Posted on 10/06/2010 12:18:34 PM PDT by ShadowAce
A teenager has been jailed for 16 weeks after he refused to give police the password to his computer.
Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool, was arrested in May 2009 by police tackling child sexual exploitation.
Police seized his computer but could not access material on it as it had a 50-character encryption password.
Drage was convicted of failing to disclose an encryption key in September. He was sentenced at Preston Crown Court on Monday.
Drage, was arrested when he was living in Freckleton, Lancashire, but later moved to Liverpool.
He was formally asked to disclose his password but failed to do so, which is an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, police said.
'Robust message'
Officers are still trying to crack the code on the computer to examine its contents.
Det Sgt Neil Fowler, of Lancashire police, said: "Drage was previously of good character so the immediate custodial sentence handed down by the judge in this case shows just how seriously the courts take this kind of offence.
"Computer systems are constantly advancing and the legislation used here was specifically brought in to deal with those who are using the internet to commit crime.
"It sends a robust message out to those intent on trying to mask their online criminal activities that they will be taken before the courts with the ultimate sanction, as in this case, being a custodial sentence."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Did he say he forgot it?
“I forgot it” would have been a better answer
Your password are belong to us...
Kate to Luc: “It’s a free country ... isn’t it?”
You give them the outer password, and they never know the inner volume exists.
It's called plausible deniability.
Forgot your Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista/Win7 admin password?
http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
with a warrant of course!
And they should be able to crack it...in about 100,000 years. Truecrypt is your friend.
-PJ
My other question is "Are the police engaged in anti-DMCA activities?"
**** Warning: Extreme Nerd Content Follows ****
The story says that his password is 50 characters long. Even if the only characters used were alphabetical, and case wasn't taken into account, that would be 26 available characters. The possible combinations for his password would be 26^50 (twenty six to the fiftieth power).
That 5.6ee70 possible combinations.
If the police were to launch a brute-force attack (try all possible combinations of characters) on this password, and they could try 1,000,000 different combinations every second...
Number of Combinations / (1,000,000 tries per second) * (60 seconds per minute) * (60 minutes per hour) * (24 hours per day) * (365 days per year) =
1.7ee57 (that's 17 with 56 zeros) years to crack the password.
Someone correct my math if I'm wrong.
**** Nerd Mode Off ****
There might be a 5th amendment question here. Providing a password could be self incriminating. If they have seized his gear, it should be law enforcement’s responsibility(or problem in this case) to access it. Not the defendant’s.
bump’n’ping
This is England. They don’t got no steeenkin amendments. Or rights.
no 5th in the UK. I remember when this compulsory password-divulging was being discussed around 2003. Quite Orwellian, but then again, that is the modern UK.
I’ll bet that this is it:
“o08fr~^K89nRX[eK~J9)/dF)Fj.gOo*=Qj%-GKVc)(@BYy_YB7R%C&p:(y*0fRx”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.