From jon@callas.org Fri Jul 6 02:34:20 2018 From: Jon Callas To: cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org Subject: Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2018 02:34:20 +0000 Message-ID: <172289095036.3849117.15176884563918908153.generated@mail.pglaf.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6798137228992404458==" --===============6798137228992404458== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Feb 24, 2012, at 5:43 PM, James A. Donald wrote: > Truecrypt supports an inner and outer encrypted volume, encryption hidden i= nside encryption, the intended usage being that you reveal the outer encrypte= d volume, and refuse to admit the existence of the inner hidden volume. >=20 > To summarize the judgment: Plausibile deniability, or even not very plausi= ble deniability, means you don't have to produce the key for the inner volume= . The government first has to *prove* that the inner volume exists, and cont= ains something hot. Only then can it demand the key for the inner volume. >=20 > Defendant revealed, or forensics discovered, the outer volume, which was co= mpletely empty. (Bad idea - you should have something there for plausible de= niability, such as legal but mildly embarrassing pornography, and a complete = operating system for managing your private business documents, protected by a= password that forensics can crack with a dictionary attack) >=20 > Forensics felt that with FIVE TERABYTES of seemingly empty truecrypt drives= , there had to be an inner volume, but a strong odor of rat is no substitute = for proof. >=20 > (Does there exist FIVE TERABYTES of child pornography in the entire world?) >=20 > Despite forensics suspicions, no one, except the defendant, knows whether t= here is an inner volume or not, and so the Judge invoked the following preced= ent. >=20 > http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf >=20 > That producing the key is protected if "conceding the existence, possession= , and control of the documents tended to incriminate" the defendant. >=20 > The Judge concluded that in order to compel production of the key, the gove= rnment has to first prove that specific identified documents exist, and are i= n the possession and control of the defendant, for example the government wou= ld have to prove that the encrypted inner volume existed, was controlled by t= he defendant, and that he had stored on it a movie called "Lolita does LA", w= hich the police department wanted to watch. There is no such thing as plausible deniability in a legal context. Plausible deniability is a term that comes from conspiracy theorists (and lik= e many things contains a kernel of truth) to describe a political technique w= here everyone knows what happened but the people who did it just assert that = it can't be proven, along with a wink and a nudge. But to get to the specifics here, I've spoken to law enforcement and border c= ontrol people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they kn= ow all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCr= ypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to = getting the second password. They said, "We know about that trick, and we're = not stupid." I asked them about the case where someone has TrueCrypt but doesn't have a hi= dden volume, what would happen to someone doesn't have one? Their response wa= s, "Why would you do a dumb thing like that? The whole point of TrueCrypt is = to have a hidden volume, and I suppose if you don't have one, you'll be sitti= ng in a room by yourself for a long time. We're not *stupid*." Jon _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- --=20 Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE --===============6798137228992404458==--