Destroying evidence (was "About 5yr. log retention")

[Alan Olsen]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Jim Choate wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Sean R. Lynch wrote:
> 
> > Eek.  Sorry.  I meant the private key could be stored steganographically.
> > And the public key need only be attached to your nym.  Now the trick is not
> > leaving anything around that might be used to link you to your nym.
> 
> Ah, that makes more sense. Your point is a valid one.

This is one of the big problems with PGP currently, BTW.

I pointed out a number of years ago that you could get a complete list of
all keys (and the nyms they were associated with) without any sort of
passphrase. ("pgp -kvv" using the private keyring.)

It was shrugged off as no big deal.  (This was before Carl Johnson got
busted and they used his private key ring to show nym association in just
the fashion I described.)

This could be prevented by encrypting the keyring, but unless it is built
into PGP itself, it is going to make life hard for most people who use PGP
front-ends.  (I can modify such tools, but most people out there are not
programmers.)

As for the "concealing of evidence"...  We are reaching a point where
trying to protect ANYTHING from the prying eyes of the feds will be
considered a "crime". 

Get used to it.  You will probably have to break laws to retain any shread
of privacy in the future. (Of course, the first rule of not being seen is
"Don't Stand Up.".)

The way that law enforcement has been approaching things is to look for
exceptions where people are able to avoid their grasp and to make laws
and/or regs to cover those "loopholes". ("Be thou the loophole in the
law.")  Any effort to exploit existing loopholes in the law will be seen
as intent to break other existing laws.  (In order to punish you more
effectively.)

So, in other words, "You are damned if you do and damned if you don't".

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