chuck says:

Can you use “I don’t remember my password” as a defense?

Or how about “no, my data is not encrypted – you prove that it is…”

Jeanne says:

My first reaction was to be glad that it was not another story about another restriction on U.S. citizens by the judicial system. Unfortunately, I can foresee this coming in the near future.

Improbus says:

If there is cause to access the drive, then it only makes common sense to require giving up the passwords.

Silly to think otherwise.

That just because the Constitution is just a god damned piece of paper. Remember the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights? The one that prohibits self incrementation? What is America with out the rule of law and a Constitution that is ignored? A frakking Banana Republic that’s what.

jbellies says:

I wonder if they could have got away with a password which decrypted the file to some sort of dada poem. Like showing the jpeg in a jpeg-cypher. “Doesn’t make sense? That’s your problem.”

There are several troubling aspects to the story. First, that two people were convicted (how? by a judge?) and nobody noticed. Second, that some of the actions were for “domestic extremism”, which a century ago might have included suffragism = the movement to allow women to vote. There may well be other troubling aspects!

Mr Diesel says:

You could use Truecrypt with inner and outer volumes. Put some bullshit in the outer and give the cretins that password and store all your good stuff on the inner.

B.Dog says:

The nerds over at Slashdot have some things to say about this.

chris says:

The difference between providing dna/fingerprint evidence is that you’re merely providing information about WHO you are and not WHAT you were doing. I would assume that proving the MAC address for a network card or GUID for Windows would be compulsory if served with a court order, that would be more similar to your analogy.

I think that locking up reporters to get their confidential sources is even worse than this. If you are in contempt of court, rather than sentenced for a charge, you could theoretically be jailed forever. Since most of those cases seem to be elected officials seeking retribution against a source that outed dirt it is doubly troubling.

Zybch says:

This is why, if you use encryption, you NEED to make sure of a feature that many enc-apps like trucrypt have that allows you to use different passwords to access different sets of files within the same encrypted volume.
You just hand over the decryption key that lets them look at your holiday snaps and stories about cats, while anything that might incriminate you (or you don’t want your wife to see) is kept safely out of the way and just appears as random noise if any analysys is performed on the encrypted volume. There is NO WAY the feds (or wife) can ever tell you have more data than the password you provide them unlocks.

Of course I’ve just read what Mr Diesel says, but I can’t be bothered deleting my precious words.

Cap'nKangaroo says:

“The disclosure was made by Sir Christopher Rose, the government’s Chief Surveillance Commissioner”

How creepy is that. A Chief Surveillance Commissioner.

Animby says:

So, for the cost of a £20 hard drive, a free, open source bit of software and a few minute’s labor devising a strong password, a couple of people who may or may not have been hiding some illegal bytes, have now cost the people of Britain an investigation, a prosecution, a trial and will now spend at least a couple of years behind bars at an annual cost in excess of £40,000. Job done. Taxpayers screwed.

bobbo, getting closer all the time says:

#18–Improb==”I guess one has to decide whether they want to be a free person or obey authority.” /// Thats true no matter what the law/issue is. I don’t think that is a consideration though on the question of whether or not the law is appropriate.

I don’t know what I would do but I would hope that I would have the balls to stand up and say, “up yours your honor”. //// Well, you can decide whether or not you wish to conform to the laws of your nation. Certainly, if you want to keep hidden those things that if revealed would subject you to more jail time than the sentence for failure to provide the password, then your actions would only be self serving. If you have nothing to hide and you are standing up for freedom, then you are just being a short sighted easily led poorly informed ill educated maroon.

ou might as well torture someone and get the answer you want instead of getting proof. /// Well, third time at bat: this is not about getting the answer you want, its about producing objective evidence.

I’d vote for such a law when it comes up in the USA. I see no reason to give guilty or stupid people a leg up on the system/rest of us.

bobbo, not projecting his demonds onto others says:

#20–SB==why would you post my nome-de-issue fell on the interesting/uninteresting continuum?

Heh, heh. I’ve heard it said that interesting is as interesting does?

bobbo, again, new to encryption says:

I think the owner of a hard drive should do any reasonable thing to provide access to the drive when reasonable cause to access the hard drive has been established in court.

I can imagine what a key file is, can’t imagine why what I imagine should not be produced.

What special effort relevantly separate/different from providing a password does it involve?