Dept of Justice says they can force you to unlock encrypted disk drives

[thewayne]

The case is interesting. The woman in question is being charged with various securities fraud crimes with having illegally obtained deeds of houses about to go into foreclosure, but the prosecutors are having problems because she seems to have used very strong encryption on her laptop. They're now saying that they don't want her password, they just want her to unlock her laptop so they can inspect the files therein.

I can't imagine this being anything except self-incrimination.

In England it is a crime to not provide an encryption password if the gov't asks for it. I wonder how long before we have such a law here. TrueCrypt has a feature called plausible deniability in which you have a password for your real info, and another password that unlocks the volume in such a way that your secure data is still secure, I imagine we'll be seeing it getting adopted a lot more.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078312-281/doj-we-can-force-you-to-decrypt-that-laptop/

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/11/1531259/DOJ-We-Can-Force-You-To-Decrypt-That-Laptop

Comments

[silveradept]

You would think, but they'll probably argue that forcing someone to unlock their computer is required for evidence stored on an inanimate object, not requiring someone to give testimony against themselves in court.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I think that is, more or less, the argument the prosecutors are making. But if the evidence is incriminating and wasn't otherwise discovered, then the evidence is sort of testifying against them.

Tricky situation.

[silveradept]

Yeah. Seems like there's a search-and-seizure thing to be navigated, then a self-incrimination thing to be navigated. They can seize the data, but is a decryption key considered protected in terms of self-incrimination? We should pay attention to see just how much of our digital data is going to be seizable and usable by the police, regardless of our protections.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That's where deniable encryption is useful, also make sure that if you're doing something illegal, that you have memorized code keywords so you can write coconuts instead of mortgages when you're committing fraud.

[silveradept]

Quite. Although there might be some odd looks about your bunches of coconuts being worth so much.

It's difficult to be a criminal and not leave some trace than an investigator can find.