thewayne | Entries tagged with 5th amendment

Saw this on Slashdot this week:

Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court
Posted by timothy on Thursday September 24, 2015 @03:28PM from the good-luck-arguing-this-at-the-border dept.

Ars Technica reports that a Federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Wednesday that the Fifth Amendment protects from compelled disclosure the passwords that two insider-trading suspects used on their mobile phones. In this case,

"the SEC is investigating two former Capital One data analysts who allegedly used insider information associated with their jobs to trade stocks—in this case, a $150,000 investment allegedly turned into $2.8 million. Regulators suspect the mobile devices are holding evidence of insider trading and demanded that the two turn over their passcodes."

However, ruled the court, "Since the passcodes to Defendants' work-issued smartphones are not corporate records, the act of producing their personal passcodes is testimonial in nature and Defendants properly invoke their fifth Amendment privilege."

I expect this will probably end up being appealed to the SCOTUS, still, it's a promising thing for now.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/09/24/2128243/phone-passwords-protected-by-5th-amendment-says-federal-court

Last year the annual National Defense Authorization Act was signed in to law by Obama on 12/31, it included a passage that read "A person who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."

A suite was filed by journalists and political activists and said that the act of interviewing a suspected terrorist could end in them being painted with the same brush, and subject to indefinite detention by the military. The Obama administration said this wouldn't happen and tried to weasel around it to prevent the judge from blocking it on a national level, but she was having none of it. The judge ruled that the due process clause of the 5th amendment trumped this.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/indefinite-detention-law/

Thank God for judges who value the constitution! And also have life-long tenure!

The Feds were able to decrypt her laptop, it's not known if her co-defendant ex-husband might have given them the password or if one that she previously gave them finally worked. Regardless, the timing is a little suspect.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/decryption-flap-mooted/

Her attorney said that it wasn't clear to him if she installed the software herself. She has not yet declared this in court, so the prosecution hasn't announced any plans to deal with this yet.

I wouldn't think it would be hard to compel her to provide a list of possible passwords then run permutations of those against the encrypted image. But you run in to the easy bypass of providing them with a list of reasonable yet wrong passwords that stand zero chance of decrypting the drive.

I'm also curious if the prosecution and investigating law enforcement agency followed procedure and are doing their forensic examination from a cloned image of the drive and not messing with the drive itself, otherwise they open an argument for the defense that their messing with the computer has corrupted the drive and it cannot be decrypted. They probably did, but cases have been lost before where investigating authorities haven't followed correct procedure.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/forgotten-password/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/07/0327233/defendant-ordered-to-decrypt-laptop-claims-she-had-forgotten-password

Said defendant is accused of bank fraud and used PGP to encrypt her entire laptop hard drive. Apparently the prosecutors don't have much of a case without the contents of said hard drive. And now the judge has given her until 2/21 to produce an unlocked hard drive. And, as a marvelous kicker, "The judge added that the government is precluded “from using Ms. Fricosu’s act of production of the unencrypted hard drive against her in any prosecution.”"

She unsuccessfully argued that this was a case of compelled self-incrimination.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/judge-orders-laptop-decryption/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/24/024233/us-judge-rules-defendant-can-be-forced-to-decrypt-hard-drive

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html

Interesting stuff. Basically the defendant admitted that he downloaded kiddie porn and border agents allegedly saw images on his laptop. Then his laptop was closed and left alone for a while. In doing so, the laptop closed the PGP drive and it now requires a PGP key to open it. The judge says that forcing him to reveal the key is tantamount to self-incrimination.

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Entries tagged with 5th amendment

Federal court upholds privacy of smartphone passwords!

Federal Judge blocks indefinite detention of Americans by the military!

Mortgage fraud defendent's laptop unlocked

Defendant ordered to decrypt laptop has forgotten the password

U.S. judge orders defendant to decrypt laptop

Vermont judge rules defendant can't be forced to divulge PGP key under 5th amendment

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