Hacker News Reader

Comment by djackson | Hacker News Reader

Yeah... no.

There's a line, and past that line, law enforcement has no power to enforce laws at all. Removing the DOJ's ability to collect evidence is, in some cases, the equivalent to denying a detective access to a crime scene. If all productions of electronic evidence can be encrypted, and the defense is not forced to decrypt those files, then dirty corporations only need to encrypt everything to defend themselves in court.

Defense: "We produced everything you asked for."

Prosecution: "We can't even verify that statement. Decrypt it"

Defense: "We don't have to."

Case closed.

View on HN

rights are rights because they allow you to do what would otherwise be illegal.

for example, there's no need for a right to free speech if you're only going to say things that everyone thinks should be said.

rights exist because some things are so important they are worth the cost of abuse.

At first blush it may be thought surprising that one should have a right to do that which one ought not. Is it not better to confine rights to that which it is right or at least permissible to do? But to say this is to misunderstand the nature of rights. One needs no right to be entitled to do the right thing. That it is right gives one all the title one needs. But one needs a right to be entitled to do that which one should not. It is an essential element of rights to action that they entitle one to do that which one should not. To say this is not, of course, to say that the purpose or justification of rights of action is to increase wrongdoing. Their purpose is to develop and protoect the autonomy of the agent. They entitle him to choose for himself rightly or wrongly. But they cannot do that unless they entitle him to choose wrongly. - Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law (p 266)

the final sentence of the quote above is hugely important.

Nobody has the right to avoid a reasonable search in the United States. You are protected by the fourth amendment from unreasonable searches, but you aren't going to convince me that a detective has no right, with a warrant in hand, to search a suspect's home for a murder weapon.

Similarly, you aren't going to convince me that a prosecutor, warrant in hand, has no right to search a computer for evidence of credit card fraud.

You still make the assumption that the prosecuted knows the password and is implicitly guilty.

Imagine for a second that I was less technically minded and didn't use encryption and I purchased a used laptop from someone who did, I then get caught up in the legal system (guilty or innocent for the charged crime, it doesn't matter, but I did not use encryption) and some prosecutor has a warrant to compel me to unlock that encrypted volume, else I be held in contempt. What now?

But, in the hypothetical counter example where the prosecution had evidence of you using the encrypted volume (let's say, a convincing photograph or video), would you then grant the prosecution the right to compel the decrypted information?

That actually was answered by a court quite recently, and is mentioned in the OP.

A guy going through border guards control somehow let them see he had illegal images on his laptop. The court concluded he is no longer protected by Fifth Amendment because of that, and ordered him to EITHER reveal the password OR give access to the (encrypted) content in question in some other way.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10172866-38.html?tag=mncol...

You would have explained the origin of the encrypted data on the laptop, and they would either drag the person who was the origin into the case as a defendant or have him testify. It's really quite simple; they're not just asking "what is the password?" and ignoring any answer that isn't the password, as you seem to think.

If you were to refuse to give the password under the grounds that someone you refuse to identify sold you the computer with the encrypted data already on it, then you would rightly be considered to be lying because that's the most plausible case for that behavior.

Assuming the original owner can be identified (I've bought a laptop off of craigslist with no way to find the previous owner even a day later), found (contact data is still valid, person is willing to cooperate with the investigation), is willing to corroborate your story (what if the laptop was, unbeknownst to the buyer, stolen property or the seller pleads the 5th and/or lies about the encrypted files), and that the prosecution is willing to believe the both of you.

It is simple, but relies on a WHOLE lot of faith in the system.

you would rightly be considered to be lying because that's the most plausible case for that behavior.

If you're going to be held in contempt (as the GP seems to be discussing) just for something that is the most plausible of options kind of destroys the judiciary's position of dealing with the complex unforeseen circumstances that arise in law. The most plausible situation is that OJ killed his wife, but we don't carry out justice with such imprecision.

>they're not just asking "what is the password?" and ignoring any answer that isn't the password, as you seem to think.

>If you were to refuse to give the password [...], then you would rightly be considered to be lying...

exactly. This is why you have the right to remain silent. You're not "refusing to give the password under the grounds", you're not giving "answers that isn't the password". You're just silent. A vegetable. Otherwise any answer, like you explained it yourself, can be used against you.

all i'm saying is that you can't say a right cannot exist because it lets bad things happen.

in this case, there may be a right to silence. i don't know (i am not american) if that "really is" a right. but if it is a right then it exists even if it allows, say, a paedophile to escape justice (through remaining silent). it's not nice, but it's the price you pay to help guarantee freedom.

[edit: it's perhaps worth adding that you could make rights more complicated. you could say that there is (or should be) a "right to silence except when it's a password", for example. there's no prima facie reason why rights should be simple. but there is a strong practical reason why rights should be simple: they need to be simple so that they are easy to understand, easy to defend, and easy to use. again, this is because rights - real rights - are critical, might-be-needed-to-save-the-world things. and that is also why there should only be a few of them.]

This case is not about rights, it's about a specific entity, the Department of Justice of the United States of America, having a specific investigative power, namely, that they don't have to keep a horde of expensive consultants on retainer to decrypt people's boring, completely legally irrelevant documents. On the off-chance that they lose that power, they'll still get whatever it is they want from your laptop, it'll just take longer and cost more.

Nobody is revising the Bill of Rights, the Fourth or Fifth Amendments.

I think you're missing the conflict between allowing reasonable search and the right against self-incrimination when the thing being searched is an encrypted laptop.

At least agree that there is a conflict here; otherwise you're just being dense.

AFAIK the govt. cannot compel (legally) anybody to reveal the combination to a ticking time-bomb; or the location of a murder weapon etc. How the hell is asking for a passphrase any different? Do you really not understand the nuance here?

The other point is that AFAIK the govt. has never asserted the right to compel a handwritten note to be deciphered. The govt. doesn't assert the right to systematically read people's mail (even postcards); but they do so wrt electronic comms. I think we can safely state that almost all comm. is going to be electronic in the future. That's why this is important. This is yet another example of the govt. trying to trim back rights that the hoi polloi have enjoyed for a couple of centuries.

As to why this is important: you might have read the quote that six lines by any man's hand are enough to hang him.

Sorry, I meandered a little there.

I don't think that in the case that someone has your laptop in hand you can still plead the fifth. If there is evidence pertinent to the case on the physical drive obtained by the government, then they already are in possession of the container holding that evidence. Beyond that, it's a matter of litigation expense to crack it. It's up to you, at that point - unlock the laptop and allow a search or force them to hire a consultant (lawyers and cops are shitty hackers) to dig into it for them.

The hand-written note argument doesn't hold water, in my eyes, because it is the encryption of all of the evidence, not any one document, that is at issue. As was mentioned, the government has compelled people to open safes.

See, here's the issue. The burden of proof, in our court system, lies with the prosecutor. If I could just say "I know you killed that person, so bring me to the murder weapon and body", and charge the accused with contempt of court if they said "no", then there's a massive potential for abuse. For example, if the accused didn't actually do it, then they would get charged with contempt (or obstruction, or whatever), because they have nothing to show.

Passwords to encrypted containers are slightly different - they're not as simple as a key to a safe, and not as obviously protected as my above (contrived) example. However, the same problem exists. If I compel you to decrypt an encrypted volume, and you don't actually have the password (i.e. it's a friends', or whatever), then it's similar enough to the example above.

I'm not a lawyer, nor am I well-versed in law. But I know enough to say that it's not nearly as cut-and-dried as some people think.

At present, all you have to do is bury it in the woods.

Sorry your honor there were no incriminating papers found.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com