all my respondents seem to be missing some basic points I have been trying to make about law enforcement in the US.
the law runs on proof, and evidence. a file with the name "diary.pgp" is not incriminating. it is not evidence. no one could be prosecuted as a criminal for having a diary. there is the presumption of innocence unless there is evidence and proof to the contrary.
A diary isn't illegal... but if you are suspected or even convicted of a crime, and there's reason to believe that a book or computer file is a diary and that you wrote about more crimes in the diary, then it's worth investigating. Just as if one is suspected of money laundering and it is known that that person has Swiss or Cayman Island bank accounts... having them doesn't mean one is guilty, but if there is other evidence that the crime took place then they are well within the realm of investigating.
furthermore, suppose the "pedophile" is actually prosecuted successfully. does that mean the diary was incriminating? no, it does not. in the CA case it happened [..]
No. It's just another area of potential evidence.
that the pedophile was prosecuted without decrypting the diary. which in fact argues in favor of the side that says, "cryptography is not the end of law enforcement, and this case proves it."
One can argue that, yes. In fact I remember some LE type who was pro-crypto who insisted the DT Bill was for lazy cops who didn't want to do the footwork necessary for an investigation. Another is when they cited the World Trade Ctr bombing... seems they already had a handle that it was in the works and did nothing anyway. DT or a crypto-ban or GAK would not have prevented that. [..]
now, a person might be successfully prosecuted for obstruction of justice, or contempt of court, in refusing to hand over the decrypted diary (but the other post I made about giving the federal agents a key that decrypts the file to a cookie recipe handles this quite nicely).
And in some ways one has less rights when in contempt of court then when convicted of a felony.... [..]
please, will people stop sending me responses like the above? do you understand how the American legal system works? a person cannot be prosecuted without evidence. evidence cannot be illegally obtained. [..]
Ideally, that is how the system works. But if they have a good reason to suspect something is evidence (and in the above pedaphile ase a file named "diary.pgp" would probably qualify) a warrant can be obtained. Note that just having PGP-encrypted files would not necessarily be evidence either. They pointed out a specific file with specific reasons why it should be examined.
a person is not required to testify against oneself. these are all basic long-established cornerstones of our legal system.
It's not clear in terms of court rulings whether handing over decryption keys is self-incrimination or not. From what I have heard, the courts do not view safe combinations as self-incriminating...
look, if someone WANTS to be put in jail for having encrypted files, I'm sure you can probably figure out some way to pull it off. but if you don't act like an idiot, such a thing is highly unlikely. it clearly has not happened to date.
Doesn't mean it won't... [..]
such deep fear around here about life in the US today? I'd say that people here are high up on the list of creating the paranoia. be careful what you fear, you might get it.
Good point indeed. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." (Flames for an FDR quote from raving anti-socialists will be bounced to /dev/null.) Rob. --- Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) to <WlkngOwl@unix.asb.com> for a copy of my PGP key.