[blackhole]

There are worse punishments then death. How many cheesy films do you need to see to get that?

[karajorma]

To be honest I'm going to agree with the judge on this one. The court doesn't have the right to demand a suspects password. They have enough on the guy to convict him without the password. There are very few juries who are going to believe him when he says that he doesn't have child porn on the laptop if he isn't willing to give up the password so I don't see why there is any need to compel him to do so. Simply make the point that there are two witnesses who saw child porn on the laptop and make it his job to prove that wrong.

I think it should be dealt with on a case by case basis to be honest. Whilst the idea of criminals being able to hide things behind passwords is a concern, so is the concept that the court can order people to cough up those passwords at will, either situation sets an uncomfortable precedent.

Not heard of our very own Regulation of investigatory Powers Bill then I take it?

[Flipside]

Not heard of our very own Regulation of investigatory Powers Bill then I take it?

No, to be honest, I haven't, but if it's designed to try and force me to give personal and private information simply because the Government 'wants' it, then I hope they've got a spare cell somewhere, cos they ain't gonna get it

[karajorma]

Basically it says that the police can order you to turn over encryption keys etc and give you two years in jail if you refuse. I have no idea how they managed to get away with passing it to be honest.

[MP-Ryan]

To be honest I'm going to agree with the judge on this one. The court doesn't have the right to demand a suspects password.

If you paid attention to the full situation, you'd know that the Customs officer who initially inspected the computer after the password was entered by the individual found child pornography on it.  That should be more than enough for the legal system to demand the password.  The judge got it wrong, and as I said before, you can bet money that it will be overturned.

People have this idea that their computers are sacred material and that the legal system has no right to examine them.  A computer is identical to a hidden box of files in your house - it's just as subject to reasonable grounds and a search warrant as everything else.  Don't like it?  Don't store illegal materials on your computer, the same way you wouldn't store a pile of child pornography photographs in your file cabinet.  I'm tired of this attitude that computers should be somehow exempt from legal examination just because you have a password or encryption scheme in place.

[karajorma]

Except that if you didn't have the key to said filing cabinet or claimed you didn't then it would be up to the state to break into it.

I never said the state hasn't got the right to look. I said that they haven't got the right to force you to help them look.

[TrashMan]

"I lost the password to my computer that is CRITICAL to my work and employment and that I use every day...and I lost it JUST when you asked me for it." - yup, sounds very convincing.


Bah. If he were smart he would go along and give them the password. It's not like they can't break it, but this way he can be additionaly charged with "abstruction of justice" or something like htat.

[Al Tarket]

besides this whole affair, the probable reason why they are just asking is because one mans word without additional voices saying the same thing and viewing the same stuff is not very convincing.

besides how do we know this guy is telling the truth about what this man has on his machine? for all you know he could be a fia or cia agent that was on a mission to infiltrate an illegal operation and what the man saw where just empty files made up to make a list to make it look convincing because he might of been delivering the laptop to as certain individual key to the illegal operation or taking it back to the lab as proof. and an encrypted drive along with a lie within a lie could mean some serious proof of something and/or very important files to something.

my point is one mans word without further proof to that means little. they don't have anything to really hold him on except one persons word.

[karajorma]

Actually they do have plenty to hold and even convict him on. They don't need the contents of the PC to convict him as his refusal to unencrypt the contents without any details of what he has on there which is so valuable would sink him with most juries anyway.

"I lost the password to my computer that is CRITICAL to my work and employment and that I use every day...and I lost it JUST when you asked me for it." - yup, sounds very convincing.


Bah. If he were smart he would go along and give them the password. It's not like they can't break it, but this way he can be additionaly charged with "abstruction of justice" or something like htat.

It wasn't his Windows login that he was refusing to hand over. His Z: drive was encrypted but when the customs officers attempted to access it they managed to do so without needing a password. That means that the laptop was turned on even before he was stopped. Which gives rise to the possibility that the drive was encrypted or unlocked by a third person and that the defendant doesn't even know the password in the first place.

I doubt that's what happened but it is possible.


Oh and they aren't breaking PGP encryption any time soon. If PGP has been cracked it's a military secret.

[BloodEagle]

For some people around here *cough TrashMan *cough* MP_Ryan *cough*.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

[Al Tarket]

and i can think of many points that makes this fifth amendment invalid to people like cia, fbi, amed forces or police. if some people can get away with it, this will probably be no different in that respect.

[TrashMan]

For some people around here *cough TrashMan *cough* MP_Ryan *cough*.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

You're reading way to much into it.

So you're saying that search warrants are illiegal? That if a guy refuses to let the police into his house for a search and they move him from the door with force, that he was COMPELLED to work against himself?
Hiding physical evidence and forced confessions - two different things.

[Ghostavo]

For some people around here *cough TrashMan *cough* MP_Ryan *cough*.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

You're reading way to much into it.

So you're saying that search warrants are illiegal? That if a guy refuses to let the police into his house for a search and they move him from the door with force, that he was COMPELLED to work against himself?
Hiding physical evidence and forced confessions - two different things.

The police can search his house but can't force him to show them where his kitchen is. You are the one confused.

[BloodEagle]

If the password/encryption key is writtin down on a piece of paper, then they can get a warrant for said paper. If the password/encryption key is in his memory, the only way they could get it is by confession. The Fifth Amendment protects him from being forced to incriminate himself.

[MP-Ryan]

It wasn't his Windows login that he was refusing to hand over. His Z: drive was encrypted but when the customs officers attempted to access it they managed to do so without needing a password. That means that the laptop was turned on even before he was stopped. Which gives rise to the possibility that the drive was encrypted or unlocked by a third person and that the defendant doesn't even know the password in the first place.

No, they needed a password.  He entered it voluntarily at the border.  The PC was then seized and shut down, thus necessitating the password which he had entered for them rather than actually given them.

All this is in the original article.

If the password/encryption key is writtin down on a piece of paper, then they can get a warrant for said paper. If the password/encryption key is in his memory, the only way they could get it is by confession. The Fifth Amendment protects him from being forced to incriminate himself.

Does not apply.  He is not a witness; he is providing a key just like any other which can be compelled from him by the court - where that key comes from is irrelevant.  He is not required to tell them about the files on the computer, but he is required to grant them access to them.  That's where the judge screwed up, and for repetition number three, you can pretty much guarantee this decision will not stand.  I'm sure the prosecutors will appeal it right up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

[chief1983]

What's funny Trashman, is that your views on child porn are merely the result of your own upbringing.  It's very likely that different upbringings will give people very different opinions on the subject.  It's not through some genetic trait that we're supposed to acknowledge 18 as the age of consent and appropriateness.  In fact it's quite the opposite, genetically, most people are going to desire to copulate with anyone capable of reproduction.  Fear of what others might think is very often the main reason a person won't stray too far away from their own age group.  Is there a great deal of different between a 16 year old ending up with a 28 year old, as opposed to a 19 year old with a 45 year old?  Yet one is (in most states) illegal, and the other is not.  However, when people think of child porn, the connotation that is usually associated is a person who is pre-pubescent.  There is not really a logical reason in any society to have a desire for this, and I would probably consider that perverted.  However, perversion isn't illegal.  I agree with nuclear, the creation and distribution is what should be illegal.  I'm tired of illegalizing the ownership of certain things, as a general principle and nothing on the side of ownership of child porn specifically.

On another note, steganography anyone?  Should work fairly well, even at a customs inspection.  But the smartest idea is to simply keep that kind of data off of anything that could be searched, either access it via the net after getting through customs, or put it on a MicroSD card in your phone (honestly, who looks _in_ a phone?).

[Flipside]

If it was a combination to a safe, would a person be entitled to plead the Fifth on that?

[chief1983]

I was actually just thinking that.  If I had some crazy, uncrackable safe, could they charge me with obstruction for refusing to give up the combination?  I'm pretty sure you could plead the fifth there, as the combination would be considered evidence, wouldn't it?  So a password should follow the same line of thought.

[karajorma]

No, they needed a password.  He entered it voluntarily at the border.  The PC was then seized and shut down, thus necessitating the password which he had entered for them rather than actually given them.

All this is in the original article.

Not based on what I'm reading.

A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.

An officer opened the laptop, accessed the files without a password or passphrase, and allegedly discovered "thousands of images of adult pornography and animation depicting adult and child pornography."

It wasn't until December 26 that a Vermont Department of Corrections officer tried to access the laptop--prosecutors obtained a subpoena on December 19--and found that the Z: drive was encrypted with PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. (PGP sells software, including whole disk encryption and drive-specific encryption. It's a little unclear what exactly happened, but one likely scenario is that Boucher configured PGP to forget his passphrase, effectively re-encrypting the Z: drive, after a few hours or days had elapsed.)

Maybe there is another article saying something different but the one quoted definitely does not sound like it's his Windows log on password at all.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Wonder what they would do if the drive was configured to write all 0's if the password failed?