Posted on 07/11/2011 10:39:22 AM PDT by Smogger
The Colorado prosecution of a woman accused of a mortgage scam will test whether the government can punish you for refusing to disclose your encryption passphrase. The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to order the defendant, Ramona Fricosu, to decrypt an encrypted laptop that police found in her bedroom during a raid of her home.
Because Fricosu has opposed the proposal, this could turn into a precedent-setting case. No U.S. appeals court appears to have ruled on whether such an order would be legal or not under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which broadly protects Americans' right to remain silent.
In a brief filed last Friday, Fricosu's Colorado Springs-based attorney, Philip Dubois, said defendants can't be constitutionally obligated to help the government interpret their files. "If agents execute a search warrant and find, say, a diary handwritten in code, could the target be compelled to decode, i.e., decrypt, the diary?"
...
"Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act--revealing control over a computer and the files on it," said EFF Senior staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying under oath, or risking contempt of court."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
My point (which I really didn’t make, my bad) was that while the program can show them all the fake stuff you want, no program is going to be able to delete the data you want to hide because they won’t be using the original drive.
But it is in essence unretrievable to external sources.
Also not all investigators are that bright. Trust me I know...I’ve seen many cops screw up investigations.
Sure.. I use it all the time.
Oh really?
Make it worth my while and I will create a file that they can't decrypt working from today to eternity.
I would call it the trojan file.
People think the NSA is like a god. If the NSA could do it so could the chicoms and the ruskies and a couple hackers in control of botnets. So the encrypted file that wikileaks dropped out there would be cracked by now and floating around the internet.
T r u e C r y p t
Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux
Main Features:
Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
Parallelization and pipelining allow data to be read and written as fast as if the drive was not encrypted.
Encryption can be hardware-accelerated on modern processors.
Provides plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.
More information about the features of TrueCrypt may be found in the documentation.
What is new in TrueCrypt 7.0a
Question for the legal types....if the laptop were to contain any correspondence with an attorney, would this not be a violation of attorney-client privilege?
Do you know how long it takes to crack AES with a 64 character length password?
I would think that depends on how much time you want to spend in jail...
It's due to a profound misunderstanding of encryption. Most theoretically successful attacks against proven ciphers like AES or RC5 still would take many many years at todays computing power. An attack against a 256-bit-key AES requiring 2^200 operations (compared to 2^256 possible keys) would be considered a break, even though 2^200 operations would still take far longer than the age of the universe to complete.
I use truecrypt and I do worry that I might someday forget my password (I don’t write it down).
My method, however, is to encrypt smaller “disks” and name them as known file extensions (like .doc, eg) and then just store those files in a folder with hundreds of junk files that I’ve accumulated over the years.
The great thing about the truecrypt is the file date doesn’t change when the file is updated so no one can tell if it’s been added to recently or not.
and then they would reimage the drive back from the forensic image the data forensics guy took when he first took the drive into evidence custody and you would be right back where you started + a charge of contempt of court.
Password for what?
Good question. There’s a database somewhere with the answer.
I already realized it wouldn't work.
All they have to do is make a backup image of your hard drive before they enter the password.
Then you are just shredding a copy.
Truecrypt has a decent alternative; a hidden encrypted volume inside of another encrypted volume.
You give them the password to the outer volume. There is no way to know that there is an encrypted inner volume, so your data is safe and they don't even know it is there.
And also: I check the “never save history” checkbox.
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
Get one, use it and write it down and put it where only you can reveal it (iffin’ you got some revolutionary info to hide!).
Full 4th/5th Amendment protection.
Do you ACTUALLY THINK that No Such Agency would let Justice, a NOTORIOUSLY leaky agency, know its’ full capabilities ??
I wonder what encryption is being used... I WANT IT !!!
Ve have vays to make you talk! Our drugs are very good! Or maybe ve vill put you on the vasser board.
I don’t think I missed that particular point. A whole LOT OF PEOPLE should have been in line for prosecution long before Libby.
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