Truecrypt supports an inner and outer encrypted volume, encryption hidden inside encryption, the intended usage being that you reveal the outer encrypted volume, and refuse to admit the existence of the inner hidden volume. To summarize the judgment: Plausibile deniability, or even not very plausible 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 contains something hot. Only then can it demand the key for the inner volume. Defendant revealed, or forensics discovered, the outer volume, which was completely empty. (Bad idea - you should have something there for plausible deniability, 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) 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. (Does there exist FIVE TERABYTES of child pornography in the entire world?) Despite forensics suspicions, no one, except the defendant, knows whether there is an inner volume or not, and so the Judge invoked the following precedent. http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf That producing the key is protected if "conceding the existence, possession, and control of the documents tended to incriminate" the defendant. The Judge concluded that in order to compel production of the key, the government has to first prove that specific identified documents exist, and are in the possession and control of the defendant, for example the government would have to prove that the encrypted inner volume existed, was controlled by the defendant, and that he had stored on it a movie called "Lolita does LA", which the police department wanted to watch. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> 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