Not surprising. The Supreme Court has trashed every other protection in the Constitution in recent years. This doesn't make the act any more constitutional, but it does make our government less legitimate.
. I do hope this comes to fruition...cool stuff. Who said war wasn't useful?
Take all the money we spend on wars and spend it on R&D. We'll get a lot more cool stuff a lot faster. War is not useful. It's good for absolutely nothing.
Patents are a good mechanism. They have a positive role in a GDP maximizing economy
Unfortunately, GDP considers all expenditures valuable. If people buy more window panes because someone's going around breaking all the windows, that's good for the GDP. As such, the GDP is of very limited use. It's certainly of no use whatsoever when trying to determine whether a behavior is beneficial or not.
That's absurd. The hard drive is physical evidence.
Yes, the hard drive is physical evidence. But you're not looking at the hard drive anymore. You're looking at a transformation of the information on the hard drive based on testimony. That's not physical evidence.
Suppose instead of an encrypted hard drive, we're talking about an old fashioned date book. Defendent has obfuscated the date book by using initials. The court has ordered the defendent to fill in the names behind the initials.
Now the fact is that "JD" refers to "John Doe" isn't incriminating by itself, just like a password. But in combination with the physical evidence, it yields incriminating information, just like a password.
I don't think there's any question that such a court order would be unconstitutional under the 5th amendment. There's no meaningful difference between this and passphrases.
>They could lock her in a private room with the computer and she could enter her password with no one looking, and no one else would ever know what it was, and it would have no bearing on the case whatsoever.
In that case, the entire contents of the hard drive would be testimony.
The data is what is incriminating. That data is evidence
Right, but it's evidence that the prosecutor doesn't have. The court cannot order a defendent to produce the murder weapon.
I have noticed over the years that/. is stereotypically wimpy about basic handyman skills...
The funny part is, in the last Raspberry Pi story about 2/3 of the comments were complaints that you couldn't get the SMD and BGA parts as a kit to hand solder.
1) This thread is about a criminal case not civil.
Civil refers to the type of contempt, not the type of case being tried when the contempt occured. If you fail that badly with 1, I'm not even going to bother addressing the rest.
The civil sanction for contempt (which is typically incarceration in the custody of the sheriff or similar court officer) is limited in its imposition for so long as the disobedience to the court's order continues: once the party complies with the court's order, the sanction is lifted. The imposed party is said to "hold the keys" to his or her own cell, thus conventional due process is not required.
If the incriminating evidence is on the hard drive, go ahead and use it to incriminate her. If you can't do that without data from her brain, then that data is incriminating. You can't constitutionally compel incriminating testimony.
P.S. I'm aware that Google charges 30% on the Android market. That's ridiculous too. But we can't expect Google to leave money on the table if people are willing to pay such rates.
And you've conveniently ignored the fact that Google spends about $500M on each data center.
I haven't ignored the fact, it's irrelevant. Whatever Google invested in their data centers they are able to recoup with a few small text ads at the bottom of their page. Apple should be able to do the same.
So you've never answered my question: How much would it cost you to build a site for 200+ million users to deliver billions of products and handle the payment systems as well as backend management?
I don't know. But I'm willing to bet that Google could do it for a lot less than Apple has.
All the password does is allow easier access to the data which may incriminate her.
What is the difference? Evidence and passwords are both data. Data that may lead to my imprisonment. If yielding my password leads to my imprisonment, then revealing the password is incriminatory.
-A judge cannot simply throw you in jail for as long as he likes because "he doesn't like you" - there has to be proof of contempt first.
Sure he can, he just has to order you to do something you can't(or are constitutionally protected from having to do) first.
-You do have a recourse - contempt findings are appealable.
Criminal contempt, maybe. Not civil, in most places. You do get Habeas Corpus, but that's not an opportunity to plead your innocense. That's merely an opportunity to see if the imprisonment is legal. Since judges have extraordinarily wide discretion in cases of contempt, that's almost always the case.
-You can't be held in contempt for wearing baggy pants - or for encryption. You can be held in contempt for refusing to produce a document that the court is satisfied that you possess and that you have been lawfully ordered to produce - and that is true whether it is encrypted or hidden under your floorboards.
Notice how satisfying the court doesn't involve proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt, or proving anything to a jury of my peers. It's totally up to the discretion of the judge whether he's satisfied or not. And if he doesn't like me, he can become unsatisfied really quickly.
-How does contempt avoid constitutional protections? It operates within the constitution, just like the rest of the state.
The protections in the constitution are for criminal law. They don't apply to civil law. So civil contempt is a much bigger threat to our freedom than criminal contempt.
-If you abolish contempt how are judicial orders enforced? What is to stop someone refusing to obey court orders if the court cannot sanction them for doing so?
Easy. Separate the roles of judge, jury, and executioner for cases of contempt, just like every other crime. Make them prove it beyond reasonable doubt, just like every other crime. We have these protections for a reason, we shouldn't just throw them out the window.
That's like saying if you make a brand new search engine on your computer at home, Google surely can't be spending all that much on their computer farm.
Here's a great comparison. Google can apparently afford to parse my search query, find my query in an enormous database, and return the results to me for what, a fraction of a penny? How much do you think they actually get from that one little pink text ad at the bottom of the page?
Now it's true that an iPad app is going to be larger than a search query. But bandwith is cheap, all sorts of hosting providers do this for free. So the major cost has to be the back end stuff. But Google's database is by far bigger than Apple's database, so I really can't see that that is a major cost either.
The only other cost I can think of is billing. Mastercard and Visa do this for 2% of the sale. How this all adds up to 30% is beyond me.
Being able to record something to watch it later is a big deal, and we've actually taken a step backwards in that respect - less people have DVRs than had VHS recorders
Those without DVRs are still better off than in the VHS days because they can use the internet to catch programs they missed.
You missed the whole point of the article - the US, and the UK, have laws that if they even THINK you really have the key and haven't forgotten it, they'll throw you in a cell until you remember. Be as smart-arse as you like but people have already been convicted and jailed over it because of "reasonable doubt" that they weren't innocent. The law is there, it's written, it's enforceable (whether it's SENSIBLE is another matter and one that takes decades to argue in court) and if they suspect for a moment that you're being a smartarse, they'll use it.
Except, at least in the US, the law violates the 5th amendment, and is therefore not a law at all. What you are describing is mere thuggery.
It's a mistake to describe this situation in legal terms. Dont' expect a legal solution to this problem. It's just thuggery, the strongest wins. That's the world we live in.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is all about how court cases are run.
Except for civil contempt, where it's just "guilty". If you are held in civil contempt, you have no recourse under the law. This is simply barbaric.
Surely every judge is familiar with the concept of checks and balances. They understand why an adversarial process is good for justice. Yet they all accept the power to be judge, jury, and executioner in civil contempt, and don't acknowledge the possibility of abuse of that power. The level of intellectual dishonesty there is abhorrent.
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Not surprising. The Supreme Court has trashed every other protection in the Constitution in recent years. This doesn't make the act any more constitutional, but it does make our government less legitimate.
Good luck with that though, you can't actually hold someone in contempt indefinitely (I think the record is 14 years)
That's a long time to spend in jail for exercising your 5th amendment rights.
. I do hope this comes to fruition...cool stuff. Who said war wasn't useful?
Take all the money we spend on wars and spend it on R&D. We'll get a lot more cool stuff a lot faster. War is not useful. It's good for absolutely nothing.
Patents are a good mechanism. They have a positive role in a GDP maximizing economy
Unfortunately, GDP considers all expenditures valuable. If people buy more window panes because someone's going around breaking all the windows, that's good for the GDP. As such, the GDP is of very limited use. It's certainly of no use whatsoever when trying to determine whether a behavior is beneficial or not.
Why do you need more than 2 wires? One signal, one ground.
That's absurd. The hard drive is physical evidence.
Yes, the hard drive is physical evidence. But you're not looking at the hard drive anymore. You're looking at a transformation of the information on the hard drive based on testimony. That's not physical evidence.
Suppose instead of an encrypted hard drive, we're talking about an old fashioned date book. Defendent has obfuscated the date book by using initials. The court has ordered the defendent to fill in the names behind the initials.
Now the fact is that "JD" refers to "John Doe" isn't incriminating by itself, just like a password. But in combination with the physical evidence, it yields incriminating information, just like a password.
I don't think there's any question that such a court order would be unconstitutional under the 5th amendment. There's no meaningful difference between this and passphrases.
>They could lock her in a private room with the computer and she could enter her password with no one looking, and no one else would ever know what it was, and it would have no bearing on the case whatsoever.
In that case, the entire contents of the hard drive would be testimony.
The data is what is incriminating. That data is evidence
Right, but it's evidence that the prosecutor doesn't have. The court cannot order a defendent to produce the murder weapon.
There is no term "civil contempt" in US law. It exists in English law.
Then why do states such as New Hampshire and Texas recognize civil contempt?
The term in context "The protections in the constitution are for criminal law. They don't apply to civil law" was clearly about a civil trial.
Yes, the civil trial for civil contempt, that may have happened during a criminal contempt trial. It's not that hard to understand.
Or you don't know what you talking about at all.
I'd say perhaps you should do a better job pretending.
That's rich.
I have noticed over the years that /. is stereotypically wimpy about basic handyman skills...
The funny part is, in the last Raspberry Pi story about 2/3 of the comments were complaints that you couldn't get the SMD and BGA parts as a kit to hand solder.
Hear, hear! I can only hope that it happens in my lifetime.
1) This thread is about a criminal case not civil.
Civil refers to the type of contempt, not the type of case being tried when the contempt occured. If you fail that badly with 1, I'm not even going to bother addressing the rest.
Here's what Wikipedia says:
If the incriminating evidence is on the hard drive, go ahead and use it to incriminate her. If you can't do that without data from her brain, then that data is incriminating. You can't constitutionally compel incriminating testimony.
When did I say Apple was evil?
P.S. I'm aware that Google charges 30% on the Android market. That's ridiculous too. But we can't expect Google to leave money on the table if people are willing to pay such rates.
And you've conveniently ignored the fact that Google spends about $500M on each data center.
I haven't ignored the fact, it's irrelevant. Whatever Google invested in their data centers they are able to recoup with a few small text ads at the bottom of their page. Apple should be able to do the same.
So you've never answered my question: How much would it cost you to build a site for 200+ million users to deliver billions of products and handle the payment systems as well as backend management?
I don't know. But I'm willing to bet that Google could do it for a lot less than Apple has.
The password is not evidence of a crime.
All the password does is allow easier access to the data which may incriminate her.
What is the difference? Evidence and passwords are both data. Data that may lead to my imprisonment. If yielding my password leads to my imprisonment, then revealing the password is incriminatory.
-A judge cannot simply throw you in jail for as long as he likes because "he doesn't like you" - there has to be proof of contempt first.
Sure he can, he just has to order you to do something you can't(or are constitutionally protected from having to do) first.
-You do have a recourse - contempt findings are appealable.
Criminal contempt, maybe. Not civil, in most places. You do get Habeas Corpus, but that's not an opportunity to plead your innocense. That's merely an opportunity to see if the imprisonment is legal. Since judges have extraordinarily wide discretion in cases of contempt, that's almost always the case.
-You can't be held in contempt for wearing baggy pants - or for encryption. You can be held in contempt for refusing to produce a document that the court is satisfied that you possess and that you have been lawfully ordered to produce - and that is true whether it is encrypted or hidden under your floorboards.
Notice how satisfying the court doesn't involve proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt, or proving anything to a jury of my peers. It's totally up to the discretion of the judge whether he's satisfied or not. And if he doesn't like me, he can become unsatisfied really quickly.
-How does contempt avoid constitutional protections? It operates within the constitution, just like the rest of the state.
The protections in the constitution are for criminal law. They don't apply to civil law. So civil contempt is a much bigger threat to our freedom than criminal contempt.
-If you abolish contempt how are judicial orders enforced? What is to stop someone refusing to obey court orders if the court cannot sanction them for doing so?
Easy. Separate the roles of judge, jury, and executioner for cases of contempt, just like every other crime. Make them prove it beyond reasonable doubt, just like every other crime. We have these protections for a reason, we shouldn't just throw them out the window.
That's like saying if you make a brand new search engine on your computer at home, Google surely can't be spending all that much on their computer farm.
Here's a great comparison. Google can apparently afford to parse my search query, find my query in an enormous database, and return the results to me for what, a fraction of a penny? How much do you think they actually get from that one little pink text ad at the bottom of the page?
Now it's true that an iPad app is going to be larger than a search query. But bandwith is cheap, all sorts of hosting providers do this for free. So the major cost has to be the back end stuff. But Google's database is by far bigger than Apple's database, so I really can't see that that is a major cost either.
The only other cost I can think of is billing. Mastercard and Visa do this for 2% of the sale. How this all adds up to 30% is beyond me.
Anonymous is us. Business and politics is the evil reflection.
Being able to record something to watch it later is a big deal, and we've actually taken a step backwards in that respect - less people have DVRs than had VHS recorders
Those without DVRs are still better off than in the VHS days because they can use the internet to catch programs they missed.
In a moral sense, yes. The 5th amendment makes any such law null and void.
However in a practical sense, we no longer abide by the constitution. They will fuck you over. Hard.
You missed the whole point of the article - the US, and the UK, have laws that if they even THINK you really have the key and haven't forgotten it, they'll throw you in a cell until you remember. Be as smart-arse as you like but people have already been convicted and jailed over it because of "reasonable doubt" that they weren't innocent. The law is there, it's written, it's enforceable (whether it's SENSIBLE is another matter and one that takes decades to argue in court) and if they suspect for a moment that you're being a smartarse, they'll use it.
Except, at least in the US, the law violates the 5th amendment, and is therefore not a law at all. What you are describing is mere thuggery.
It's a mistake to describe this situation in legal terms. Dont' expect a legal solution to this problem. It's just thuggery, the strongest wins. That's the world we live in.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is all about how court cases are run.
Except for civil contempt, where it's just "guilty". If you are held in civil contempt, you have no recourse under the law. This is simply barbaric.
Surely every judge is familiar with the concept of checks and balances. They understand why an adversarial process is good for justice. Yet they all accept the power to be judge, jury, and executioner in civil contempt, and don't acknowledge the possibility of abuse of that power. The level of intellectual dishonesty there is abhorrent.
When you are in court, you are required to present requested evidence.
Data from my brain is not evidence, it is testimony. Self-incriminating testimony is protected by the 5th amendment.