Posted on 08/11/2009 10:23:28 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Well, since they want the entire volume decrypted, they will still have access to all of his other private data. The drive is in the possession of the prosecutor, and he would have to decrupt the volume under supervision. Since he encrypted a container, he can't decrypt specific files only (and they want to search the other files for additional illegal material).
At any rate; if put in that position by the authorities I guess you would have to weigh the penalties of refusing to decrypt vs. the potential penalties or other consequences of giving them what they want. Prison gives you three hots, a cot, full coverage health care, dental, cable TV, library, workout equipment ... ie. it's outfitted a lot better than my place. ;^)
I assume you mean can't hack.
The fact that they couldn't crack the crypto seems more significant to me than the rest of the story.
These people need a 5th ammendment badly!
Chilling!
It doesn't take a particularly big key to be secure if it is sufficiently random, or not created by a known randomizer. If they have a good idea of what was used to create the key, they have a better chance of cracking it.
I assume they confiscated his computer, wouldn't they know what randomizer/algorithm he used? Surely he had a way to quickly decrypt the data.
Oh, come on, like the Constitution is anything more than a hindrance to get around to these people.
Pretty much the rest of that amendment has already been trashed: drug war seizures depriving people of property without due process (”it’s the money that’s being arrested”) and that wonderful Kelo decision that destroyed “public use.”
They’ll say it’s the equivalent of not letting the police into your house for a search. They have a warrant for the information so you must supply it as long as the information itself isn’t locked in your head.
Seagate has a USB disk that they guarantee to be uncrackable. It uses a simple short password that the user picks. It scatters the data across the disk, and it can only be retrieved by a small program on the disk that destroys its own allocation table if a wrong password is used too many times.
While TrueCrypt is good, its purpose is preventing them from getting your data. But this situation needs something more: an alibi.
There is a likelihood that the court has some knowledge of what your data might be. And they intend to keep you as long as they think you are able to recover it. But if a system exists that is very clear that it, not you, controls your data, and will not let *anyone* have it, because the ability to access it is expired, the focus is off of you.
That is, TrueCrypt protects your data. This system would protect *you* from being held indefinitely. Now, you *might* be able to fool them with a fake password, and you might not.
The decryption organization might even have an open website, with your login and password in it. You can take the court there, and login with password to see your free account. And that free account will show various “jobs”, and whether or not the website *can* provide a decryption key, or if that job has expired, and they can no longer provide a key that works for it.
If the entire volume was encrypted as a unit, yeah, that's a problem...
There's a product out now (I forget the name) which encrypts the contents of a disk with two different passwords. Decrypt using password-1 and you get one result (one set of files), but decrypt with password-2 and you get a different result -- a different set of files.
So you set password-1 to be the one that decrypts the kiddie porn, and password-2 decrypts the pictures of the family trip to Disneyland. Or something only slightly incriminating, like nudie pics but not kiddie porn.
Naturally, you don't tell the cops that there are two passwords. You fight for a while, and then give up, saying you'll decrypt and give them the files. Using password-2 of course. They get the non-porn pics.
Amendment IIA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
That is truecrypt.
The unfortunate title gives a misleading impression of the role, which is not what you might think. The surveillance commissioners are a panel of senior judges to whom the security services and police are required to apply for a licence every time they want to use covert surveillance (eg phone-tapping). Their function is thus to regulate and monitor, rather than to promote, such surveillance in the very limited circumstances in which it is legal. Set up under the 19997 Police Act.
I did not realize that. Thanks for the information!
“They never said anything about bullets or the means to make them.”
“They never said anything about bullets or the means to make them.”
Have you used this? I’ve been thinking of using it on my flash drive. The drive came with a program but it is Chinese in origin and I am a bit paranoid.
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