Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
James A. Donaldjam...@echeque.com writes: Hidden compartment? What hidden compartment? If I have one, you are welcome to search it. Go knock yourselves out. On 2012-02-27 1:30 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: James, meet Bertha. Sorry about her cold hands, just give her a minute to get the gloves on. In the meantime if you'll drop your trousers... Yes, they can make me miss my flight, vandalize my luggage, and all that, but they cannot make me reveal that my truecrypt drive has a hidden inner volume. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
James A. Donaldjam...@echeque.com writes: Hidden compartment? What hidden compartment? If I have one, you are welcome to search it. Go knock yourselves out. On 2012-02-27 1:30 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: James, meet Bertha. Sorry about her cold hands, just give her a minute to get the gloves on. In the meantime if you'll drop your trousers... James A. Donald wrote: Yes, they can make me miss my flight, vandalize my luggage, and all that, but they cannot make me reveal that my truecrypt drive has a hidden inner volume. There's a fundamental legal difference. It's called the administrative search exemption. Basically, the way the TSA can do such things is that they do it to everyone, and you are told beforehand that you will be subjected to such procedures. If such a search is applied only to some, it would be a violation of the fourth amendment. Similarly, secondary screening such as the unpleasantness you described is still illegal unless we get into Clear and Present territory. Josh E ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 25/02/12 18:50 PM, Jon Callas wrote: ...We're not *stupid*. Once upon a time ...ok skip the annoying anecdote and get to the question: What would be the smallest steganography program that someone could type in and use to hide ones secret archive in plain site? iang ...a long long time ago, I used to port network code on demand. This was before the net. So I had a bootstrapping problem. This was before the time of compatible magnetic media too, I guess, but, every machine had a serial port. I wrote a little network slave program in C, and a larger master one. The master one stayed on the primary source machine. The slave one I typed in. I got it down to around a page of C in time, and it would generally take under an hour to get it up and humming. Oh, and I had a little home-made rs232 patch kit. End of distracting anecdote. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Feb 25, 2012, at 3:18 PM, Kevin W. Wall wrote: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:50 AM, Jon Callas j...@callas.org wrote: [snip] But to get to the specifics here, I've spoken to law enforcement and border control people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they know all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCrypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to getting the second password. They said, We know about that trick, and we're not stupid. Well, they'd be wrong with that assumption then. Only from your point of view. From their point of view, the user is the one with wrong assumptions. Remember what I said -- they're law enforcement and border control. In their world, Truecrypt is the same thing as a suitcase with a hidden compartment. When someone crosses a border (or they get to perform a search), hidden compartments aren't exempt. They get to search them. Also to them, Truecrypt is a suitcase that advertises a hidden compartment, and that's pretty useless, in their world. I asked them about the case where someone has TrueCrypt but doesn't have a hidden volume, what would happen to someone doesn't have one? Their response was, Why would you do a dumb thing like that? The whole point of TrueCrypt is to have a hidden volume, and I suppose if you don't have one, you'll be sitting in a room by yourself for a long time. We're not *stupid*. That's good to know then. I never had anything *that* secret to protect, so never bothered to create a hidden volume. I just wanted a good, cheap encrypted volume solution where I could keep my tax records and other sensitive personal info. And if law enforcement ever requested the password for that, I wouldn't hesitate to hand it over if they had the proper subpoena / court order. But I'd be SOL when then went looking for a second hidden volume simply because one doesn't exist. Guess if I ever go out of the country with my laptop, I'd just better securely wipe that partion. Or just put something in it that you can show. Jon ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
[Jon Callas j...@callas.org (2012-02-26 17:35:55 UTC)] On Feb 25, 2012, at 3:18 PM, Kevin W. Wall wrote: But I'd be SOL when then went looking for a second hidden volume simply because one doesn't exist. Guess if I ever go out of the country with my laptop, I'd just better securely wipe that partion. Or just put something in it that you can show. I know nothing about TrueCrypt, but I imagine a technical solution to this kind of problem exists: Just give TrueCrypt the ability to have a virtually unlimited number of hidden volumes. Now you can reveal them, one after the other, in increasing order of embarrasment value and perhaps a modest level of illegality, after which you say, that's it, there are no more secrets here. - Harald ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Feb 25, 2012, at 6:35 PM, James A. Donald wrote: Jon Callasj...@callas.org writes: I've spoken to law enforcement and border control people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they know all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCrypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to getting the second password. They said, We know about that trick, and we're not stupid. They may assume that - but they cannot prove it. You're assuming that they operate with the same security model that you do. Your security model presupposes US law, to start with. I can see that in the glib comment asking if I'd ever heard of innocent until proven guilty -- which is a US principle. It is one that I not only have heard of, but think is is pretty darn good idea, too! Nonetheless, it does not exist everywhere in the world, and I said this was not the US. In fact the very reason I said it wasn't the US was because I wanted to point out that objections to the story based upon US law are irrelevant. Moreover, innocent until proven guilty is interpreted differently depending on what sort of case there is. The term *proven* is context-dependent. There are different ways they prove, different burdens of proof. Beyond reasonable doubt and clear and convincing evidence are two used in criminal cases in the US. Preponderance of evidence is usually used in civil cases. None of these are plausible deniability. As I said before, this is a term of spycraft and statecraft. Usually it's used to describe how a powerful entity like a nation state can defend itself against attacks by less-powerful entities. There are forms of torture that are popular because they leave no marks on the victim and therefore give the state plausible deniability. Bureaucracies also use this technique to spread blame or leave the blame with some other person. In a number of cases involving spectacularly failed companies, the CEO has tried to stick someone else with the blame through plausible denial. Or perhaps the family and associates of a fraudster use a form of plausible denial to avoid conviction or trial. (I am not saying that using plausible means you're guilty -- it only means you don't have a better defense.) It works sometimes and doesn't work others. It didn't work for Bernie Ebbers, for example. Plausible denial combined with a lack of evidence works really well, but it's not a legal principle at all. Most people who use the term plausible denial, particularly us crypto people, would be better served to say reasonable doubt. It's a better marketing term at the very least. But anyway, back to deniable encryption and what is a language-theoretic issue. If your security model includes technical issues and policy issues, but your attacker has different policies, then your security might fail for language-theoretic reasons. To a border control person (and that's who I was talking about), Truecrypt is the same thing as a suitcase with a false bottom. Technically, we'd say that it is a container that (assuming it works correctly) *might* have a secret compartment and that one that does have secret compartment is information-theoretcially indistinguishable from one that has a secret compartment. But if you read the previous sentence to a border control person, they might hear, ...it is a container ... that ... has a secret compartment. The difference is policy, not technical. If their security model includes the policy that there's no reason to have a suitcase with a false bottom except to put something in it, then how you make a denial becomes everything. If your denial is don't be ridiculous, I *know* you guys can spot hidden volumes and that's why I'd never use one -- I use it because I'm cheap then you're doing well. If your denial is, you can't prove there's a hidden volume there then you're not doing so well. My point is that there are security models out there that know about hidden volumes and have their own defenses against them. I used the word defenses intentionally. They are border control people. Their model considers a hidden volume to be an attack, not a defense. They have developed their own defenses against smuggling that take hidden volumes into account. Evidently in the case of http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf They were totally unable to get information out of John Doe For the entire case turned on the fact that John Doe never admitted the existence of the hidden drive, and forensics were entirely unable to prove the existence of the hidden drive. Customs may have the authority to search through your stuff, but if they cannot find what they are looking for, they have no authority to make you tell them that it exists and where it is. But if you *do* tell them that it exists, then they can make you tell them where it is. Absolutely. This is a
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 2012-02-27 3:35 AM, Jon Callas wrote: Remember what I said -- they're law enforcement and border control. In their world, Truecrypt is the same thing as a suitcase with a hidden compartment. When someone crosses a border (or they get to perform a search), hidden compartments aren't exempt. They get to search them. Hidden compartment? What hidden compartment? If I have one, you are welcome to search it. Go knock yourselves out. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 2012-02-27 4:29 AM, Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote: I know nothing about TrueCrypt, but I imagine a technical solution to this kind of problem exists: Just give TrueCrypt the ability to have a virtually unlimited number of hidden volumes. Now you can reveal them, one after the other, in increasing order of embarrasment value and perhaps a modest level of illegality, after which you say, that's it, there are no more secrets here. In the case on which the ruling was issued, John Doe had five terabytes of TrueCrypt drive, and absolutely nothing on the outermost TrueCrypt drive. I am pretty sure that if he had something moderately embarrassing or a little bit illegal on the outer drive with the easily broken password, he would not have had to appeal all the way up. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 2012-02-27 5:09 AM, Marsh Ray wrote: So everyone who now has a hidden 2nd Truecrypt partition with incriminating things in it needs to make it their hidden 3rd partition and in the hidden 2nd partition instead store things which are merely embarrassing. Except that as it is stipulated that the captors are not stupid, we must assume they are perfectly rational actors who will have worked out this strategy too. If everyone goes for a third partition - but in practice, some people will have only one, some people two with the good stuff on the second, some people three with the good stuff on the third, some four, some five .. Rationality can easily be defeated by deliberate randomness and intentional irrationality ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 8:36 PM, James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote: On 2012-02-27 3:35 AM, Jon Callas wrote: Remember what I said -- they're law enforcement and border control. In their world, Truecrypt is the same thing as a suitcase with a hidden compartment. When someone crosses a border (or they get to perform a search), hidden compartments aren't exempt. They get to search them. Hidden compartment? What hidden compartment? If I have one, you are welcome to search it. Go knock yourselves out. Well, we're already considerably OT, but since the moderator seems to be letting this thread play itself out, I use that to segue to a related topic on a new proposed Ohio law and hidden compartments. [I just literally finished posting this to my G+ account moments ago, but will repost here rather than making all you you go to GooglePlus.] Ohio Gov. John Kasich is advocating a law that would make it a 4th-degree felony to own any vehicle equipped with hidden compartments. Conviction under this proposed law could mean up to 18 months in jail and a potential $5,000 fine. So someone please tell me why the ACLU is not jumping all over this? I just don't see how this law is a good thing. It seems to me that this could trap a lot of innocent people. Imagine the following scenario: A drug dealer whose car has a secret compartment decides to get some new wheels so he trades in is old car for a hot new one to some legitimate auto dealer. The auto dealer does not know this person is a drug dealer so they have no reason to suspect anything. Sometime later, the car dealer sells the car to someone. That someone then happens to get in an accident where they get rear ended. The ensuing damage reveals a hidden compartment such as that described in the Columbus Dispatch article (see below). The officer on the scene of the accident notices the secret compartment, and even though there are no drugs present, decides to arrest the driver of the damaged car solely because she or he can observe the secret compartment. Thereby some innocent person is charged with a fourth degree felony and at least has to go through a bunch of legal hoops to clear his or her name. Now how is this a _good_ thing? So much for the presumed innocent until proven guilty. The original Columbus Dispatch article is here in case anyone wishes to read it: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/02/25/secret-compartments-could-get-drivers-busted.html -kevin -- Blog: http://off-the-wall-security.blogspot.com/ The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We *cause* accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Marsh Ray ma...@extendedsubset.com writes: Except that as it is stipulated that the captors are not stupid, we must assume they are perfectly rational actors who will have worked out this strategy too. It's not an exercise in game theory, it's standard police work. If they've watched you downloading child porn for six months, with enough evidence to get a warrant, and all they find is an encrypted partition and no trace of the pr0n anywhere else, then it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where it most likely went. (Talking to e-crime investigators is always illuminating. When they say they're not stupid they don't mean they have PhDs in game theory, they mean that they're (usually) going to come in with enough evidence and expertise to have a good chance of a successful prosecution. Being able to hide something with FDE is a very, very rare exception, generally one where evidence was very flimsy anyway). Peter. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 02/26/2012 09:08 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: Marsh Rayma...@extendedsubset.com writes: Except that as it is stipulated that the captors are not stupid, we must assume they are perfectly rational actors who will have worked out this strategy too. It's not an exercise in game theory, it's standard police work. My post had about as much to do with standard police work as the traveling salesman problem has to do with actual salesmen, or the prisoner's dilemma has to do with actual prisoners. I thought the situation might be amenable to a simple model, and it seemed like an interesting way to try to nudge the conversation back to discussing crypto, or comp sci at least. If they've watched you downloading child porn for six months, I know that this is a terribly common scenario that todays computer crime investigators have to deal with on a daily basis, but isn't there some variant of Godwin's law I can invoke here? - Marsh ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com writes: Hidden compartment? What hidden compartment? If I have one, you are welcome to search it. Go knock yourselves out. James, meet Bertha. Sorry about her cold hands, just give her a minute to get the gloves on. In the meantime if you'll drop your trousers... Peter. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Jon Callas j...@callas.org writes: I've spoken to law enforcement and border control people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they know all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCrypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to getting the second password. They said, We know about that trick, and we're not stupid. Ditto. One other thing that you need to add, the police are very, very good at getting information out of people. They've been doing it with hardened criminals for decades, so your average random geek is no problem. Peter. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Bill St. Clair billstcl...@gmail.com writes: Which is why the average random geek needs to be reminded, over and over again, that you NEVER talk to the police. Not a word. Ever. If you're feeling kind, write them a note, I don't talk to police. They should leave wondering whether you're mute. Uh, you know the bit where I said that the police are very good at getting information out of people? That also applies to people who initially decide that they don't want to talk to the police. Peter. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Which is why the average random geek needs to be reminded, over and over again, that you NEVER talk to the police. Not a word. Ever. If you're feeling kind, write them a note, I don't talk to police. They should leave wondering whether you're mute. Uh, you know the bit where I said that the police are very good at getting information out of people? That also applies to people who initially decide that they don't want to talk to the police. In the US, you should tell them you're not going to talk to them without your attorney present. That should shut them up. Assuming they follow the law, they must stop all questioning at that point. Assuming they make a written record of your request, anything they get from you (other than information you volunteer) after that point should be inadmissible. Note that there are two assumptions in this paragraph. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:50 AM, Jon Callas j...@callas.org wrote: [snip] But to get to the specifics here, I've spoken to law enforcement and border control people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they know all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCrypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to getting the second password. They said, We know about that trick, and we're not stupid. Well, they'd be wrong with that assumption then. I asked them about the case where someone has TrueCrypt but doesn't have a hidden volume, what would happen to someone doesn't have one? Their response was, Why would you do a dumb thing like that? The whole point of TrueCrypt is to have a hidden volume, and I suppose if you don't have one, you'll be sitting in a room by yourself for a long time. We're not *stupid*. That's good to know then. I never had anything *that* secret to protect, so never bothered to create a hidden volume. I just wanted a good, cheap encrypted volume solution where I could keep my tax records and other sensitive personal info. And if law enforcement ever requested the password for that, I wouldn't hesitate to hand it over if they had the proper subpoena / court order. But I'd be SOL when then went looking for a second hidden volume simply because one doesn't exist. Guess if I ever go out of the country with my laptop, I'd just better securely wipe that partion. -kevin -- Blog: http://off-the-wall-security.blogspot.com/ The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We *cause* accidents.-- Nathaniel Borenstein ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 2012-02-25 5:50 PM, Jon Callas wrote: There is no such thing as plausible deniability in a legal context. Plausible deniability is a term that comes from conspiracy theorists (and like many things contains a kernel of truth) to describe a political technique where everyone knows what happened but the people who did it just assert that it can't be proven, along with a wink and a nudge. Does the phrase innocent until proven guilty ring any bells? Similarly, there is no inner volume on a truecrypt drive until it is proven that there is, and so you cannot be compelled to produce a key that has not been proven to exist. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Jon Callasj...@callas.org writes: I've spoken to law enforcement and border control people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they know all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCrypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to getting the second password. They said, We know about that trick, and we're not stupid. They may assume that - but they cannot prove it. On 2012-02-25 9:36 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: Ditto. One other thing that you need to add, the police are very, very good at getting information out of people. They've been doing it with hardened criminals for decades, so your average random geek is no problem. Evidently in the case of http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf They were totally unable to get information out of John Doe For the entire case turned on the fact that John Doe never admitted the existence of the hidden drive, and forensics were entirely unable to prove the existence of the hidden drive. Customs may have the authority to search through your stuff, but if they cannot find what they are looking for, they have no authority to make you tell them that it exists and where it is. But if you *do* tell them that it exists, then they can make you tell them where it is. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
wow deja vu: http://www.mail-archive.com/fde@www.xml-dev.com/msg00623.html ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:30:57 +1000 James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com wrote: So: Don't talk to police about the contents of your drive, or indeed anything of which they might potentially disapprove. I believe that you meant to say, Don't talk to the police at all, which should be standard policy for anyone who finds themselves under arrest. There is no advantage in talking to the police once you have been arrested, nothing you say will help in your defense and you are not going to talk your way out of an arrest. The odds are stacked against you during a police interview -- you are talking to people who have been trained to extract confessions, who are being paid to sit there interrogating you, and who will pick through what you say to find incriminating statements. Stay quiet, speak only to your attorney, and let your attorney speak on your behalf; you cannot be penalized for exercising your rights, nor can the fact that you refused to speak be introduced as evidence against you (at least in the United States). -- Ben -- Benjamin R Kreuter UVA Computer Science brk...@virginia.edu KK4FJZ -- If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. - George Orwell signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Feb 24, 2012, at 2:30 57PM, James A. Donald wrote: Bottom line is that the suspect was OK because kept his mouth zippered, neither admitting nor denying any knowledge of the encrypted partition. Had he admitted control of the partition, *then* they would have been able to compel production of the key. The court did not concede any right to refuse to decrypt a drive if you admit possession of the contents. So: Don't talk to police about the contents of your drive, or indeed anything of which they might potentially disapprove. No, I don't think that that's quite what the ruling said. It's a long, complex opinion; what you said is close to one aspect of it, but not (in my non-lawyer opinion) precisely what the court said. The first point, not addressed in your note but quite important to the ruling, is that the key has to be something you know, not something you have. If the keying material is on a smart card, you have to turn that over and you're not protected. If a PIN plus smart card is needed, you still have to turn over the smart card but not disclose the PIN. Second, and going to the heart of your point, what's essential is whether or not they already know in reasonable detail what's on the encrypted drive; depending on the circumstances, they may already have that knowledge regardless of what you've said. The issue of admitting possession is not what this case focused on; in fact, the prosecution tried to finesse that point by granting limited immunity on that point. Quoting from the opinion: 'The U.S. Attorney requested that the court grant Doe immunity limited to “the use [of Doe’s] act of production of the unencrypted contents” of the hard drives. That is, Doe’s immunity would not extend to the Government’s derivative use of contents of the drives as evidence against him in a criminal prosecution. The court accepted the U.S. Attorney’s position regarding the scope of the immunity to give Doe and granted the requested order. The order “convey[ed] immunity for the act of production of the unencrypted drives, but [did] not convey immunity regarding the United States’ [derivative] use” of the decrypted contents of the drives.' In other words, the fact of control of the encrypted data -- aka knowledge of the key -- was not at issue; the prosecution had agreed not to use that. What was important was the files on the drive. This is what distinguishes this case from Boucher (a case discussed in the opinion). The other current case is Fricosu, where a trial judge has ordered her to decrypt her laptop. The Court of Appeals for that circuit -- the 10th; the opinion I cited is from the 11th, and hence not binding on this court -- declined to hear her appeal, not on the merits but because as a matter of procedure they won't intervene at this point in a trial. If she's convicted, she can appeal on the grounds that her Fifth Amendment rights were violated, but not until then. It's worth noting that the trial judge made his ruling on the same basis as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals: did the government have enough prior knowledge of the contents that her rights were not infringed? An appellate court may find that he didn't rule correctly on that point, or it may decline to adopt the 11th Circuit's reasoning -- but the fundamental legal reasoning is the same; what's different is the facts of the case. (Btw, Fricosu did not talk to the police; however, she made injudicious statements to her husband in a monitored jailhouse call...) --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Truecrypt supports an inner and outer encrypted volume, encryption hidden inside encryption, the intended usage being that you reveal the outer encrypted volume, and refuse to admit the existence of the inner hidden volume. To summarize the judgment: Plausibile deniability, or even not very plausible deniability, means you don't have to produce the key for the inner volume. The government first has to *prove* that the inner volume exists, and contains something hot. Only then can it demand the key for the inner volume. Defendant revealed, or forensics discovered, the outer volume, which was completely empty. (Bad idea - you should have something there for plausible deniability, such as legal but mildly embarrassing pornography, and a complete operating system for managing your private business documents, protected by a password that forensics can crack with a dictionary attack) Forensics felt that with FIVE TERABYTES of seemingly empty truecrypt drives, there had to be an inner volume, but a strong odor of rat is no substitute for proof. (Does there exist FIVE TERABYTES of child pornography in the entire world?) Despite forensics suspicions, no one, except the defendant, knows whether there is an inner volume or not, and so the Judge invoked the following precedent. http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf That producing the key is protected if conceding the existence, possession, and control of the documents tended to incriminate the defendant. The Judge concluded that in order to compel production of the key, the government has to first prove that specific identified documents exist, and are in the possession and control of the defendant, for example the government would have to prove that the encrypted inner volume existed, was controlled by the defendant, and that he had stored on it a movie called Lolita does LA, which the police department wanted to watch. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On 2012-02-25 7:28 AM, Steven Bellovin wrote: The first point, not addressed in your note but quite important to the ruling, is that the key has to be something you know, not something you have. If the keying material is on a smart card, you have to turn that over and you're not protected. If a PIN plus smart card is needed, you still have to turn over the smart card but not disclose the PIN. Surely the core of the ruling is that no one except the defendant knows for sure whether the key exists, knows whether there is an inner truecrypt volume or not. The cross examination of the forensics witness focused on that point. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
Surely the core of the ruling is that no one except the defendant knows for sure whether the key exists, knows whether there is an inner truecrypt volume or not. The cross examination of the forensics witness focused on that point. On 2012-02-25 1:25 PM, d...@geer.org wrote: One must assume that this nicety does not apply to border crossings (Customs inspection) where access to anything and everything is stare decisis. If they knew the inner drive existed, they could insist on access to it. But they can only suspect. They can have access to the drive. They can have access to the encrypted drive on the unencrypted drive. They may *speculate* that there is an inner encrypted drive, but the only way they can find out that it exists is to ask me to incriminate myself. That the customs can have access to everything physical that crosses the border is stare decisis - but it is a big jump that they have access to your state of mind. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
On Feb 24, 2012, at 5:43 PM, James A. Donald wrote: Truecrypt supports an inner and outer encrypted volume, encryption hidden inside encryption, the intended usage being that you reveal the outer encrypted volume, and refuse to admit the existence of the inner hidden volume. To summarize the judgment: Plausibile deniability, or even not very plausible deniability, means you don't have to produce the key for the inner volume. The government first has to *prove* that the inner volume exists, and contains something hot. Only then can it demand the key for the inner volume. Defendant revealed, or forensics discovered, the outer volume, which was completely empty. (Bad idea - you should have something there for plausible deniability, such as legal but mildly embarrassing pornography, and a complete operating system for managing your private business documents, protected by a password that forensics can crack with a dictionary attack) Forensics felt that with FIVE TERABYTES of seemingly empty truecrypt drives, there had to be an inner volume, but a strong odor of rat is no substitute for proof. (Does there exist FIVE TERABYTES of child pornography in the entire world?) Despite forensics suspicions, no one, except the defendant, knows whether there is an inner volume or not, and so the Judge invoked the following precedent. http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf That producing the key is protected if conceding the existence, possession, and control of the documents tended to incriminate the defendant. The Judge concluded that in order to compel production of the key, the government has to first prove that specific identified documents exist, and are in the possession and control of the defendant, for example the government would have to prove that the encrypted inner volume existed, was controlled by the defendant, and that he had stored on it a movie called Lolita does LA, which the police department wanted to watch. There is no such thing as plausible deniability in a legal context. Plausible deniability is a term that comes from conspiracy theorists (and like many things contains a kernel of truth) to describe a political technique where everyone knows what happened but the people who did it just assert that it can't be proven, along with a wink and a nudge. But to get to the specifics here, I've spoken to law enforcement and border control people in a country that is not the US, who told me that yeah, they know all about TrueCrypt and their assumption is that *everyone* who has TrueCrypt has a hidden volume and if they find TrueCrypt they just get straight to getting the second password. They said, We know about that trick, and we're not stupid. I asked them about the case where someone has TrueCrypt but doesn't have a hidden volume, what would happen to someone doesn't have one? Their response was, Why would you do a dumb thing like that? The whole point of TrueCrypt is to have a hidden volume, and I suppose if you don't have one, you'll be sitting in a room by yourself for a long time. We're not *stupid*. Jon ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
