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Allegation: Philly Cops Leaned Suspect Over Balcony To Obtain Password
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Ars Technica: If you want access to encrypted data on a drug dealer's digital device, you might try to break the crypto—or you might just try to break the man.
According to testimony from a police corruption trial currently roiling the city of Philadelphia, officers from an undercover drug squad took the latter route back in November 2007. After arresting their suspect, Michael Cascioli, in the hallway outside his 18th floor apartment, the officers took Cascioli back inside. Although they lacked a search warrant, the cops searched Cascioli's rooms anyway. According to a federal indictment (PDF), the officers 'repeatedly assaulted and threatened [Cascioli] during the search to obtain information about the location of money, drugs, and drug suppliers.' That included, according to Cascioli, lifting him over the edge of his balcony to try to frighten out of him the password to his Palm Pilot. That sounds like a good time for a duress password.
According to testimony from a police corruption trial currently roiling the city of Philadelphia, officers from an undercover drug squad took the latter route back in November 2007. After arresting their suspect, Michael Cascioli, in the hallway outside his 18th floor apartment, the officers took Cascioli back inside. Although they lacked a search warrant, the cops searched Cascioli's rooms anyway. According to a federal indictment (PDF), the officers 'repeatedly assaulted and threatened [Cascioli] during the search to obtain information about the location of money, drugs, and drug suppliers.' That included, according to Cascioli, lifting him over the edge of his balcony to try to frighten out of him the password to his Palm Pilot. That sounds like a good time for a duress password.
I remember it being done in a few movies — by the good guys — without anybody in the audience cringing. Nor do I remember any calls to boycott a movie over such things.
So, if popular culture approves of and encourages it, can't blame the cops too much for doing it despite it being merely illegal...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Obligatory https://xkcd.com/538/
https://xkcd.com/538/
https://xkcd.com/538/
Bam! My first obligatory post on Slashdot.
Someone has probably posted it while I typed this though...
BlameBillCosby.com
That sounds like a good time for a duress password.
I always took the time to make two containers with one accessed through a duress password. I felt silly for doing it...less so now. It was something I did because I used to travel a lot internationally. That was before Customs started cloning people's device drives.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The idea is that if you beat somebody with a rubber hose, that does not leave any mark.
Also, stop the nonsense about duress-passwords. They do not work. Really not and no, your smart idea for any movie-like device that makes them work is just that: Movie-like but not real. On the other hand, trying to be smart with a duress password procedure can easily get you killed or worse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I didn't know that Palm Pilots still exist.
XKCD did not invent it — the method is known as rubberhose cryptoanalis for ages — unlike wrench, a hose is less likely to leave visible marks.
But beating is for wussies — and drugging is completely gratuitous. The real men of the wonderful entity lovingly referred to as "Russkiy Mir" (Pax Russiana) use the swifter variation known as thermorectal cryptanalysis.
It does not have to involve any beating and requires a $5 soldering iron. I'll leave the details to your imagination...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At least none that can be seen. You cannot demand keys for something you don't know of. If there's a container with a "please enter pass phrase" lock on top of it, it begs for a key.
Unused space on your hard drive that looks like it contains old data from before you last partitioned, though...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
after force feeding him the drugs he was selling.
something about a $5 wrench?
Bangladephia. It's a Third World City with a football team.
I'd cave in after a while.
"The drugs are right there, officer. In the cabinet underneath the video camera streaming this whole scene out to YouTube."
Have gnu, will travel.
I live here, and this is the first time I've heard there's some sort of corruption trial.
Let us know how well that "can't blame me, I saw it in a movie" defense works out for you.
I let him go. - John Matrix
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
You cannot demand keys for something you don't know of.
The cop or the border guard spends his entire working life learning how to read faces, body language, as if his life depended on it, which, of course, it often does.
It is not the machine that betrays you. It's you.
Infiltration worked so well. Cooperation, leniency for working with the gov. Years of free charming, charismatic chatroom leaders and their accomplishments, forums and gov funded onion networks.
Once a person and all their data is lost the only hope is a "security check" word, phrase. Something that can be added or left out that shows duress or coercion.
That was the past.
Now with OS, hardware and telco collaboration expect every consumer device to have a backdoor or trap door as sold.
The backdoor or trap door would have been expected for the security services at a national level.
Now that same level of expert contractor is ready for state, city and local law enforcement use on any device recovered.
The same offer of cooperation, leniency, working with the gov will be made and a 'show' about needing the passwords over hours and much longer.
The device, network is open in seconds and the isolated holding time is been put to use.
The new trend is movement around a city with no access to any lawyer for many hours..
Just before some legal time limit for court documentation a person is released or the lawyer is finally allowed access for the first formal recorded interview.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Was the undercover cop Suge Knight?
I think the more interesting story is undercover drug unit goes and terrorizes numerous drug dealers for illegal profit. But I guess that story is already months old. http://articles.philly.com/201...
More lives have been harmed by drug law enforcement than by drugs themselves. Make it legal to destroy yourself with drugs. That is what liberty means. To be at liberty to make bad choices. Get the state out of the business of saving those who make the choice to destroy themselves with drugs. The role of the state is cleanup. Let the private sector focus on redemption. With the tax money saved, let all those "concerned" liberals, step up their giving to charity.
That's what the douche gets for having a palm pilot in 2007.
Funny, the most interesting part of this story was the mention of his Palm Pilot. /me wonders what model it was.
And to answer your question, yes I still use a Palm Pilot.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
After all there is a war on drugs. The drug dealers won't hesitate a second to get your sons and daughters addicted and then pimp them out at a truck stop. When some cops actually try to combat the problem you criticize them. Fight fire with fire. I wish they had thrown the dealer off the balcony. This is how cops should act. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time Law Enforcement ignores people like this and instead goes after the strung out looser driving away in the busted jalopies. Drug dealers and law enforcement are anal sex buddies working hand in hand to ensure the prisons are full (of drug addicts e.g. your children) and that the drug dealers make tons and tons of profit off the ruins of Americas youth, while the cops get good pensions and salaries ignoring the central problem. The USA needs a good dose of vigilantism and street justice. The legal justice system has been totally corrupted by money and power. (Drug dealers, both the legal and 'illegal' kind)
Duress passwords are fine for stuff that the adversary doesn't know about. If three letter agents bust in on you and they have network logs or other surveillance showing what you've been up to then no, the duress password is not going to get you anywhere.
On the other hand, if you had a laptop with some Tienanmen square videos on it that you wanted to bring to China, I think it's perfectly viable approach to simply load up the dummy container with videos of yourself doing a little soft S&M or something, just in case. Really, I would like to hear your explain why you think showing some slightly annoyed (but not suspicious of anything in particular) Chinese officers videos of tanks rolling around in Tienanmen would be safer and preferable to showing them your wife tying you to a bedpost. I would say that the latter approach is at least worth a shot.
Of course, it's usually better to go the extra mile and use headerless solutions in such a way that it would take someone with a fair bit of expertise to notice even the possibility of encrypted material, with no way to conclusively prove whether it's there or not. I mean, if the phrase "please enter your password" appears at any point, you have already done something extremely stupid and lazy. The criminal or cop who has just busted in and is holding the gun to your head almost certainly does not have the knowledge or tools necessary to realize that the device might not be fully decrypted.
If you're worried about getting "killed or worse" by an adversary who is going to first detain you for days while the device is subject to extensive forensic analysis then you're a terrorist and/or you plan on visiting some rather unpleasant countries and doing some fantastically stupid things.
LAWYER!
Better call Saul!
Go the UK way: you either surrender your passwords, automatic 25 years sentence. You say you forgot them? Too bad, automatic 25 years sentence. You give a password to a bogus volume? As soon as we detect your puny ruse - and we will - you get an automatic 40 years sentence. There, all your stupid tricks are now useless, no amount of technology can save you. The use of encryption by ordinary citizens should automatically be treated as admission of guilt. If you're trying to hide from the State, you're a criminal. End of discussion.
We are seeing the effect of electronics on the exposure of bad cops. It certainly looks like a sizable chunk of our cops belong in prisons. I wonder if society will try to bury the ability to detect bad cops.
I wish Hollywood's influence was limited to the simple-minded "masses." When you get a chance, go ask Justice Scalia about his hero, Jack Bauer.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
should have dropped him
https://xkcd.com/538/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
American Crime. Regular TV. Blows your memes.
... that makes it so hard for them to follow the law?
I am so much more worried about corrupt cops and corrupt politicians than anything some clown in the middle easy could ever do to me.
duress password? lotta effort.
just use truecrypt (7.1a or earlier), and make sure you have a hidden partition and a dummy partition, with just enough files in the dummy partition to look legitimate. bam, problem solved, with a lot less effort/cost
A confession out of a suspect.
I don't really care what the bastard did now. He walks because cops don't get to do this shit.
If we allow this, then they'll beat whoever they want until they admit to whatever crime the cops want to clear off their books.
Ctrl+F "xkcd"
Suspicions confirmed.
xkcd.com/538
may be an "old school" policing tactic, but Palm Pilots are a pretty "old school" device.