Man jailed over computer password refusal

BBC ^ | 5 October 2010 | Unknown

[ShadowAce]

[sickoflibs]

Did he say he forgot it?

[Mr. K]

“I forgot it” would have been a better answer

[tubebender]

Your password are belong to us...

[NonValueAdded]

Kate to Luc: “It’s a free country ... isn’t it?”

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The best bet is to nest an encrypted volume within an encrypted volume.

You give them the outer password, and they never know the inner volume exists.

It's called plausible deniability.

[Ancient Drive]

Forgot your Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista/Win7 admin password?

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

with a warrant of course!

[Soothesayer9]

"Officers are still trying to crack the code on the computer to examine its contents.

And they should be able to crack it...in about 100,000 years. Truecrypt is your friend.

[Red_Devil 232]

Ultra High Security Password Generator

[Political Junkie Too]

In the USA, would this be protected by the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination?

-PJ

[ShadowAce]

I would think so.

My other question is "Are the police engaged in anti-DMCA activities?"

[Washi]

And they should be able to crack it...in about 100,000 years.

**** 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 ****

[KoRn]

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.

[dcwusmc]

bump’n’ping

[Still Thinking]

This is England. They don’t got no steeenkin amendments. Or rights.

[WoofDog123]

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.

[Delta 21]

I’ll bet that this is it:

“o08fr~^K89nRX[eK~J9)/dF)Fj.gOo*=Qj%-GKVc)(@BYy_YB7R%C&p:(y*0fRx”

[Myrddin]

If he has child porn on the drive, he is ahead to take the punishment for not turning over the password. If he hands it over, the consequences could be significantly worse.

[Defiant]

This guy was hiding child porn, not the plans to our rebel alliance. Military secrets and intellectual property should be protected as you suggest. Let's hope the scumbags don't get too good at covering their tracks.