English 19-year-old jailed for refusal to disclose decryption key
----- Forwarded message from Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> -----
At 17:02 06 10 10, Eugen Leitl wrote:
----- Forwarded message from Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> -----
From: Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:57:26 -0700 To: Cryptography <cryptography@metzdowd.com> Subject: English 19-year-old jailed for refusal to disclose decryption key X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.3.1
a 19-year-old just got a 16-month jail sentence for his refusal to disclose the password that would have allowed investigators to see what was on his hard drive.
I suppose that, if the authorities could not read his stuff without the key, it may mean that the software he was using may have had no links weaker than the encryption itself
Or, it might only mean that the prosecutor decided not to spend that time and money since there was a handy law to charge the lad as being in violation of. Oops.
-- and that is extraordinarily unusual - an encouraging sign of progress in the field, if of mixed value in the current case.
Really serious data recovery tools can get data that's been erased and overwritten several times (secure deletion being quite unexpectedly difficult), so if it's ever been in your filesystem unencrypted, it's usually available to well-funded investigators without recourse to the key. I find it astonishing that they would actually need his key to get it.
Rampant speculation: do you suppose he was using a solid-state drive instead of a magnetic-media hard disk?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11479831
Bear
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On Wed, 6 Oct 2010, Ulex Europae wrote:
a 19-year-old just got a 16-month jail sentence for his refusal to disclose the password that would have allowed investigators to see what was on his hard drive.
I suppose that, if the authorities could not read his stuff without the key, it may mean that the software he was using may have had no links weaker than the encryption itself
Or, it might only mean that the prosecutor decided not to spend that time and money since there was a handy law to charge the lad as being in violation of.
Or that the ability to break [truecrypt|gpg|pgp|whatever] is an incredibly valuable thing, and you aren't going to blow it on a petty prosecution. Very likely, if that ability exists anywhere, knowledge of its existence is very highly guarded. ObSSLBackdoorHoneypotProposal ... you know the drill. The only question is, what could you obtain, and resend over and over again, that would be worth someone like the US Govt ... or Apple Computer ... tipping their hand ?
participants (3)
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Eugen Leitl -
John Case -
Ulex Europae