fictional. It's generally considered that "taking the fifth" is a well known act by criminals.
Without doubt it is possible to argue that not answering questions is impeding an investigation and therefore obstructing justice, but it is balanced by a suspect's right to remain silent when questioned by police. Now whether a person can be compelled to answer questions about a password is a different twist on the question "where did you hide the key the safe" or whatever, but I think the answer is well settled in U.S. jurisprudence.
I'm assuming you're referring to Northern English barons who rebelled against King John in 1215 and forced upon him the Magna Carta? Because this is referring to UK law, not US law.
Insightful indeed.
They also accounted for warranted searches. It's not self-incrimination to surrender your shed keys when you've got a naked co-ed chained inside.
You have a USB stick with a naked co-ed in chains on it? Can I get a copy?
OK, "surrender keys to a shed filled with incriminating documents," Mr. Pedantic.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Where did I claim that this case took place in the US? Read my post, the parent post, and think a little harder.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
From TFS: "already serving time for helping to plot attacks against UK targets"
You didn't even need TFA.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But, that's not what the GGP said. They said "not a terrorist" and "orchestrating a car bomb plot" is pretty much straight terrorism, uncut.
For the fifth amendment to apply, there must be a risk of incriminating oneself. That depends on the specifics of the case:
Chalk said the USB contained material linking the defendant to an alleged fraud. He added that it was only when investigators told Hussain he was being investigated for fraud that he gave up the password. Investigations into the alleged fraud are ongoing.
If this were an American case, the defendant could be charged with obstructing the investigation into someone else's fraud, but the evidence linking him to it would easily be inadmissible. It's been held in federal court that defendants can be compelled to provide unencrypted drive contents to investigators if the police already know the partial contents of the device. While he could probably invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid handing over the password, a blanket grant of immunity for anything further found on the device may be enough* for a court to determine that "self-incrimination" is no longer a risk.
* There are conflicting rulings on this recently, implying that there's a threshold for how much immunity is enough to mitigate the risk.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I did catch that. But, it got me wondering. Did the UK not have any founding fathers? How about founding mothers? Maybe some founding SOB's? Where did England come from? Did it spring forth from the primordial soup? Which came first, the soup or the crown? Questions, questions, questions, all of which only lead to yet more questions!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'm more annoyed that the police didn't figure it out based on the password for other systems.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Even in the UK you have the right against self incrimination.
Our right may be spelled out in our Constituion, but they have the right none the less.
It was a pretty obvious reference to the American Founding Fathers (the UK founding fathers would make no sense in this context) and the US Constitution/Bill of Rights. The fact that it's in the UK means that the American Founding Fathers and Constitution is irrelevant to this story.
OK, "surrender keys to a shed filled with incriminating documents," Mr. Pedantic.
Except a locked shed requires a physical object, i.e. key, to be opened. The cops don't need you to incriminate yourself if they can find the key (or get a proper warrant to circumvent it).
Conversely, locked data (information) does not require a physical key, but rather information kept within the owner's brain.
Information that would be self-incriminating to give out.
FWIW, I personally don't know of any legal precedent (in the US) that requires one to surrender a key if doing so would be self-incriminating.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm confused. I forgot. Sure, the NSA has the ability to decrypt and listen/read everything we're doing, but this? Is it a tactic to make us all believe that they truly don't have these kind of powers, and our data is safe... a false story... or more likely - the truth, the majority of the people who have the ability to access everything they need to access and technologies reserved for government agencies but simply, are incompetent in their jobs. I believe the latter is the answer, DFUs are managing our information, which ultimately means - most of us, while technically are fully vulnerable, are really safe...simply because the exploiters of our information are fucking idiots.
Except where Parliament otherwise decides, like in this case.
This is in the U.K.
Yea, about that: I always understood the US Constitution to be based, essentially, on English Common Law.
That said... don't you guys have some sort of 5th Amendment equivalent?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This article just threw out a bunch of idiot comments. So a few clarifiactions:
1) This is England, not the US. Their rights are similar but not the same.
2) The right to silence (how it's referred to in the UK) does not allow someone the right to obstruct an investigation. It specifically refers to the right to not say anything that will incriminate you, but even in the US obstruction of justice when carrying out a court order is not protected. Him not giving a password is not an incriminating statement, it's obstruction of a legal investigation.
3) The side issue that's rather shocking is that the GCHQ was unable to crack the encryption despite the password being used on other systems and they had already obtained it; wouldn't the first thing you at least try be passwords you already have? Seems like a large oversight by the GCHQ.
What on this beautiful blue ball of earth is classified as national security. What possible secrets are there?
I would propose that all secrets would either benefit humanity or not. If the secret is of benefit to humanity then do away with secret.
If its against humanity the. Do away with the secret so we can arrest the shits.
And before you think I mean terrorist, I actually mean gov.
If they hold secrets its usually the bad kind....
To me, screw national secrets. Security and secrets are two diff things. US is always protecting their dark heart.
As the US government operates outside of my interpretation of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered by me to be a criminal organization.
FTFY.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Even if you are completely innocent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
Of course in the UK you have no right to silence, because well, you're a terrorist, right.
Even so the law was brought in intended for dealing with terrorism threats. Although the suspect was involved in terrorism this specific investigation was not. Therefore this is that police power being used in a broader sense than it had been intended. Got no problem with the guy being sentenced for terrorism or for fraud, but the slippery slope of the usage of this power is disturbing.
Indeed. As the US government operates outside of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered a criminal organization.
Since it defines what is and isn't criminal it cannot, by definition, be a criminal organization. What it can be is unethical, immoral, corrupt, incompetent, unjust, and moronic... but it can't be illegal. People often confuse the word "criminal" with the concept of the "bad person". Ethics and morality have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the law. The law is about order. Ethics and morality is about justice. And our justice system has as much to do with actual justice as the military has to do with "peace" keeping.
In every society in which the rule of law has existed for more than a couple generations, it has been corrupted to prioritize order over justice -- and order is another way of saying "remove malcontents and political undesireables". Principally, in an industrialized society these will be young males under the age of 35 who are unemployed, under-employed, sexually frustrated, mentally ill, not eligible for meat grinder service or otherwise producing wealth for the already-wealthy.
Eventually, the law reaches the point where everyone can be a criminal, that the law itself has become and inaccessible bureauacracy, and every action can be rationalized as legal. That point is now, in the UK, the US, and indeed, most of Europe and much of eastern Asia. Every major empire has a historical record of its citizens complaining about overly dense laws and regulations, from modern times all the way back to the Roman Empire, and fragments of literature suggesting an intractable bureaucracy that appeared to randomly punish people as far back as the Akkadian Empire (for the iPod generation, that's about 2300 BC, or about the time Al Gore invented the internet and Jesus rode around on primitive loldinocats).
My point in all this is, it's not a new problem. Arguably, it isn't even a problem: It is in fact the natural progression of all empires and countries. But have hope: It's a sure sign that the civilization has passed its epoch. Within the next 50-100 years, western civilization will start to deteriorate back to a feudalistic-capitalistic hybrid where destitution, slavery, debtors prisons, and constant warfare again become the norm... and eventually the people will rebel, the world will burn, and out of the ashes a new civilization will rise up, and our grandchildren will enjoy a period of relative peace and prosperity.
Humanity is cyclical.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
In the UK, the right to remain silent has been around since the 17th Century. However, it was removed by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1984.
Since the UK doesn't have a written constitution, it's impossible to argue that a law is unconstitutional. The question cannot be taken to the European Court of Human Rights, because the tight to remain silent is not mentioned in the European Convention on Human Rights, although the majority of E.U. countries have laws giving that right.
Further, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 make it a crime not to disclose an encryption key to police when asked.
No shit. Does that make the founding fathers an invalid counter example to GPs assertion that only "libtards" would be upset about this?
Why are people with terrible reading comprehension are so quick to criticize others reading comprehension?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
We have many rights enumerated in UK law, statute and royal proclamation. And as a signatory to the EUHRA too.
Which means the UK has BETTER rights and more strictly enforced rights than the USA, who have a 5th amendment.
Of course, governments ignore the laws when convenient. As do criminals, to be fair. However, we pay a lot of money to jail the second type of criminal, and have little chance to prosecute the former.
Yes, we can choose to not testify in court. However, once you turn up at court to testify, you cannot then refuse to answer some questions.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Sure. The UK's most famous Founding Father is a fictional guy who banged his sister, whose wife was banging his best friend, and who was eventually killed by his incest-bastard. Oh, and he pulled a sword out of a stone, too.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
He wasn't jailed for refusing to reveal the password. He was jailed for his part in a bomb attack. Once in prison you can get out early for good behavior and for turning over information. Here he tried to trade this password for time. He claimed he had just remembered it. But they found out it was a password that he had already given them for something else. So they backed out of the deal.
Also a lock is something that you can trivially bypass, encryption is not.
I would suspect that the law doesn't require you to surrendering keys and access during a search with a warrant - but it'll help your case an awful lot and limit the damage to your property. If you don't have or provide the key the police will just force their way in instead, no problem. With encryption they can't do that. So similarly you probably in the past wouldn't have been required to surrender the encryption key if it constituted self-incrimination, although it would have helped your case a lot if you complied. Because it's so much harder to bypass though they felt they needed some way to force you to comply, hence the new law. That doesn't remove the legal/moral question mark of self-incrimination. I do expect that sometime in the future it'll get challenged in court, though I also expect national security will likely overrule the other issues.
England has a right to silence that is very similar to the U.S. fifth amendment.
It wasn't broken, unless you can't think for yourself and need to be told what to think and believe.
I don't think the rules should change just because encryption works better than a physical lock.
The CNET article fails to mention context, and my understanding of the case law is that it isn't so simple. I can't speak to the specifics of the Colorado case in the CNET article, but I do know that the case of the Sebastien Boucher/CBP, Boucher was compelled to reveal his key based upon more than just reasonable suspicion. In this case, agents had actually seen child pornography on the system, and then shut the system down. The key was flushed from memory upon shutdown, rendering the data inaccessible. However, officers had already seen the incriminating data. Certain federal district courts have protected defendants from being compelled to reveal keys for the purpose of "fishing expeditions", when it is uncertain whether or not there is any incriminating data.
IANAL
-Turkey
The question cannot be taken to the European Court of Human Rights, because the tight to remain silent is not mentioned in the European Convention on Human Rights, although the majority of E.U. countries have laws giving that right.
Actually, it can: the ECHR have ruled that:
"Although not specifically mentioned in Article 6 (art. 6) of the Convention, there can be no doubt that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination are generally recognised international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under Article 6 (art. 6) (see the Funke judgment cited above, loc. cit.). By providing the accused with protection against improper compulsion by the authorities these immunities contribute to avoiding miscarriages of justice and to securing the aims of Article 6 (art. 6). "
In other words the European court considers it so fucking obvious it doesn't matter if it's not said. The American consitiution apparently considered it important enough to put down in writing. Sadly our (the UK) government considers it neither important nor obvious.
That ruling was brought against the UK when it was taken to the ECHR for violating the whole "right to silence" thing. Sadly the wankers in power will not get the message.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This goes directly against prior decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. There is very clear and unambiguous legal precedent, that a person under criminal investigation need not bear witness against himself. For example. in Marttinen v Finland the Court interpreted the article 6.1 that reads inter alia "In the determination of ... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by [a] ... tribunal ...". The Court wrote in its decision:
The Court reiterates its case-law on the use of coercion to obtain information: although not specifically mentioned in Article 6 of the Convention, the rights relied on by the applicant, the right to silence and the right not to incriminate oneself, are generally recognised international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under Article 6
If the defendant is not able to have this sentence overturned in domestic courts, he should hire a lawyer who can bring this case before the European Court of Human Rights ASAP to obtain a decision against the Government of UK. The court will also award compensation for the inhumane treatment of the defendant by the Government, and obligate the government to compensate for the legal expenses.
I've always thought that encryption software should offer a meltdown password such that when entered, instead of decrypting the data it erases it. So when you want to get into your encrypted drive you enter "sesame" but when the authorities which to get your password you enter say "meltdown" (or rather you tell them your password is "meltdown") and they enter it only to find the drive has been hosed. Then you shrug your shoulders and say "I thought that drive was on it's last legs....".
Anyone who commits a crime can be considered a terrorist it's actually a fairly broad term.
Reporting on this provision of RIPA is always wrong, and the Slashdot discussion is even worse.
To face conviction for failing to disclose a password in the UK the police have to be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt (and that's specifically stated in the legislation itself) that you knew the password at the time.
This case is no different. The guy was arrested for terror plots, asked to divulge a password but then claimed he didn't know it, the police couldn't prove he did know it so nothing came of it, the guy was jailed anyway under all the other evidence they had.
The police then found it seemed he'd been involved in card fraud. Turns out incriminating evidence of this was on the memory stick and that's why he didn't want the police acting it, because he clearly hoped if he got off with the terrorism charge they'd never find out about the card fraud charge, so he had nothing to lose. Once they had found out about it he hoped for further sentencing leniency over the card fraud for admitting the password and hence helping the police. The problem for him is by admitting it he gave the police the "beyond reasonable doubt" that they needed all along to do him for failing to disclose the password.
So to this day, if you don't know the password, if you pretend you don't know the password, then there's fuck all the police can do to you with this legislation, hence it's not half as bad as people make out.
To date the only people getting done by it are those admitting they know the password and explicitly refusing to hand it over, those who do stupid things like this guy, and for example, more complex scenarios where someone pretends they've lost a password and the police can't cracking, but then they manage to crack, say, weaker encryption such as that used for his desktop login to find his desktop password which they can confirm forensically that he has entered and used since denying knowing his encrypted USB password and if it matches the encrypted USB password they can claim, well, he knew his desktop password, he logged in, and it was the same as his encrypted USB password, and hence beyond reasonable doubt...
Really, it's not the worst law in the world, the police have to hit a pretty high standard of evidence, or the accused has to fuck up and basically admit their own guilt to ever become victim of this. If you genuinely don't know your password, or if you deny knowing it and the police can't prove otherwise, then you're fine. You have to explicitly and provably obstruct a police investigation to get done by this law.
As the US government operates outside of my interpretation of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered by me to be a criminal organization.
FTFY.
You clarified that a signed post on Slashdot was the judgement and opinion of the poster? I don't think that rises to the level of "repair" that "fixing" implies.
I am not a crackpot.
All governments operate between limits, if we leave the interpretation of their constitution to themselves. That being said, if the constitution is vague or broad enough to allow a wide range of interpretations, then the constitution itself is wrong.
What a bunch of non-sense. I don't understand how crap like this gets modded up.
The point is that the U.K. Parliament is sovereign. That is there nothing that prevents Parliament from passing any law, and nothing one Parliament can do that prevents a future Parliament from changing it's mind, with the single proviso that the current monarch is willing to put their signature to whatever piece of legislation Parliament puts before them.
There are basically only two ways out for the U.K. at this point. The first is a full blown revolution which would most likely be extremely unpopular. Revolutions are almost never quick and clean. The last time we tried (aka the interregnum) it lasted just over 11 years.
The second option is to persuade the current and future monarchs to reserve certain powers (aka the ability to overrule certain pieces of legislation) to themselves when they reconstitute parliament after every dissolution (any parliamentary election in the U.K. is preceded by the dissolution of the current parliament) and hope that the courts and police will go with it.
In the case you posit someone is in imminent danger of harm
So? What difference does that make? I'm tired of people throwing principled out the window in the name of safety.
This is where I have a problem with the courts interpretation of the 5th in the US. Either the right to deny self-incrimination exists or it doesn't. I can either hold my tongue, or not. I don't agree with the mantra, 'this information isn't being used against you, so you must talk", which we often see when people are held in contempt for not talking. It's one thing, if there are secondary witnesses to yourself, however if I'm up there on my own with me as the key, and no others, I don't agree that I should have to divulge. IMO, it goes against the grain of liberty that the US was supposedly founded on.
I think part of it goes to the 'social contract', meaning, if you choose to live in society, you are expected to give pass on certain liberties that you'd normally retain as an individual. Either way, the 5ths interpretation is a mess, again my opinion, and unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
(I know this article deals with UK, however I feel it's apt to discuss a US scenario since we are no longer far removed with this specific topic)
That is more realistic then what the Tea Party said about the American Founding Fathers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The USB was believed to contain data...
Are we really just calling this "a USB" now instead of "a USB flash drive" or something similar?
R.Mo
"Since the UK doesn't have a written constitution, it's impossible to argue that a law is unconstitutional."
This is no longer really true in certain key areas (where we are governed by wider conventions) but it's better to say it's irrelevant. The idea of constitutionality is only important if you have a constitution; a constitution is by no means essential because given the right impetus it can be ignored; federal income tax, the patriot act, customs searches at borders, the entire swathe of history before the civil rights acts... the only thing worse than a constitution is one that the entire country can choose to ignore without amendment.
Anyone who commits a crime can be considered a terrorist it's actually a fairly broad term.
I've always said jaywalking was destroying this country.
What makes you think they hadn't it all cracked
To go back to the parent poster and Bruce's declaration: ... they are all used out there in production for quite some time. They are even used in some quite lucrative sectors.
AES, RSA, DSA, SHA256 (SHA-2), Scrypt,
If anyone was actually able to break (as in find a fundamental flaw that helps finding the solution without need to brute force-it) they would be making a killing of money. Thing about hacking e-banking transaction (AES, RSA, DSA), hacking crypto-currencies (DSA, SHA-2, Scrypt, SHA-3), etc. and earning tons of money.
That has not happened yet.
The algorithms and their mathematical and cryptographic basis have stood the test of time (although not yet for more recent addition like SHA-3).
The only methode left are:
- brute forcing, but it's mathematically and physically provable that it's not possible to scan the whole key space before the sun has gone supernova (or even before the heat death of the universe). No matter how much ressources you throw at this problem, you can't brute-force them within the current boundary of science. (and the hashcash-like technology behind crypto-currencies is a nice example of the limits of bruteforcing.
- going around it. find a flaw in the implementation of the software that created the encryption. AES could be the best encryption in the entire universe, it would be no use if the encryption software is stupid enough to leave behind temp file with the information in clear. Or if the user is a moron and doesn't follow proper security procedure (uses the same laptop to surf porn and install every single tool bar and smiley pack, and thus has 25 different key logger constantly listening for all the typed password)
There would be nothing surprising in the police revealing that they have recovered the password. That would be no surprise (specially given the quality of some software or the brightness of some criminals).
The only secret worth keeping, would be hiding that the bugs that were exploited to recover the password, the fatal stupid flaw in the software, weren't accidental but were planted by paying the company / by having an undercover agent hired by the company.
but just wanted to have him spend more time in jail while they prepare the other stuff they will hit him with ?
I don't think that pretending that they don't have the password in order to keep for a longer time would be a very legal method.
If the defending lawyer manager to get suspiction about this (e.g.: if the password was never revealed, but the guy still got charged on fraud anyway), he would have a field day with it.
Beside he had already given them; why would not they have tried all other passwords they had received ?
That's actually a good question. Password re-use has repeatedly been proved to by a frequent security flaw. Re-testing all the previous known password should have been done immediately, even before asking for collaboration.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If the police, TSA, government or even my mother want to see what is on data storage I have encrypted then they can sit down and crack it, I have no reason to ever decrypt that drive, if you want inside of it then get inside of it but I'm not going to help, after all I didn't encrypt the drive so you could just freely go in and look around.
I would consider it his fifth amendment right not to be forced to self incriminate. It's the prosection's duty to prove his guilt, so make them do their job. I don't care if he's guilty of other charges; he still has the same rights as everyone else.
The legal line in the US is clear. Protection from Self incrimination and warrant-less search and seizures are indeed rights, but that does not extend to hiding or destroying evidence. If they have a warrant to search, you *must* comply to the search or it's obstruction of justice. Just like they can arrest and charge you for obstruction if you attempt to physically prevent a lawful warranted search, they can arrest and charge you with obstruction for refusing to give them passwords. If a Jury will find you guilty of obstruction or not is an open question, but they *can* charge you.
Self incrimination is where you are required to testify about evidence or provide evidence for which law enforcement has no warrant. You are NOT required to take the stand in a trial and testify to or deny anything, but you also must NOT obstruct the discovery and collection of evidence.
But, I would highly recommend you consult a lawyer before you answer *any* question from law enforcement. In the USA, if you are not actually under arrest, answering any question beyond who you are and providing ID is not necessary or consenting to any searches due to the 5th amendment protections. Where answering questions and allowing searches may not hurt you, they can NEVER help you so it's best to to avoid them. If you are under arrest, then ALWAYS request your lawyer be present (and take their advice) before answering any questions. Remember, in the USA, law enforcement *can* legally lie to you and try to trick you, so just don't answer questions or consent to searches.
Finally, NEVER OBSTRUCT a search or detainment, legal or not and follow any commands given. You can (and should) respectfully protest a search and you can and should repeatedly ask "Am I free to leave now?" while answering any questions with "Respectfully Officer, you know I am not required to answer that question, Am I free to leave now?" Leave any questions about "was that search legal" for later.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
it doesn't have to be a crime to be terroristic.
"Does this dress make my butt look fat?" strikes terror into any man who's ever heard it! By definition making all women terrorists.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Jaywalking isn't a crime in the UK. You can walk pretty much wherever you like, except on motorways, and cars have to get out your way.
That's your opinion, not GP's
The british law version of the 5th is somewhat different, and that's borne out in the statement that the police read to you if you are arrested. Instead of simply having the right to remain silent, we "do not have to say anything, but it may harm [our] defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything [we] do say may be given in evidence." The key being that "it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court". You can keep quiet –but keeping quiet may well harm you just as much as it harms the prosecution.
Don't come here with your facts and logic ... this is Slashdot!!
It's different in one important respect – "it may harm your defence if when questioned you do not mention something which you later rely on in court". In the US, you can simply remain silent, and then pull surprises in the court room. In the UK, if you didn't tell the police when they were investigating, you can't tell the jury either.
We have the European Convention of Human Rights - http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/Treaties/Html/005.htm
But it doesn't include a right not to incriminate yourself.
You'd have to look up details, but even 'planing attacks' doesn't indicate the ability to carry them out. A lot of terrorists in this part of the world turned out to be incompetents who don't know how to make a simple bomb. One lot had their non-functioning car bomb towed away for illegal parking. Being attacked by them isn't terrifying, it's insulting.
The difference is that the warrant would not say that you had to hand over the key, but rather that they can search the shed.
If you refuse to turn over the keys they will break down the door to execute the search without they key. And you probably will not face any additional charges for failing to have the key when they asked.
The equivalent for digital storage would be they have a warrant to search the device, and they ask you for the password but if you can't/won't provide it they can use their own means to break in. This is unpopular with law enforcement because it's harder to break strong encryption than it is physical locks.
Also FYI, the right to say nothing would be covered under the 1st amendment regardless of context as the right to freely express oneself requires the right to not express what one does not wish to.
You are doing it wrong... m8s.
"Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. "
Dyslexics Untie!
As the US government operates outside of many people's interpretation of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered by many to be a criminal organization.
FTFY
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Which points out one little understood fact.. The police can legally lie to you if they want. So don't answer questions without following your lawyer's advice.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It was a pretty obvious reference to the American Founding Fathers (the UK founding fathers would make no sense in this context) and the US Constitution/Bill of Rights. The fact that it's in the UK means that the American Founding Fathers and Constitution is irrelevant to this story.
I'm pretty sure a significant part of the US population think that their constitutional rights also apply outside of the US...
For the fifth amendment to apply, there must be a risk of incriminating oneself. That depends on the specifics of the case:
Chalk said the USB contained material linking the defendant to an alleged fraud. He added that it was only when investigators told Hussain he was being investigated for fraud that he gave up the password. Investigations into the alleged fraud are ongoing.
If this were an American case, the defendant could be charged with obstructing the investigation into someone else's fraud, but the evidence linking him to it would easily be inadmissible. It's been held in federal court that defendants can be compelled to provide unencrypted drive contents to investigators if the police already know the partial contents of the device. While he could probably invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid handing over the password, a blanket grant of immunity for anything further found on the device may be enough* for a court to determine that "self-incrimination" is no longer a risk.
* There are conflicting rulings on this recently, implying that there's a threshold for how much immunity is enough to mitigate the risk.
Doesn't matter, the 1st amendment would apply (choosing to express nothing is freedom of expression), unless the choice to remain silent put lives in immediate and clear danger.
In the UK, if you didn't tell the police when they were investigating, you can't tell the jury either.
Of course you can, but it won't look good, and a UK jury isn't restricted from inferring from that fact.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Its long been understood that exposing your capabilities isn't a Good Thing. This brings us to the interesting potential scenario that in fact maybe GCHQ *could* quite easily read his files but wouldn't acknowledge this capability. In essence people can legally be jailed for not revealing access to material they can already bypass the encryption on perhaps? A bit worrying...
Yes and no. I'm neither a security expert nor an expert in intelligence/counter-intelligence. However, if I were to break a crypto scheme, it is paramount that I never reveal that I have broken the crypto scheme. That way, I can continue to intercept and decode your secrets while you believe that your crypto scheme is safely protecting them.
If AES were broken, the last thing that a government entity would want to do was reveal that it is broken. In fact, if AES has been broken, UK law enforcement officials are extremely unlikely to even be aware of this. It would most likely be an entirely different branch of government (or a different government altogether - e.g. US) who has knows of and has the means to break a scheme like AES.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with your assertion that crypto is good, but this story does not in any way suggest that AES has not been broken yet. I am still suspicious, particularly given that the scheme was "blessed" by the American NSA.
-Turkey
"Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1984"
Really? That name for number 1984? not_an_instruction_manual.jpg...
a similar thing can happen in the US. it is called contempt of court.
H. Beatty Chadwick is the record holder for serving 14 years for contempt of court. This was basically for a divorce. apparently they finally released him in 2009.
according to this:
In Chadwick v. Janecka (3d Cir. 2002), a U.S. court of appeals held that H. Beatty Chadwick could be held indefinitely under federal law, for his failure to produce US $ 2.5 mill. as state court ordered in a civil trial.
Yes, we do think those rights should apply outside the US. Mainly because we've thought those were natural (or god-given, depending on preference) rights, not privileges provided by government, since our country's conception.
What's crazy is that I have a handful of encrypted USB sticks and even an entire laptop whose passwords I've long since forgotten. It's not like there's anything on them (That I know of, but a year or so ago I was playing with encryption schemes, full disk encryption, volume encryption, hidden containers, etc for shits and giggles), and recently I booted my laptop to discover that I really have no idea what the password was. Now imagine the stormtroopers come banging on my door tomorrow.. I'm in deep doodoo if they think I'm hiding something on any of those devices. Eventually, I need to wipe/reinstall, but I've not been in any particular hurry...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
From TFS: "already serving time for helping to plot attacks against UK targets"
It is irrelevant to consider a past criminal record. This is a new case, and this case is not regarding terrorist activities but a fraud-related charge. This means that case-law is being created: "even in cases where the charges are only fraud-related, a defendant no longer has the right to remain silent in the UK".
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is why the UK has become a Police State: it started with the slippery slope of "protect the children against porn and terrorism", and now two things have happened:
- You no longer have the right to remain silent;
- Everything you do on the web can and will be censored by the Chinese^H^H^H UK Government;
No way that I am ever going to do business with a British entity. Once upon a time they were a symbol of courage and freedom, today they are the symbol of oppression and prime example for China and North Korea.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Except those same founding fathers were ALSO in the UK when they decided that they had had enough and were going to stop being part of the UK over the whole deal.
The founding father's were UK citizens in what was then the UK. Your argument is invalid.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Indeed. As the US government operates outside of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered a criminal organization.
Since it defines what is and isn't criminal it cannot, by definition, be a criminal organization.
Sorry, I stopped right there. Just because the government CAN amend the constitution to expand its powers, it doesn't mean they HAVE. There's a reason the limits of our government were made human-readable and kept small - so we'd know when to reset it. Government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and our only means of granting informed consent is with a simple, clear constitution which is actually followed.
So, Ollie North would have hung in the U.K. ?
Honestly, I don't know how they could coerce me into remembering the password on my USB stick, I've completely forgotten what it was.
Can't the answer be: "I don't remember the password anymore." ?
That was entirely conscensual, I just forgot where I put the key.
Since it defines what is and isn't criminal it cannot, by definition, be a criminal organization.
The Constitution defines what is criminal and what is not.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The US government operates outside of any reasonable interpretation of its constitutional limits. Anyone who considers it anything other than a criminal organization is simply not paying attention.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Dude, I'm totally gonna use this password. Bruce Schneier will be so proud of me!
I don't think this cycle of civilization is going to end like previous ones. There's an awful lot of guns and ammo around today, and one idiot with a hundred gallons of diesel fuel and some functional construction equipment can do massive environmental damage that people in the Roman era couldn't even dream of.
It's either going to go out with a serious big bang, or hobble along with some core of civilization preserved - sort of how it is today with the First / Third world.
I'm pretty sure a significant part of the US population think that their constitutional rights also apply outside of the US...
And there's probably good overlap of that part with the part of the U.S. population who think that the Constitution does *not* apply to non-citizens in the U.S.
It is irrelevant to consider a past criminal record.
Not at all true. It happens all the time with career criminals, which this guy is.
Jaywalking isn't a crime in the UK. You can walk pretty much wherever you like, except on motorways, and cars have to get out your way.
I was told that of all traffic deaths in the UK, 4 percent are on the motorway. And of those four percent, 20 percent are pedestrians. Feel free to walk on the motorway anytime you like :-(
Here, in the UK, you do not have the right to remain silent (let's face it, you don't even have rights anymore, but anyway) if you're being investigated for either fraud or terrorism.
Let's face it, the UK absolutely despises freedom, rights and any kind of concept like that.
> and nothing one Parliament can do that prevents a future Parliament from changing it's mind, with
> the single proviso that the current monarch is willing to put their signature to whatever piece of
> legislation Parliament puts before them.
> The second option is to persuade the current and future monarchs to reserve certain powers
Don't these together suggest a solution: Their parliament could put a constitution before the current monarch to sign, one which gives up certain powers entirely without some unusually hard process (like ours 2/3 majority and ratification by the states) to change.
Its not perfect, certainly ours has been circumvented to a very large extent over time, but, its a starting point; and it is something they could do if they wanted to fix it. Of course, its rare that people work to limit their own powers.
Normally the best you get are the Obama types whose attitude is "Well I shouldn't have and don't want this power, but I wont oppose it, I will just promise not to use it more than I see fit."
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The comment was about U.S. citizens who think their constitutional rights DO apply outside the U.S. (they don't), not that those rights SHOULD apply outside the U.S. (this is debatable).
Of course you can, but it won't look good, and a UK jury isn't restricted from inferring from that fact.
For example, if you tell the jury that you have an alibi, and the police had no chance to question the person providing the alibi or do any checking, then the jury can assume that you just made it up on the spot.
The simple answer to this question is "No, it's not the dress."
Except a locked shed requires a physical object, i.e. key, to be opened. The cops don't need you to incriminate yourself if they can find the key (or get a proper warrant to circumvent it).
That doesn't make a difference. Giving the passcode to encrypted information is not self incriminating. It's only self incriminating if the fact that you can provide the password incriminates you, beyond the information itself. And that could be with a physical key as well. You claim that all the stolen TVs in your garage have nothing to do with you and you don't even have a key. Having a key would be incriminating.
The fact that it's in the UK means that the American Founding Fathers and Constitution is irrelevant to this story.
Not at all. The post to which I was replying claimed that protection against self-incrimination was a property of "libtards". I brought up the founding fathers as a counter example.
I never suggested that the founding fathers had anything to do with UK law, or that this case took place in the US. Those of you who who thought I did need to read and think harder.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The national state does not always have the last say in what is legal and/or illegal. For example, certain crimes against humanity (such as genocide) are considered illegal in every state of the world regardless of the legality of the act in the country where it was committed.
See wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ius_cogens
There is no such thing as a natural or god given right, they are all rights we grant each other.
" The USB was believed ..."
Argh not on slashdot too. USB is a BUS standard it is not a physical device. Next thing we'll here statement like I stored my files on my SATA and plugged my monitor into my PCIe.
unless they apply the universal "national security" or "suspected terrorist" to the warrant. then they get to do anything they want.
Sure, the NSA has the ability to decrypt and listen/read everything we're doing, but this? Is it a tactic to make us all believe that they truly don't have these kind of powers, and our data is safe...
They can *listen and read* everything we're doing. That's true. That has been suspected as a possibility by experts for a long time, and Edward Snoden's revelations are a comfirmation that it has indeed happened, and a revelation of the methodic large scale of the whole spying program.
BUT
The NSA doesn't have the ability to *decrypt* everything. They have the ability to make sure that the software you're using is broken and doesn't encrypt well, choses its key from a small pool of only 10 alternatives, or plainly leaks the clear text... or even hack you PC and put a keylogger in it... all this thanks to bugs carefully planted either by them (while undercover) or by the companies making the software (after paying them).
Also, if you're dumb enough to re-use password, any policeman with half a brain has the ability to first try all the passwords they already have to see if they can open the encryption without needed a password.
But the NSA can't magically pry AES open. That doesn't work. The maths and cryptology behind it are still sound. And bruteforcing it is in the "not before the heat death of the universe" range of time requirement.
Here lies the small distinction.
If you're careless about your secret stuff, at some moment or another, they are bound to hear something that will help them obtain your secret.
That's why NSA is a massive danger to the privacy of Joe Sixpack. He's careless, and his privacy is completely violated.
If you systematically follow proper security procedure (as in being anal-retentive about it, to the brink of sanity), NSA can nothing about you. That's how Edward Snowden manage to evince detection and to successfully orchestrate the whole leak. That how the journalists managed to keep the whole procedure secret. See Bruce Schneider's explanation about the security procedure).
or more likely - the truth, the majority of the people who have the ability to access everything they need to access and technologies reserved for government agencies but simply, are incompetent in their jobs. I believe the latter is the answer, DFUs are managing our information, which ultimately means - most of us, while technically are fully vulnerable, are really safe...simply because the exploiters of our information are fucking idiots.
There were recent report that indeed, NSA is drowning in too much information. Finding precisely what they need among the see of gathered information is hard (finding a needle in a haysack is hard. When you gather and pile all the haysacks you encounter inside a huge farm, finding the very specific needle you need is getting even harder).
The problem is everybody's privacy. While finding something precise is hard, accidentally landing on something sensitive is much more likely. That's why everyone's privacy is utterly fucked by the whole thing.
Answering open wide question is hard. "Where are all the terrorist of the world ?" is a complex request that can't be answered easily, even more so given the mass of data to scan.
Answering targeted small question is easy. "I want all the photo of naked people !" or "Please keep getting all the data feeds from my ex-girlfriend" are typical abuses that can be done more easily. "Please help me eavesdrop on my competitor" is a type of industrial espionage that can be done as an abuse of the current system.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They have the passwords for everything!
They couldn't have, you know, picked a different year to enact this?
Actually, you cannot resort to EU law. Despite the EU coming down upon your side, the UK law basically says "don't care, law of the land wins". IR35 is illegal in Europe, the UK doesn't care. Single parent males cannot get widower benefits like their female counterparts, again, illegal and again, UK law will not change.
"Really, it's not the worst law in the world": No, it just forces otherwise innocent people to lie.
It is against EU law and you have the right to NOT INCRIMINATE yourself.
This is yet another case where the UK ignores EU Human Rights laws... and they have the nerve to dictate how other countries have poor human rights?
Your logic makes Spock cry tears of copper based blood.
And yet a lot of Brits want to leave the EU.. well if you leave the EU, you will get more anti-human rights draconian laws as the UK is one of the top Police states in the WORLD.
If you want to get your way with the UK, BOMB the City Of London (seperate from the UK as is the Vatican City as is District of Columnbia in the US).
It worked for the IRA, it will work again. The UK DOES negociate with terrorists, if you bomb LONDON:
BOMB the CITY OF LONDON.. Then make your demands.
To face conviction for failing to disclose a password in the UK the police have to be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt (and that's specifically stated in the legislation itself) that you knew the password at the time.
If that were really the case no-one would ever be convicted of this offence. How can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone remembers something? I forget stuff all the time, especially passwords. Even passwords I was using the day before. In fact especially passwords I was using the day before, if they are new.
The problem for him is by admitting it he gave the police the "beyond reasonable doubt" that they needed all along to do him for failing to disclose the password.
He claims he forgot and then later remembered it. That happens sometimes. I don't see how it proves he never forgot it beyond a reasonable doubt.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So it never happens to you that you forget something, and then remember it again at a later time?
and for example, more complex scenarios where someone pretends they've lost a password and the police can't cracking, but then they manage to crack, say, weaker encryption such as that used for his desktop login to find his desktop password which they can confirm forensically that he has entered and used since denying knowing his encrypted USB password and if it matches the encrypted USB password they can claim, well, he knew his desktop password, he logged in, and it was the same as his encrypted USB password, and hence beyond reasonable doubt...
Ummm... yeah, that would be a more complex scenario - my head just asploded.
Yes, we do think those rights should apply outside the US. Mainly because we've thought those were natural (or god-given, depending on preference) rights, not privileges provided by government, since our country's conception.
Actually not quite. The American Constitution is a contract between american citizens (aka The People) of what you promise not to do to each other. The US Government is not conceived of as an independent entity with its own identity but an emergent property of The People consenting to collect their rights together for the benefit of all The People, based on the pooling of their individual sovereignty. 'We The People' refers to American citizens.
Consequently, since people in other countries didn't sign on to The American Constitution, they haven't made any promises to you of which of your rights they wont violate and you have absolutely no expectation of your contract with your fellow Americans being honoured, also you are not bound by the Constitution to respect the rights of foreigners.
There is however an expectation that anything the American Government has promised to do towards foreign nations it will honour, because The People of 1 nation can freely enter into an agreement with The People of another nation, which is why American Treaties actually form part of the law of the land (and it says this in the Constitution). This, for instance, means the US government must honour the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights inside the borders of any nation that is a signatory to it because the US is a signatory to it.
The bottom line is that the Constitution is a written contract between The People. The US government doesn't claim to be bound to always respect inalienable rights, but only whatever it expressly agreed to respect.
At the very most some foreign government can violate your so called inalienable rights and you could launch a civil lawsuit (or a revolution) against it for being wronged and a US court might agree with you. But nothing in the Bill of Rights claims that all of the rights contained therein are all inalienable rights.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
The Constitution defines what is criminal and what is not.
The Constitution, by its own verbiage, is to be interpreted by the Supreme Court and subject to modification at any time by Congress. As such, it means whatever they say it does, not what you say it does.
If you wish to quibble about whether they're "right" or "wrong" in their interpretations, there's a social club for that -- they meet every friday down at the bar when they aren't shitting up internet forums the world 'round. But they're the ones that say what is "legal" and what is "illegal", not you or me.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
If it's your wife or girlfriend the proper response is "Shake it!" you have now successfully avoided answering and changed the subject.
Whatever you do, don't break out with some rap "I like big butts and I cannot lie" it's the same as saying yes and it's kind of dorky.
It takes a peculiar sort of arrogance (perhaps hubris would be a better word) to predict the future 50-100 years out. How about a stock tip instead or maybe just a super bowl pick.
Terrorists are often expected to be self-financing, so training in fraud is included alongside bomb making.
Yes, but it's unlikely that you'll be able to prove that, so they'll throw you in prison for failing to divulge the password. Sucks, doesn't it?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
The post to which I was replying claimed that protection against self-incrimination was a property of "libtards". I brought up the founding fathers as a counter example.
You and the OP are both wrong. The American founding fathers are actually liberals. I know the L word has attached a lot of negative connotations over the years, but that's due to libtards being Tsundere. libtards actually like a lot of liberal ideas, but they can't admit that they like them, so they try very hard to deny it, to the point they attack the liberals.
But at the end of the day, most libtards end up going along with liberal polices. That's US politics in a shell: everybody thumps their chest saying they're for liberty and libertarian values, but after "compromising" and "discussion", what they come up with is more liberal policies, be it socially or fiscally (usually fiscally)
Since it defines what is and isn't criminal it cannot, by definition, be a criminal organization.
The Constitution defines what is criminal and what is not.
No, the Constitution defines what the government can and should go; deciding on "criminal" it leaves up to the judicial and executive branches.
"nothing one Parliament can do that prevents a future Parliament from changing it's mind"
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Erm, you have the right to remain silent in court. However adverse inferences can be drawn from your silence (and failing to mention something under police questioning).
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
So? The conversation was what would happen in the US, and I said, "I would consider", refering to the hypothetical statement of being in the US.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The problem for the defendant in this case, is he was lying when he said he didn't remember it
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It is up to you to decide if you may or may not be incriminating yourself. You are presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Therefore, saying nothing is *always* the best defence. Ask any lawyer about that.
Unless they can prove without a doubt that that USB sticks holds evidence, they can't prove you are obstructing justice. If they can already prove without a doubt that there's evidence on that stick, they don't need the contents any more and they already have their proof, so you're not obstructing either because they already have the evidence.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I always answer with, "If you ask a question to which you don't really want an honest answer, you might get an answer you don't want to hear."
Appropriate signature, because you are a moron. The 'founding fathers' (no apostrophe before the s) were traitors of the UK and renounced their citizenship.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!
Burn the land and boil the sea........
Just ask our NSA for the password, since the USB stick probably has that tiny wireless chip in it that allows them to hijack and snoop on air-gapped computers that was reported recently.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
I didn't realise that you can refuse to answer certain questions in court; I thought they'd do you for contempt. However, if silence can be inferred as guilt, then there's not a huge benefit in remaining silent (except to the police - don't help them to prosecute you).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Here, in the UK, the Police can issue their own warrants.
And how's that work out for you?
Ralphie May has a line something like: "If you're a married man, you know you've always got a choice - you can be right, or you can be happy."
If he told them the password previously, but they didn't even try it, maybe the password was "F*ck you!"?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
What's the ChinUK Government!?
How does remembering the password later prove beyond reasonable doubt that he hadn't forgotten it earlier. How many times in human history has someone struggled mightily to remember something important (the name of the person who just said hello enthusiastically, the answer to question 3 on the exam, etc) and failed only to have it pop into their head unbidden after it's too late? Certainly often enough that it's a perfectly reasonable claim to make.
You can walk pretty much wherever you like, except on motorways
And jaywalking doesn't involve walking on a motorway...?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Oh, so it's a synonym for "highway." Damn Brits and their other words for common things. I hear "motorway" and thing "road where motored vehicles travel," which would include pretty much everything other than bike paths and trails.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
It is possible to have a binding constitution within a Westminster system - look at Australia. Might be tricky in the UK though. One way might be to have a panel of senior judges (like Germany's constitutional court) that the monarch can ask for advice on signing legislation they thought might be unconstitutional. Then amend the convention that the monarch can only act on advice of the Privy Council appropriately.
Quick, what is your ATM PIN?
You don't have to actually tell us, but if you're like me, you have trouble remembering it unless you are in front of an ATM.
Just because the defendant was later able to give them the password, does not mean that he was lying when he said he could not remember it at the time.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Excuse me, but we're talking about the United States here. The people [are supposed to] define what is and isn't criminal in these parts!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So you have the burden to prove your innocence in Great Britain?
Well according to Wikipedia the monarch technically has the power to withhold consent. Just none of them have since 1708.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Consent
As a non-Brit, I would be interested in hearing an explanation for this.
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Probably, but I don't think there is proof of that. How do you prove what someone is thinking. Clearly he knew the password, because he produced it eventually, but that doesn't prove that he didn't forget it then remember it, as he claimed.
Umm, no.
The Constitution cannot be amended by act of Congress. It can only be amended by the votes of 3/4 of the individual States.
Congess may PROPOSE Amendments, but the act of proposing such does not guarantee that they'll be enacted.
In addition, a Constitutional Convention may be called by the States to propose Constitutional Amendments. If those Amendments are then ratified by 3/4 of the States, then Congress and the rest of the Federal Government just has to suck it up....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This is not about EU law directly. The ECHR is not the EU court of justice even though they follow each others work. There will be often financial and legally binding consequences for the UK if it doesn't follow ECHR rulings. The ratification of the Charter means that sometimes law of the land does not win, even if Cameron says it does it does.
I think producing the encryption key probably is incriminating in a lot of circumstances, because it proves you had the ability to access the data, and strong evidence of ownership.
If you already admitted to owning and encrypting the data, then I guess it doesn;t matter. But if your defense is that the usb key isn't yours and you don't know the password, then providing the password does kind of screw up your story.
What makes you say it was encrypted using AES? I haven't found any comment on exactly how it was encrypted anywhere.
Ok, ok, just the executive branch of the US government then. Big difference.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Oh, so it's a synonym for "highway." Damn Brits and their other words for common things.
The word "highway" was already in use in the UK, and has a wider (and more generally legal-oriented) meaning than the commonly-accepted one in the US. That's presumably why a different word was chosen.
Besides which, AFAICT, even in the US "highway" isn't an exact synonym for "motorway" (or "controlled-access highway"), it's just a historical term normally used for major roads which nowadays mainly happen to be of that type. (Correct me if this is wrong). Whereas "motorway" *does* refer specifically to that type of road.
I hear "motorway" and thing "road where motored vehicles travel," which would include pretty much everything other than bike paths and trails.
Why? Does "motorway" have that meaning in North America? If not, were you just making an assumption, and if so, that's your problem!
Why would it hurt you? Is this under the suspicion "maybe he just made it up between the arrest and the courtroom"?
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No. Everything is a right, until you are told, or a law is made, against something.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
It's not as if the beyond reasonable doubt test is a new thing, it's a well established legal principle and this guy had to be tried by the courts using that principle and was found guilty.
The problem is you're speculating, and the news stories are light on detail, for all we know he was given months to remember the password and never did then when he ultimately did perhaps he incriminated himself by also admitting he knew it all along. The fact is he was deemed guilty by our legal system and there's no evidence that the decision was an unjust one only half assed reporting of this law as usual.
Yes I know it's a lame law but that doesn't mean it's okay to pretend it's something it's not and that there is injustice without evidence of any such thing.
Do I have full faith in our justice system? Not at all, but I've yet to see a single case where this law has been used to jail someone who wasn't stupid enough to incriminate themselves and we have seen cases dropped where police couldn't prove their case precisely because it takes a special amount of stupidity or massively expensive forensic investigation to reach the high standards use of this law to prosecute requires.
I'm not saying it doesn't concern me that this law is open to injustice if that standard isn't asked for by the courts, but this far it's far cry from the "Give me your password", Forgotten it", "Right you're going to jail" that lie publications like The Register have pretended over the years.
The irony is it's so difficult for the police to use precisely as a compromise as the result of strong lobbying by many of those of us that care about technology in the first place. It was us that got that strong reasonable doubt clause there to start with, now we have people in the technology world pretending it doesn't exist.
Just because the law is sometimes used isn't evidence of abuse, it's so far just evidence that sometimes there are idiots that implicate themselves, sometimes through protest, sometimes through simple stupidity.
I am struggling to remember whether I have ever heard *anyone* in the U.S. use the word "motorway." We do use "highway," "freeway," and "interstate" though, which I've always been a bit fuzzy on, interstate being a subtype and freeway...higher-density, maybe?
I personally would define a highway as a road with a significant contiguous portion of its length being free of stoplights; anything else is a road. That's probably not the actual definition though.
I was interpreting "motorway" literally, yes, which I suppose is an assumption.
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If you wish to quibble about whether they're "right" or "wrong" in their interpretations, there's a social club for that -- they meet every friday down at the bar when they aren't shitting up internet forums the world 'round. But they're the ones that say what is "legal" and what is "illegal", not you or me.
Government gets its right to exist more from those guys at the bar than from any court. When the will of the people is no longer respected, we'll have much worse problems than illegal searches.
Me? I just go for total honesty. "Yes, your butt looks fat. But then your butt looks fat in everything because well, your butt's fat. But I love you anyway."
Or you could try writing better, since your sarcastic comment implies you thought the 'libtards' referenced by OP was referring to the U.S.
Not entirely, it doesn't. The Constitution is the law of the land. It defines the government, the government doesn't define it. (SCOTUS"s attempt to retcon that power for itself notwithstanding.) That which is in opposition to the law is criminal. (Not to say moral or immoral -- John Brown was a criminal, a terrorist even, but he it can be argued that he was in the right to attempt to start a slave insurresction.) When the government violates the law, it is engaging in criminal activity.
History moves in a helix, not in a circle. Some elements repeat, yet progress happens.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Maybe the terrorist was using the usb for a "sneakernet". Put him in a back room and punch him until you get the password.
This is a strange one to get past the american audience, because despite the two legal systems sharing a common root ("common law"), they functionally operate very differently.
So I put to you a scenario. I've just been shopping for some housewares, and happen to have in my shopping bag a l large flat-bladed screwdriver. At the same time, the same object can be found about the person of another chap with a known drug problem and a history of breaking & entering.
Now, under English law, I'm doing absolutely nothing wrong, but it would be quite simple to confiscate the screwdriver from the chap with a history of breaking & entering, enquire about his business this evening, where's he's been, going, and even remand him for a more formal chat if his answers aren't convincing, or he's uncooperative.
In English law, this would be "Going equipped to steal"; the American reaction would be "Screwdrivers are illegal? since when?" Which is where we differ so wildly. It's often said that "possession is nine tenths of the law". In English law, Intent is nine tenths of the law. We really do depend on the judicial system showing some common sense, and protest when it fails to do so.
Which is exactly how this case works. If I encrypt my financial documents, my employer opts to encrypt my harddrive, a journalist encrypts their research, etc, this is prudent, and I would call any overreach against this "abuse of police powers" or "abuse of regulatory powers". But if a convicted terrorist has a cache of encrypted data, yes it's kosher for a court to demand the contents to further their investigation.
I'm quite sure all this makes me sound like an apologist; I believe nothing could be further from the truth. I do value my privacy, I do encrypt things "simply because I can", I'm disgusted by untargeted, dragnet surveillance, etc. But I'm also a realist, and there's a very simple problem here: Outrage at stories like this actually damages my position against such breaches of privacy. Internet Pitchforks are far too readily available, but they make us look like the tinfoil nutters. Where common sense dictates that an investigation is overreach, then yes, yell at the top of your lungs. But to protest a court order made during the investigation of a convicted terrorist - use some common sense.
Seems to me that an officer at the scene could drop an encrypted USB stick into your possessions, then demand the password from you. Of course, sworn officers of the law would never do such things.
Except an encrypted hard drive is not a locked shed. It is a notebook, made out of metal, written to with magnets (adjust analogy as needed for flash memory and other alternative storage devices).
And if I'm not required to teach the cops the made-up language I used in this physical paper notebook, why should that change just because the materials that make up the notebook change?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
"Why that's the same password as my luggage!"
My definitions, FWIW: Expressway: a road with on & off ramps and without stop lights. Often two or more lanes per direction. Freeway: a free expressway Tollway: a non-free expressway Interstate: Part of the US Interstate Highway system. Every one I've been on has been an expressway. Highway: Don't have a good definition here. There is the US Highway system, which seems to have predated the Interstate system, and has a mixture of expressway and stoplight / traffic control mixtures along its routes.
Prevents, no....but there is nothing that ever prevents such things. The best we can ever hope to do is add hurdles in front of such changes.
Our constitution, for example, what stops congress from declaring it invalid? Nothing really except its own clauses. It is just an agreement. Now that isn't to say they are likely to get away with it. It isn't to say it wouldn't divide the country. In fact, it would do those things...which is the major hurdle to them just "changing their mind".
Likewise, if the Monarch signs a bill put before her which reserves her own power to change it, which puts specific and onerous requirements on parliament in order to change it.... then it is what it is, a new law.
What is to stop them from going back on that and just putting a new bill before the Monarch just like that to nullify it? The same nothing that is stopping congress here: Only the implications of doing so. Implications created by the promises in the document itself.
In the end that is all a constitution is. Its a document which declares the legitimacy of the government and lays out a number of promises to the people about how power will be used; and how these promises can be changed should the need arise. That is all it really is.
They can do that, and with time, those promises will become so ingrained that they will catch appropriate rations of shit should they violate them, and hopefully risk losing their own power.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I am from NZ
A Motorway is very similar to a US Freeway, with a minimum speed (usually 70Kmh) and no cyclists, horses or other livestock allowed. There are at least 2 lanes going in each direction, and a median separating opposing traffic.
Society almost seems to be regressing back to the feudal days. In a manner of speaking we are already picking our lords and masters in relation to how we assign our bits: Google, Apple, Microsoft are all feudal systems vying for willing vassals. Creepy methinks.
I'm an ordinary bloke, but after reading this and other stories like this, I'd like to keep the goon squad boffins from taking possession of my tech. I'll be leaving my devices at home even though I have nothing untoward on them nor are they encrypted.
Not sure how prevalent minimum speed limits are either. It probably varies state to state; I think all the minimum speed limit highways I've seen were out west (of the Mississippi).
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Once upon a time they were a symbol of courage and freedom
Really? So why did America break away some 200 years ago then? Maybe they toned down their act for a few years in the middle, but this is just them reverting to their old ways.
(That being said, America is headed down that path as well... :-/ At least I'm legally allowed to start a militia to stop us from going down that path. ...for now...)
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Yawn. I fucked up an apostrophe, you just backed up my point, who is the moron? That is exactly what I said. They were UK citizens in the UK when they decided they had had enough of that.
Could be worst, I could have my head so far up my ass, I go around commenting on grammar and punctuation as if it added anything to a conversation.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Like they were such a symbol of courage and freedom in colonial India? Please forgive me if I'm being overly cynical here but I find the assertion that Britain was ever a genuine 'symbol of courage and freedom' to be extraordinary and to require extraordinary proof.
As the US government operates outside of my interpretation of its constitutional limits, it can only be considered by me to be a criminal organization.
FTFY.
Interpretation? What exactly do you need to interpret with previous case law based on the 5th Amendment where a defendant has chosen to remain silent? Do you need to hire a translator to convert that silence into nothingness to understand how that law works?
The Bill of Rights have stood the test of time for many decades prior to 9/11, so don't sit here and give me this interpretation bullshit. Perhaps you need to be stopped and searched at one of our many "border" checkpoints 100 miles inland to see that today. When you're hauled away in handcuffs and spend thousands defending yourself for doing nothing but exercising your Rights, interpret all you want as to who the real criminal is.
I've found the correct response is, "You've got it all wrong. It's not the dress that makes you look good, it's you that makes the dress look amazing."
Goddammit just when I get my first +5 the Beta rolls out and kills everything
As I understand it, with membership in the EU, Parliament is no longer sovereign and is subservient to the EU courts and Parliament.
BTW, the last revolution was the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which even included the first Bill of Rights and finished neutering the Monarchs power. Personally I wish the Monarch had a bit more power, perhaps occasionally not giving Royal Assent but instead dissolving Parliament (and giving assent after the election). This is a power that couldn't be used too often though as the electorate doesn't like frequent elections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There are certain rights that no human can GIVE to some other human but only TAKE away. That is because no human can give life to another, but only take it. The ultimate right is the right to life. There is no government on earth that has ever GIVEN any right, but has only TAKEN rights away that people already had. The U.S. Constitution was written to reduce or limit that human tendency to take rights away from each other.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
To pull out the most wildly stupid example I can think of, I put to you:
I've lost my key. But having lived here quite a while now, I have a fair idea I can jimmy the kitchen window. I proceed to do so, and happen to be caught in the act by the local bobby.
Now, just like every "freeman" on youtube tells me, I shut my mouth and tell the police nothing. I'm arrested, obviously, and events take due course. But I hold my "god-given right to silence" just like youtube tells me to.
When I stand before the judge and finally announce "your honour, that's my house", I'm basing my defence entirely on something I didn't admit during questioning. And I'd deserve to be treated like the idiot I was.
Obviously, I'd hope to never see this example play out in real life. But yes, withholding during questioning can very much work against you.
Your militia and your AR15 are completely utterly useless to rise against a government. Even 100 million of them. Private handguns might have been useful 200 years ago. Not any longer. A single Apache gunship, hell a single platoon would wipe out your entire local militia before lunch.
It's delusional to think of guns as a guarantee for freedom. As such the NRA is simply ridiculous.
In 1688 Parliament asserted its power and declared the King to have abdicated and invited William of Orange and his wife the Kings daughter to take the crown. This included a new oath of coronation amongst other things and basically cemented the sovereignty of Parliament. Every sovereign since has been well aware of who actually holds the power since and even in 1708 Anne only declined giving Royal Assent on the advice of her Government. As recently as 1936 Parliament pushed out the King and there is a possibility that Charles could also be pushed out if he gets too political and is still alive when the Queen dies though he'll be old enough they'll probably just wait for him to die.
I'd guess if Parliament tried to pass a really unconstitutional law such as there will no longer be elections and all members of the opposition shall be summarily shot, the Queen would refuse assent so she is sorta the last defence against full out tyranny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If I plot to kill someone and am stopped, I am hardly a straight, uncut murderer. He is an attempted-terrorist at best.
...
And what super power allows you to manically work that out? I am sure the FBI and CIA woudl love to talk to you about how you can work out what is on an encrypted device.
Fraud and other crimes are often used to fund terrorist groups. Where do you think the IRA got their armalites and Semtex from - not all from passing the hat in bars in Boston for sure.
Well in the old days he woudl have been expected to go into the side room with a bottle of whiskey and his service revolver and do the right thing
The American "outlaw" mentality surfaces again.
Let me guess: "laws are not there to protect bad people and they are not there to apply to good people, like those the people in power have decided should have immunity."
It's only a hop and a skip from there to full on "might makes right" which China is very slowly growing out of.
One that flies over in a dual rotor helicopter.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
But your honor, I don't know the password, because I had it written down on a Post-it note under the keyboard. When the cops took the computer and everything else away, they must have overlooked and lost it. Sorry! Now what can any judge say to that?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Interstate would be any highway travelling across state boundaries, where 'inter-' being defined as "among/between" States.
I'm a bit confused by Interstate 1 though.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Oh, so it's a synonym for "highway." Damn Brits and their other words for common things. I hear "motorway" and thing "road where motored vehicles travel," which would include pretty much everything other than bike paths and trails.
Yeah damn those English people who speak something other than English as it's spoken by those who invented it.
Oh wait! It's called English because the English "invented" it and the ex-colonists decide to fuck with it.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Apparently the authorities don't bother to think you will.
It's not 'number 1984'.
It became law in 1984.
MA has a minimum speed limit of 45 on the pike (I-90).
What's the ChinUK Government!?
This is something that's always bothered me, and I'm talking decades here. In which fsckin' editor are we backspacing destructively anyway, because that's not what I use in my editors (cat, vi, emacs, ...).
However, if this is Win* specific, I don't care and that should answer the question.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
*shudder* Can't be the same guy, I have to assume..
This keeps coming up...
Your rights have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your citizenship. Just in case anyone was in doubt about that, the 14th Amendment spells it out very clearly: "No state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
What matters is not who you are, but where you are. If you're on American soil, then you're under US jurisdiction as defined by the US constitution. If you're on, say, Egyptian soil - then, not so much. This is equally true for an American, an Egyptian, a Briton or a Mongolian.
If your comments were correct then the government would not fear its citizens having guns. Guerilla warfare exists and has worked for generations against a larger more powerful army. If what you said was true the war on terror would have been over immediately after it started.
According to a strength test, the password has only 49 bits of entropy, so it's surprising GCHQ couldn't crack it:
< 28 bits = Very Weak; might keep out family members
28 - 35 bits = Weak; should keep out most people, often good for desktop login passwords
36 - 59 bits = Reasonable; fairly secure passwords for network and company passwords
60 - 127 bits = Strong; can be good for guarding financial information
128+ bits = Very Strong; often overkill
The checker had been posted on slashdot a while back [IIRC]:
http://rumkin.com/tools/password/passchk.php
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
The reason it may hurt you is because certain types of evidence will become inadmissible in court if you did not reveal them to both prosecution and defence prior to the trial. Both sides need all the information to be able to build their cases, you can not simply deny information to one side arbitrarily. The goal is to get to the truth, not to protect some weird right you have not to own up to things (aside, seriously, what *is* the logic behind the 5th? Why should you have the right to not own up to things you've done?)
Britain made a strategic decision to do business with China. They allowed international students to come over and study, allowed investment and purchase of property, have done business deals to build nuclear power stations. Then the manufacturers of China's firewall also built one for the UK.
Hussain Husein Make up your mind, and if you're going to post about a person the least you could do is get their name right.
OK, "surrender keys to a shed filled with incriminating documents," Mr. Pedantic.
Except a locked shed requires a physical object, i.e. key, to be opened. The cops don't need you to incriminate yourself if they can find the key (or get a proper warrant to circumvent it).
Conversely, locked data (information) does not require a physical key, but rather information kept within the owner's brain.
Information that would be self-incriminating to give out.
FWIW, I personally don't know of any legal precedent (in the US) that requires one to surrender a key if doing so would be self-incriminating.
In the USA they just have to wait until you are within 100km of a border and then let the TSA take you away.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The Parliament is full of politicians who hope to remain politicians (or at least respected public figures) for the most part. Changing things arbitrarily in unpopular ways is a good recipe for becoming a former politician sooner rather than later, and an unloved one as well.
No Monarch has actually "put their signature to whatever piece of legislation Parliament puts before them" in the UK since a few ceremonial signings by Victoria, and no monarch has tried to avoid granting royal assent since Queen Anne. Today's process is fully automated and carried out by a Royal Commission formed by the government and opposition whips of both Houses of Parliament without much ceremony.
The current monarch happens to be queen in several other independent countries and has put her "sign manual" on the occasional document *with legal effect*, however mostly personal signings are purely ceremonial, with the formal enactment procedure having been performed by someone else.
There is an important point about the monarchy though: it lobbies and lobbies hard. The queen and her family do not need to threaten to refuse to grant Royal Assent when they somehow still manage to get to have secret meetings and exchange secret correspondence with government officers, including elected politicians, without serious difficulty. Moreover, it is fairly clear that these meetings are often taken seriously, and that from time to time regulations and/or the wording of government bills are altered as a result. It is *that* behaviour by the monarch and her eldest son that is the real power of the monarchy as a non-democratic institution, not the formal procedures that no monarch has used (or even really needed to use) for centuries.
Cromwell pere and fils both enjoyed a lot more direct power than the monarchs on either side of the Commonwealth, and were vastly more engaged with directing the business of Parliament than *any* monarch, especially those since the Glorious Revolution.
A formal Entrenchment Procedure could be laid down by Parliament and backed by a referendum; that has already been done in all but name with the effect that not even the most hostile-to-Europe factions would dream of abandoning devolution (including the Belfast Agreement) or continued membership in the EU without another plebiscite.
While formally Parliament is Sovereign is still said, most people probably accept now that it is the people living in the UK that are sovereign, and it is fairly clear that governments-of-the-day do not have carte blanche to do arbitrary major changes to the constitution just because they and their supporters control the House of Commons (or both Houses).
Additionally, the idea of Parliamentary supremacy has always been offset -- formally and otherwise -- by the independence of English judges (and juries and other parts of the system of justice), which has roots in both Roman and pre-Roman cultures in the British islands, and which has never been fully suppressed for significant periods of time.
Don't forget the ones who have all of the training and equipment to actually be able to carry out an attack provided by our own law enforcement officials, so they can swoop in at the last moment and play the hero...
NO !!! It's worse than that ... if you don't provide information when asked by UK police, the prosecution can prevent you from introducing that information during your court case. I believe this is also the case in Australia.
Tell that to the people of Libya.
In western PA at least, highway generally referred to pretty much any numbered route, usually having a speed limit of 55MPH or greater.
Interstates are...well, federally designated as such, so that's pretty clear.
'Freeway' is some strange term people use on the west coast. I have never actually heard anyone ever use that term. But I've read that in some specific regions, freeway is generally used to mean larger divided roads with fewer on and off ramps (basically roads built like interstates but not designated as such I guess). Other places it means large roads with no tolls ("free-as-in-beer"-ways)
(aside, seriously, what *is* the logic behind the 5th? Why should you have the right to not own up to things you've done?)
Either they have sufficient proof that you've done it, or they don't.
If they do, they don't need you to testify.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done. Which is pretty important, considering that you may still be innocent. In fact, there have been people *on death row* proven to be innocent. Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
They deport you to Saudi Arabia where you'd be water boarded, drugged, beaten and raped for years.
No, just kidding. Nothing at all.
Mind you though, I'd definitely write your passwords down on a Post it note and stick it under your desk if I were you just to be safe.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'm pretty sure a significant part of the US population think that their constitutional rights also apply outside of the US...
That's because they do. Our *constitutional rights* (not the same thing as 'our rights') are restrictions on the power of our government. Take part of the first amendment -- they cannot restrict our freedom of speech. Now, whether I'm in Pennsylvania or fuckin Japan, *the US government* cannot take any action to restrict my freedom of speech. They also cannot take any action to restrict the freedom of speech of a Japanese citizen sitting in Tokyo -- the Bill of Rights does not say what rights citizens have; it does not say what powers the government has within its borders; it says what the government may NEVER do, to ANY persons. If they meant citizens, they would have fucking said citizens. They use that term elsewhere in the document. And if they meant within US borders, they would have said within US borders. They do not.
The comment was about U.S. citizens who think their constitutional rights DO apply outside the U.S. (they don't)
Please show me where in the US Constitution it restricts the Bill of Rights to within US borders or to applying only to US citizens. Neither of those restrictions are present.
Granted, it doesn't have any legal weight against OTHER governments -- but it doesn't have that even within our borders! It's specifically about what *the US government* may and may not do, and that applies anywhere in the world. Contrary to Bush's and Obama's wishes, the US Constitution still applies in Guantanamo Bay as well as the CIA black sites in Europe and Africa, and anywhere else in or outside of this world. Shit even if we somehow found a path to parallel dimensions, it'd still apply there too.
If it was published in a newspaper, it must be true!
News outlets like to spin things so they can sell subscriptions. Don't believe everything you see in a news article.
Unless you are on death row and are pardoned.
Also, every person ever born was given life by their parents.
While I concede that that would be a rather jackass thing to do, I don't think that's a reason to convict the guy in and of itself.
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As with most of the Bill of Rights, this was something that the British were using against the colonists. Some printer guy got forced to testify against himself IIRC.
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To be frank,I'm more worried about the European Arrest Warrant than UK law. Which I consider far more anti-human.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
the Constitution is a written contract
God damn lawyers and their god damn contracts...
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
To be fair it also has a provision that the police have to provide probable cause for needing the password, so if you're innocent it shouldn't concern you any more than the police turning up with a random search warrant.
A police officer can't just walk up to you in the street and demand your password and send you to jail if you refuse, they still have to build up the same amount of justification they'd need to obtain a search warrant. It doesn't have the same degree of judicial oversight as a search warrant but it does have the backing of the law, such that if any such demand didn't have a sound case behind it it would be quickly killed by the European Court of Human Rights - which is why we should be more concerned the Tories and UKIP want to pull us out of that than we should that laws like this exist as it's a far bigger threat as it puts control of such safeguards in the hands of grossly biased politicians rather than an objective external judiciary meaning they're no longer safeguards.
But fundamentally it's really not too dissimilar to the digital concept of a search warrant, the police still have to provide evidence of a need to search the data, and a strong degree of evidence that you know the password.
Honestly? No I've never forgotten a password when it's in my interest to hide illegal activity, and I've never suddenly remembered it again when it gives me a legal advantage.
The problem is that we don't know what was said, we don't know that he didn't outright admit that he knew it all along, that bit isn't being reported.
At the end of the day the rigorous standard of evidence was met, which means it's not as simplistic as you make out.
See my post here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4675915&cid=45983627
Fundamentally, by itself, it doesn't. But given that the standard of evidence was met it implies there's more to it than him simply forgetting and remembering. At the end of the day our judiciary found his excuse implausible based on the evidence and they have to justify that or face losing on appeal but this guy isn't even bothering to appeal which in itself implies he knows they got him bang to rights.
I'm absolutely for ensuring things like forgetting passwords don't get you sent to jail, but pretending this is the case here is silly. There have been similar RIPA cases that have been dropped precisely because the police couldn't prove their case that the defendant knew the password which shows that the safeguard seems to be working as intended so again in the cases where prosecution has been successful the defendants have thus far always been stupid enough to implicate themselves, or get caught using the password during a period when they deny knowing it.
The problem here is that because it's a law that isn't popular amongst tech circles that we a) have an excessive level of FUD spread about the law and b) that every successful prosecution under it is unfair. The reality is that sometimes, just sometimes, criminals are stupid enough to allow the strict legal standards required for prosecution to be met and if you have a problem with that, you may as well equally claim that all law is unjust and let's have a world of anarchy. I mean, so what if you found a suspect's DNA at a murder scene, recordings of the murder on the suspects computer, eyewitnesses placing him at the scene, and the murder weapon buried in his garden? All of it could just be planted from the DNA to the recordings, to the eyewitnesses, to the murder weapon. So what if the speed camera caught you fair and square? what if the camera was hacked and a photoshopped picture and records injected? Those are the sorts of argument being made, and that's why beyond reasonable doubt exists, because conclusive proof does not exist, we have to go on the overbearing weight of the evidence in every case. Of course it sometimes goes wrong, that's a statistical certainty, but we don't have anything better and this law is no more unjust than any other in this respect and the standard of evidence required.
The reason for that is because we, the tech community, lobbied hard to neuter the fuck out of the law when it was originally being written in the 90s, and we actually won these massive concessions precisely to ensure it does meet the strict legal standards of most pre-existing law. Sure we didn't completely defeat the law, but unless you want to live in a dictatorship where a minority dictate to the majority then compromise is necessary, and we got that massively in our favour in this particular case. We're lucky in this respect that the law was drafted pre-9/11 else we'd likely never have got these concessions. Post 9/11 law on technology and terrorism is a far bigger problem and far worse than this particular clause and so deserves far more attention, hell, even other provisions of RIPA such as those that let any public authority including local councils spy on private individuals were far far worse, but thankfully even that has been neutered now.
Unless they define the terms of the meaning of "person" to exclude certain people.
I well understand that nothing at all can be proven beyond any doubt, and so we must have a standard of reasonable doubt. My only objection is to laws that cannot be proven to a reasonable standard short of a confession. I am also aware that the beyond reasonable doubt standard get cheated too often in court. That is, a conviction doesn't itself prove that the charges were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That other have been found not guilty only proves that there i some level of doubt sufficient to prevent a guilty verdict, not that it i the appropriate level.
Notably, none of your examples would call for proving the defendant's memory or knowledge, even by reasonable inference (which CAN be done in some cases beyond reasonable doubt). In your example, the strongest evidence is the recording of the crime and the murder weapon. The DNA only matters if there's no plausible way the defendant was there prior to the crime. The witness testimony would depend strongly on how they were questioned.
This goes hand in hand with the erosion of the once absolute requirement of intent in a criminal prosecution.
Wow, you're an idiot. Try reading the story. Maybe then you will understand why the post you responded to is in a block quote.
Magna Carta.
Not a minimum speed limit in UK
So it doesn't.
"the Queen would refuse assent so she is sorta the last defence against full out tyranny."
Pretty much this.
NO MATTER what law was passed, if the Queen decided that the law would not apply at all within her soverignty, then it would NOT be a matter of law, but a matter of politics, therefore the public would NOT be under the law until the parliament and the crown sorted it out amongst themselves.
If the public were enough in support of the crown's interference, then the crown's actions are entirely safe. If the public were enough in support of the parliament, then parliament is entirely safe calling for the regent to be disowned.
But in the meantime, the law could not apply since the laws say that the crown gets the last say, the law only says that parliament can remove the crown, not override the edict of the crown (and after removing the crown, asking for the law to be passed again).
That would be ridiculous on several counts. First, I assume you are not saying "my god gave me these so that trumps everyone on Earth" as that would require proof that a god gave them for that argument to hold weight.
The US constitutional rights are a product of US culture. Why should every other country share that same culture?
The Constitution, by its own verbiage, is to be interpreted by the Supreme Court and subject to modification at any time by Congress.
Wow, basic civics fail. Please point to this verbiage in the Constitution for us. Neither of these are stated in the Constitution.
If you don't even know what it says, perhaps you shouldn't be commenting on it. It's not that long... read it.
First off, I said that the Constitution DOES apply to non-U.S. citizens, so, reading comprehension.
Second, you're simply wrong about the literally universal applicability of the Constitution. No one with half a brain would expect that it applies outside of the U.S. and any special extra-territorial locations, such as U.S. military bases outside the U.S.
Your absolutist position is amusing, but not practical, in that only a loon would try to exercise rights under the Constitution in relation to U.S. government action in those locations.
Why did you even post this? It's a waste of time - which is why I won't respond again, because you have seriously lost your shit.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done.
No it doesn't. The 5th amendment says nothing about whether they can arrest you, or how much evidence they need before they arrest you. It merely says something about whether you're allowed to hide the truth of the situation from one investigating party, and then pull it out at the last minute.
Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
Why on earth would that be true? What law would he be held in prison under?
As with most of the Bill of Rights, this was something that the British were using against the colonists. Some printer guy got forced to testify against himself IIRC.
There's a difference between being allowed to not give false testimony against yourself, (or to not be forced to give testimony against yourself at all), and being allowed to deny information to one party, but then use it in court anyway.
Sounds like it would get in the way of consulting with a lawyer first, though. Unless you go everywhere with a lawyer by your side, when you got arrested and "have" to talk to the cop, it would be without the benefit of legal advice initially.
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No, this works fine in the UK –the police interview you, and the first question is "would you like a lawyer present". If you answer yes, the interview pauses until your lawyer is present.
How sporting of them. It rankles me a bit that in every cop show these days, the police are shown to have "lost" if the suspect lawyers up.
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But what the original AC stated is also technically correct:
Syed Hussain had already been jailed for his part in a cell that had discussed an attack on a Territorial Army base in Luton using a bomb attached to a remote control car.
So Syed Hussain was convicted of terrorism as well as being involved in said fraud.
When they came for the terrorists I didn't protest, for I was not a terrorist...
El reg has a great article on what will happen if you have dealing with the police concerning an IT related investigation.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/feature_what_happens_when_you_arrested_by_computer_police/
My advice is read it and try to understand it, before you comment on a country that most US people cannot even find on a map.
Please US do not demonstrate your ignorance and provincial mindset even more then you already have.
Thanks
Beside he had already given them; why would not they have tried all other passwords they had received ?
My first thought. Is it somehow illegal for them to do that?
"To date the only people getting done by it are those admitting they know the password and explicitly refusing to hand it over"
What if I know the password, but I signed a non-disclosure agreement with the company that owns the laptop or flash drive.
I cannot legally give them the password, and I cannot legally refrain from giving them the password.
You are suggesting my only option for just treatment is to commit a crime by lying to the police.
This is one example where you need a security method that allows for plausible deniability. Trucrypt, for example, has an option to create a hidden volume. You can give up the password for the default volume, but no one will be able to tell that there is an inner (hidden volume) which requires another password.
It's an old ASCII thing, actually. ^H (control-H) is a way of specifying 0x08, which is "backspace". Once terminals started getting backspace keys, the actual ^H became largely unused. Pressing control and H is in fact a destructive backspace on the vim instance I just tried.
I'm not sure about the ^W you sometimes see to cancel out words, but that also works in vim. I don't know if it's ASCII or not (my reference says ETB, and I don't know offhand what that is).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In the Minnesota area, a "freeway" is a larger divided road with on and off ramps and no need to stop under normal circumstances. Once there's a traffic signal it ceases to be a freeway.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The US Constitution is, at least theoretically, a list of things US governments, and in particular the Federal government, are allowed to do, along with some specific things they are not allowed to do. If the Feds are not specifically allowed to do something according to the Constitution, they can't do it. The courts have been pretty firm on this principle, although willing to stretch Constitutional provisions past anything I see as reasonable sometimes.
Therefore, where the US Government has authority, that authority derives from the Constitution, and is subject to it. If I were in a place outside the US but subject to US authority, my Constitutional rights still exist. They may be denied me, but government agents do violate the law at times.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
IANAL, but as I understand it the law in the US is not settled. You cannot interfere with a legal search, but I don't think you are required to assist it in any way. Of course, in a physical search the authorities can break anything they need to get what they're looking for, and that doesn't apply to file encryption. There is one case where the password was demanded based on the authorities knowing what was encrypted, but not AFAIK on general suspicion. Don't rely on any of this without talking to, you know, an actual lawyer.
Further, if a file has evidence of illegal activity, actually knowing the password may be incriminating, and you can't be forced to divulge whether or not you know it. If this ever matters, just do what your lawyer tells you to do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Therefore, where the US Government has authority, that authority derives from the Constitution, and is subject to it. If I were in a place outside the US but subject to US authority, my Constitutional rights still exist.
If you re-read my post, you'll realize this was my position. As I said, "No one with half a brain would expect that it applies outside of the U.S. and any special extra-territorial locations, such as U.S. military bases outside the U.S.", but it does apply, as you said, anywhere the U.S. has authority.
It was Urza who claimed a bizarre universal (actually, multiversal) applicability. If you have a beef with anyone, it's him, and not me.
Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
Why on earth would that be true? What law would he be held in prison under?
That's the point! The Fifth Amendment is exactly what prohibits such a law!
But in the hypothetical situation of not having this protection -- I imagine the charges would be something like contempt of court or obstruction of justice or perjury. They say 'we know you did it, admit it!' and you say 'no, I'm innocent' and they say 'we're arresting you for obstruction of justice for not admitting what you did!' -- that is the sort of tyranny the 5th amendment is protecting against.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done.
No it doesn't. The 5th amendment says nothing about whether they can arrest you, or how much evidence they need before they arrest you. It merely says something about whether you're allowed to hide the truth of the situation from one investigating party, and then pull it out at the last minute.
Have you read it? Because the exact phrase is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" -- and I can't see any way that can be interpreted to be about someone changing their story. It says quite plainly that you can't be compelled to testify against yourself. You can't be forced (which would generally be under threat of criminal prosecution) to produce evidence of your own guilt. Because you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. So if you're testifying, you haven't been proven guilty yet, so how can they compel you to give evidence that you committed a crime which you are (presumably) innocent of?
Where in the Constitution does it say that the US government has zero legal constraints on its actions outside of US territories? Because that seems to be your argument. I mean if there's a declaration of war or something, fine, that's all constitutional. But we can't just go abduct someone in the middle of London and deprive them of their rights and say that it's all perfectly legal under US law because we aren't acting within US territory (Sure, we've done that before, but it wasn't constitutional). Of course doing so would probably be illegal under British law, but it's illegal under US law as well.
And to be perfectly clear, let me repeat that I'm *certainly* not saying the Constitution applies to the actions of *other* governments within their territory. They can do what they want. But it constrains any and all actions of the US federal government, regardless of where that action takes place.
Furthermore -- under the Constitution, the federal government's powers are explicitly enumerated, and they do not have the power to do anything that is not enumerated. Therefore, if it doesn't say that they're allowed to violate these rights outside of their territories, then they aren't. It's that simple.
If that were really the case no-one would ever be convicted of this offence. How can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone remembers something?
I can't speak for this specific case (the parent has more information than I do), but in one of the few other cases of this law being used (one that got appealed on the grounds of it breaching the privilege against self-incrimination), I think the prosecution were able to show that the defendant was at his computer, in the process of entering the password when the police turned up to arrest him. That may have been enough to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that he knew the password.
I think that in at least some of the other cases (there aren't many), there have been defendants making it clear that they refused to disclose the password on principle. In others it may be possible to show that the defendant accessed the data (and therefore used the password) shortly before the order for disclosure was issued. Basically it comes down to being able to convince a jury beyond reasonably doubt that the defendant knew the password.
He claims he forgot and then later remembered it.
And it seems the court didn't believe him... which they do. And I imagine they have far more relevant facts than we do.
... It's that simple.
There you go, that's your problem, right there.
"Yinz jeet jet?" or "Go Stillers!" ring a bell? If so, you'd understand it's impossible to know exactly what people around here are yakking about.
There's not enough resources for civilization to rise again. We either expand into space in this century, or the game is up.
Therefore if I threatened to take away something from you and then change my mind I have given it back? No human being has ever given life to another. Parents have been given the awesome responsibility to PASS ON life, but they are not the originators thereof.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
just do what your lawyer tells you to do.
Excellent advice with which I totally agree, even if our legal positions are different. Retain a lawyer, take HIS advice and while you are waiting for him to show up, stay out of the way of a search.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101