(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys, resulting in landmark convictions that may have carried jail sentences of up to five years.

Comments

[tyoko.livejournal.com]

Not really a landmark, people were just charged with contempt of court before. If the prosecution can prove that you were in possession of a physical key, safe combination or other token needed to carry out a judicially authorised search and you fail to produce it or destroy it, you could be locked up.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Do you know how that would work in the US with the fifth amendment?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

It's a complicated issue. There's a case right now about a man named Sebastian Boucher--he's refusing to give the password as it's revealing that he knows the contents (which the authorities already know is child porn, long story). The authorities have offered to not use the fact that he knew the key against him, which they're arguing will abrogate the Fifth Amendment concerns. (The Fifth Amendment says "no testifying," so if knowing the key is waived as testimonial, and the government just uses the contents of the computer that is Boucher's to convict him, they say that there is no Fifth Amendment right not to type in the key.)

The government will probably win, is the feeling I'm getting.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Sebastien Boucher.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, his case was the one I was thinking of. The way I understood it, they already had enough to bust him on a good chunk of each charge brought against him (even the child porn stuff), they were just looking to get eighteen life sentences instead of thirteen, or whatever.

And I'm no legal scholar, but a virtual password still seems inherently different from a physical key. If it were a code word you told to the bouncer to get into some underground lair, is that "key which is evidence" or "testifiable knowledge"?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

a virtual password still seems inherently different from a physical key.

Under the law, it might not be.

If it were a code word you told to the bouncer to get into some underground lair, is that "key which is evidence" or "testifiable knowledge"?

More complex. The cops can get in via other ways.

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Yeah, from reading this and the story in other places it looks like a fairly standard 'failure to comply with a warrant' hit. Like locking your file cabinet or refusing to hand over your Windows password, if a warrant has been issued access to that information, then you're breaking the law by not complying.

The difference is that the police can crowbar open your file cabinet or pop your HD into a different machine if they want access to the files, whereas they can't break your encryption.