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5th Amendment rights and encryption.

H

Herr Heckler Koch

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Yes.

Read Electronic Frontiers Foundation EFF.org Read Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC.org
 
P

PistolPackingMomma

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A judge on Monday ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop computer so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case.

The defendant, accused of bank fraud, had unsuccessfully argued that being forced to do so violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against compelled self-incrimination.
Click to expand...

Here's my opinion...

:cuss::cuss::cuss:
 
Fallschirjmäger

Fallschirjmäger

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Before I would venture an opinion, I'd want to know what the courts have decided in matters involving locked automobiles, locked houses and businesses, locked boxes and locked safes.
I don't see a material difference between something being encrypted (software locked) file and something being physically secured (hardware locked).
 
VW_Factor

VW_Factor

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Fallschirmjäger said:
Before I would venture an opinion, I'd want to know what the courts have decided in matters involving locked automobiles, locked houses and businesses, locked boxes and locked safes.
I don't see a material difference between something being encrypted (software locked) file and something being physically secured (hardware locked).
Click to expand...

This was sort of my thought about it. Can "the State" force someone to unlock things in order to find evidence, physically or otherwise. I would venture to say no, they cannot.

Who in their right mind would just hand over a key or whatever have you in order to hand evidence to the very people who are attempting to hang you.
 
marshaul

marshaul

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Fallschirmjäger said:
Before I would venture an opinion, I'd want to know what the courts have decided in matters involving locked automobiles, locked houses and businesses, locked boxes and locked safes.
I don't see a material difference between something being encrypted (software locked) file and something being physically secured (hardware locked).
Click to expand...

The difference is in being forced to act against your own interests.

A lock can be picked. A door can be kicked.
 
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slapmonkay

slapmonkay

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marshaul said:
The difference is in being forced to act against your own interests.

A lock can be picked. A door can be kicked.
Click to expand...

And encryption can be broken. People decrypt sensitive information all the time. If the state wants the data they should take the time to decrypt it themselves. If it were me in the case, I would not do it even under court order. No Way No How.
 
VW_Factor

VW_Factor

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slapmonkay said:
And encryption can be broken. People decrypt sensitive information all the time. If the state wants the data they should take the time to decrypt it themselves. If it were me in the case, I would not do it even under court order. No Way No How.
Click to expand...

n June 2003, the U.S. Government announced that AES may be used to protect classified information:
Click to expand...

Win 7 Bitlocker (AES 128 or 256bit in this case) encryption is pretty beefy. It would take enormous amounts of computing power an untold amount of time to even think about cracking 256bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard

Good luck with that.
 
H

Herr Heckler Koch

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marshaul said:
The difference is in being forced to act against your own interests.

A lock can be picked. A door can be kicked.
Click to expand...
... and a super-computer is capable of its own brand of brute force and of monstrous cost. Unintended constitutional consequences may be part of the monstrous cost.

Good people ought to be armed as they will, with wits and Guns and the Truth.
 
VW_Factor

VW_Factor

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Herr Heckler Koch said:
... and a super-computer is capable of its own brand of brute force and of monstrous cost. Unintended constitutional consequences may be part of the monstrous cost.

Good people ought to be armed as they will, with wits and Guns and the Truth.
Click to expand...

Even kei the current most powerful supercomputer in the world

In June when it hit 1 quadrillion calculations per second, or one petaflop, it consumed 9.89 megawatts of power
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/14cSy)
Click to expand...

It would still take an enormous amount of time.

AFAIK its all theory math, but.. (from wiki) AES permits the use of 256-bit keys. Breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires (2 to the 128th) power times more computational power than a 128-bit key. A device that could check a billion billion (10to the 18th power) AES keys per second (if such a device could ever be made) would in theory require about (3×10 to the 51st power) years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.

Which is like what.. 50,955,671,114,250,072,156,962,268,275,658,377,807,020,642,877,435,085 years?

This is all brute force method, unless someone has the key, its going to take whoever a very long time to crack the encryption.
 
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slapmonkay

slapmonkay

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VW_Factor said:
Win 7 Bitlocker (AES 128 or 256bit in this case) encryption is pretty beefy. It would take enormous amounts of computing power an untold amount of time to even think about cracking 256bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard

Good luck with that.
Click to expand...

I am not saying it will be easy. I am saying it can be done. I am a programmer so I am well aware of encryption.

I further read the judges orders:
1) The court is asking that she decrypt her hard drive on her laptop for a case against her husband
2) The court has given HER full immunity from anything they find on the laptop
3) A separate search warrant was requested and granted specific to the laptop due to a phone conversation make between the defendant and the wife
4) The prosecution has already tried to decrypt said hard drive and failed

The judge seems to be stretching some circumstances in existing cases to make this sound more constitutional however even after reading it, I don't see how he could side with prosecution and I personally would still not provide unencrypted hard drive if anything on there could implicate my significant other.

Ruling: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/decrypt.pdf
 
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H

Herr Heckler Koch

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Don't compare general purpose supercomputer Apples to special purpose supercomputer oranges, like Deep Crack that was built twenty years ago to break the DES - by EFF.org (cited above). 56 hours for a 56 bit key after searching a quarter of the parameter space.

https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Crypto_misc/DESCracker/HTML/19980716_eff_des_faq.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard#Security

Be careful of basing unique events on frequentist statistics, for which Bayesian methods are more effective. Be careful of the Ludic fallacy.
 
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VW_Factor

VW_Factor

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Simply talking calculations per second (regardless of what the computer cluster is meant for).

Its really the only way to put such things into terms that are easier to understand.
 
H

Herr Heckler Koch

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Putting something in terms easier to understand is, if I may conflate Taleb's later writings into his Ludic fallacy, the 'Procrustean fallacy.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb#Philosophical_theories
Taleb said:
His book The Bed of Procrustes summarizes the central problem: "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas". Taleb disagrees with Platonic (i.e., theoretical) approaches to reality to the extent that they lead people to have the wrong map of reality rather than no map at all. He opposes most economic and grand social science theorizing, which in his view suffer acutely from the problem of overuse of Plato's Theory of Forms.

Relatedly, he also believes that universities are better at public relations and claiming credit than generating knowledge. He argues that knowledge and technology are usually generated by what he calls "stochastic tinkering" rather than by top-down directed research.
Click to expand...
"Stochastic tinkering" is trimming the problem to fit the frequentists' statistical framework fallaciously.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/Princeton-phil.WMA
 
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marshaul

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slapmonkay said:
And encryption can be broken. People decrypt sensitive information all the time. If the state wants the data they should take the time to decrypt it themselves. If it were me in the case, I would not do it even under court order. No Way No How.
Click to expand...

Yup.

And if my encryption is too good.... Tough.
 
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Polynikes

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Been discussing this on another forum. I have no problem with the prosecution seizing the computer and attempting to retrieve any information from it that they are able, in order to further their case. However, the defendant should under no circumstances essentially have to provide all the information for them.
 
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sharkey

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slapmonkay said:
I am not saying it will be easy. I am saying it can be done. I am a programmer so I am well aware of encryption.

I further read the judges orders:
1) The court is asking that she decrypt her hard drive on her laptop for a case against her husband
2) The court has given HER full immunity from anything they find on the laptop
3) A separate search warrant was requested and granted specific to the laptop due to a phone conversation make between the defendant and the wife
4) The prosecution has already tried to decrypt said hard drive and failed

The judge seems to be stretching some circumstances in existing cases to make this sound more constitutional however even after reading it, I don't see how he could side with prosecution and I personally would still not provide unencrypted hard drive if anything on there could implicate my significant other.

Ruling: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/decrypt.pdf
Click to expand...

His lawyer should seek an injunction against her testimony under the spousal testimonial privilege.

http://www.invispress.com/law/evidence/trammel.html
 
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