English 19-year-old jailed for refusal to disclose decryption key

[Ulex Europae]

At 17:02 06 10 10, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>----- Forwarded message from Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> -----
>
>From: Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net>
>Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:57:26 -0700
>To: Cryptography <cryptography at 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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>Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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