Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.

Black Unicorn unicorn at schloss.li
Wed Aug 1 16:15:49 PDT 2001



----- Original Message -----
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei at rsasecurity.com>
To: "Tim May" <tcmay at got.net>; <cypherpunks at cyberpass.net>; "'Black Unicorn'"
<unicorn at schloss.li>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 7:21 AM
Subject: RE: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.


>
> > From: Black Unicorn[SMTP:unicorn at schloss.li]
> >
> > I also made some speculative suggestions about what encrypting such data
> > might
> > look like in a test case extending the facts to be a bit more edgy just to
> > see
> > where the limits were.  Such a test case (of which there are none to my
> > knowledge) would easily present a close issue to argue if a savvy
> > prosecutor
> > were around.  I'm not sure anyone could tell how it would come out.
> > Consider
> > it a cautionary note for cypherpunks designing evidence destroying
> > (concealing, whatever) systems.
> >
> BU:
>
> You may be a lawyer, but I'm a cryptographic software engineer.
>
> Cleansing disks and memory of keys and plaintext isn't done
> to prevent some hypothetical court from looking at evidence;
> there are good, legally unremarkable reasons to do so, which
> are regarded as good hygiene and 'best practice' in the
> industry.

Unfortunately, that conduct is going to be assessed by some old guy who was
once a lawyer, and who I highly doubt was ever a cryptographic software
engineer.  (The latter actually has to think hard on a regular basis).

[Lots of good stuff elided for brevity]

> Destroying sensitive data is part of doing the job right, in
> a professional, 'best practice' manner.

Again, it's going to be an uphill battle to get a jury of people too stupid to
get out of jury duty to believe that.  You might think about a side job
offering expert testimony services for this exact thing.





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