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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."
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/
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.
This is in the U.K.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
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!
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.
Forget your CDs, it's your DVD collection you should be worried about. "All I remember is the first part! 09 F9... then the hex code for some shade of red... I swear!" This is why everyone should have that number handy.
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.
That's not the moral of this story. He was given 4 months because he wasted police time - that was because he actually gave them the password in the end.
If he had continued not to give them the password, even if it were actually true that he had forgotten it, they could have imprisoned him for considerably longer, the current maximum is 10 years, which is more than you get for cutting someone's throat with a smashed beerglass in the pub, and considerably more than the slap on the wrist you get for killing an unarmed civilian if you're a police marksman.
This warped and clearly unfair legislation was brought to you courtesy of this total bastard.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.