Re: Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop
On Mar 3, 2009, at 6:38 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: So, the court is not going to pay the least attention to your elaborate claims that you just like storing the output of your random number generator on a large chunk of your hard drive. They really don't give a damn about claims like that. Actually they do care. They'll be pissed off that you're wasting their time. You miss the point. Re-read the link I provided that explains how TrueCrypt implements hidden volumes. A hidden TrueCrypt volume is *completely indistinguishable* from empty space in a regular TrueCrypt volume. That's what makes it hidden! As I implied in the 2004 message in the context of political dissidents, a good use for hidden volumes isn't to distract your prosecutor with kittens and sunsets. That's just plain stupid, regardless of whether you're dealing with a US judge or someone whose preferred method of communication involves a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. The idea is to present an alternative but *plausible* set of information that's far less incriminating than the real deal, such as only mildly illegal material or legal material that the owner would still plausibly wish to keep secret for social reasons. I gave you a concrete example: hardcore or fetish porn (legal, but plausibly not the kind of thing whose possession you wish to advertise) provided to investigators to mask a secret volume with kiddie porn. If you give me the benefit of the doubt for having a reasonable general grasp of the legal system and not thinking the judge is an automaton or an idiot, can you explain to me how you think the judge can meet the burden of proof for contempt in this instance? Surely you don't wish to say that anyone using encryption can be held in contempt on the _chance_ they're not divulging all the information; what, then, is the other explanation? -- Ivan Krstić krs...@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu | http://radian.org - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Activation protocol for tracking devices
Santiago Aguiar wrote: As I wrote in my last email, in Brazil they are devising a protocol to activate tracking/blocking devices to be installed from factory in *every* vehicle, starting progressively from august 2009. The idea is that a service operator (SO) can activate a device to work with it, by first asking a centralized agency, the DENATRAN (department of transit), that must authorize the activation request. Once activated, the device keeps in that state until the SO deactivates it or until DENATRAN reconfigures the device SIM card remotely to change it IMSI to a special network operated by DENATRAN. This does sound like it introduces novel risks. I would suggest that rather than spending too much energy on the cryptomath, it would make sense to focus energy on the systems issues and the security requirements. 1) Is the system really intended to allow a single government agency to deactivate a car, without permission from the owner of that car? If so, that creates systematic risks that should be examined carefully. Is there any chance of revising the security requirements, so that consent of the owner is required? Good requirements engineering may be able to make as big a difference as any amount of crypto. 2) Strong audit logs would appear to be important. In particular, here are a few ideas. One might require that anytime a car is deactivated, a postcard is sent to the owner of that car letting them know of the deactivation and who authorized it. One could also require that an audit log be kept of every deactivation event and who precisely authorized it, and mandate that the owner of a car has the right to a copy of the audit log for their own car at any point, without delay. 3) You might consider advocating an opt-out policy, where car owners can turn off the functionality that allows deactivation of their car without their permission, and/or turn off the tracking functionality. 4) You might want to ask about what protects the location privacy of car operators. Does this system provide a third party with the power to track the movements of cars around the country? That sounds like a serious privacy risk to me. What controls are there to protect privacy, surveillance, or government abuse of power? 5) I would think that another possible security concern may be social engineering: if DENATRAN has the power and is authorized to deactivate cars, one tempting method to maliciously deactivate someone's car might be to convince DENATRAN to deactivate it. How will that be prevented? What are the procedures that DENATRAN will follow before deactivating a car? Are these required by law or regulation? 6) Are there penalties for inadvertent, incorrect, or unauthorized deactivation of a car? One possibility might be to require that the agency or the business pay a fee to the owner of the car if the owner's car is improperly deactivated. That might then put the onus of securing the infrastructure on the folks who can do something about it. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop
Perry E. Metzger pe...@piermont.com writes: [Explanation of why courts aren't Turing machines] Very nice explanation. The name I've used for this (attempted) defence is the Rumpelstiltskin defence, for reasons that should be obvious (and at some point I'll get around to finishing the writeup on this, which I get motivated to do every time I see someone advocate the Rumpelstiltskin defence as a strategy to use in court). Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop
Adam Fields wrote: On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 12:26:32PM -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote: Quoting: A federal judge has ordered a criminal defendant to decrypt his hard drive by typing in his PGP passphrase so prosecutors can view the unencrypted files, a ruling that raises serious concerns about self-incrimination in an electronic age. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10172866-38.html The privacy issues are troubling, of course, but it would seem trivial to bypass this sort of compulsion by having the disk encryption software allow multiple passwords, each of which unlocks a different version of the encrypted partition. When compelled to give out your password, you give out the one that unlocks the partition full of kitten and puppy pictures, and who's to say that's not all there is on the drive? In this particular case, the border guard already saw the supposedly incriminating documents, but they failed to properly secure the evidence (the picture on the laptop) at that time. When they shut down the laptop, the evidence was locked down by the encryption due to the removal of the encryption key from RAM. Securing digital evidence is a big problem for law enforcement. So, if the defense then discloses a different encryption drive with only kitten and puppy pictures, they will be in very big trouble, as there is already testimony that other files exist. The defense is asked to produce the documents in question. I don't know much about the legal bells and whistles that apply to such a case, but here are some ideas: * Maybe the defense could ask the prosecution to describe which pictures they want to have in particular, and the defense can make a case to just produce those particular pictures. However, the prosecution can probably just demand to produce all files within particular folders, which are easier to recall and more likely to hit something interesting. * Maybe the defense can argue that they lost the password and thus access to the document. They'd better make a convincing argument that they really can not recover it. It would be great if that argument is tied to the police confiscating the equipment. Maybe the password was written in invisible ink on the laptop and needs to be rewritten every day or it washes away... * I wonder if it may not be a better strategy to reveal the password and then argue that the pornography is legal or widely available on the internet, supposing it really is just generic internet porn. OTOH, some material may be legal only in some countries. A couple of consequences: * The safest thing to do is to do a clean operating system install before traveling. * If you use encryption, shut it down before crossing the border. * Computers have too many documents in a single, easily accessible location. If the files were more dispersed, the defense might be able to weasel out by producing fewer documents. Nobody would bring a meter-high stack of porn magazines from Amsterdam in their luggage, but with cheap mass storage it's a different situation. Also, this information is easily explorable by everyone using the file manager. Maybe hierarchical organization is not the best way to store such documents. A searchable database that limits the number of results may offer some protection against stumbling over something interesting. * Online storage may be an attractive solution for border crossing without leaving documents at home. The internet is a big smuggling ring that easily avoids border guards. Marcus - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Activation protocol for tracking devices
David Wagner wrote: This does sound like it introduces novel risks. I would suggest that rather than spending too much energy on the cryptomath, it would make sense to focus energy on the systems issues and the security requirements. Very interesting read. These topics are being discussed, but the proposed solutions are basically 'policies' but no actual mechanisms to enforce those policies are being defined. For example, privacy is not really an issue because the owner can opt to deactivate the service. How? By sending a signed letter to the SO or DENATRAN who then will dutifully disable the device. We'll see how things develop, but probably there will be more outcries about this legislation once the deadline gets even closer and public awareness rises -- Santiago - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop
Marcus Brinkmann marcus.brinkm...@ruhr-uni-bochum.de writes: * The safest thing to do is to do a clean operating system install before traveling. If you have an appropriate netbook (about 50% support this, check your manufacturer and model type), unplug the SD card containing the OS image and replace it with the SD card containing the clean install of XP along with Letter to mom.doc and Aunty Edna's 90th birthday.jpg. Once you're at your destination, pull the real SD card from the collection in your camera bag and reinsert it. Takes next to no time at all, and it guarantees there really isn't anything there to be found (including large collections of random noise) in any normal search. Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop
* Stephan Somogyi: At 13:08 -0500 03.03.2009, Adam Fields wrote: When compelled to give out your password Unless I'm misunderstanding the ruling, Boucher is not being compelled to produce his passphrase (like he could under RIPA Section 49 in the UK), but he is being told to produce the unencrypted contents of the drive. Assuming I'm interpreting the ruling correctly, this seems little different than a judge approving a search warrant for a residence, whose execution could produce incriminating evidence that is usable in court. The difference is that having your residence searched does not require active cooperation from you. You don't even have to disclose all your residences which should be searched. Forcing a suspect to decrypt data is rather questionable because it is difficult to draw a line between decrypting, decompressing, selecting, and producing relevant data. FWIW, the case which sparked this thread is rather special because when the laptop was searched at the border, the files were visible to a border guard. I guess this constellation is highly unusual. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop
On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:05:32 -0800 John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: I would not read too much into this ruling -- I think that this is a special situation, and does not address the more important general issue. In other cases, where alternative evidence is not available to the government, and where government agents have not already had a look at the contents, the facts (and hence perhaps the ruling) would be different. Balls. This is a straight end-run attempt around the Fifth Amendment. The cops initially demanded a court order making him reveal his password -- then modified their stance on appeal after they lost. So he can't be forced to reveal it, but on a technicality he can be forced to produce the same effect as revealing it? Just how broad is this technicality, and how does it get to override a personal constitutional right? Courts very rarely issue broader rulings than they absolutely have to. *Given the facts of this particular case* -- where Federal agents have already seen the putatively-illegal images -- it strikes me as unlikely there will be definitive ruling in either direction. Let me refer folks to Orin Kerr's blog on the original ruling: http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1197670606.shtml . I rarely agree with Kerr; this time, after thinking about it a *lot*, I concluded he was likely correct. I suggest that people read his post (including all the 'click here to see more' links, which seem to require (alas) Javascript) and the precedents cited. It doesn't mean I agree with all of those rulings (I don't), or that I think the courts should rule against Boucher. What I'm saying is that based on precedent and the facts of this case, I think they will. Here's a crucial factual excerpt from Kerr's blog: The agent came across several files with truly revolting titles that strongly suggested the files themselves were child pornography. The files had been opened a few days earlier, but the agent found that he could not open the file when he tried to do so. Agents asked Boucher if there was child pornography in the computer, and Boucher said he wasn't sure; he downloaded a lot of pornography on to his computer, he said, but he deleted child pornography when he came across it. In response to the agents' request, Boucher waived his Miranda rights and agreed to show the agents where the pornography on the computer was stored. The agents gave the computer to Boucher, who navigated through the machine to a part of the hard drive named drive Z. The agents then asked Boucher to step aside and started to look through the computer themselves. They came across several videos and pictures of child pornography. Boucher was then arrested, and the agents powered down the laptop. Also note this text from the original ruling (at http://www.volokh.com/files/Boucher.pdf) supporting Boucher: Both parties agree that the contents of the laptop do not enjoy Fifth Amendment protection as the contents were voluntarily prepared and are not testimonial. See id. at 409-10 (holding previously created work documents not privileged under the Fifth Amendment). Also, the government concedes that it cannot compel Boucher to disclose the password to the grand jury because the disclosure would be testimonial. The question remains whether entry of the password, giving the government access to drive Z, would be testimonial and therefore privileged. The legal issue is very narrow: is entering the password testimonial, and thus protected? Again: both parties agree that the contents of the laptop do not enjoy Fifth Amendment protection as the contents were voluntarily prepared and are not testimonial. Beyond that, Boucher waived his Miranda rights in writing and showed the agent the (I assume) relevant folders. That, coupled with the precedents from Fisher, Hubbell, etc., make it likely, in my non-lawyerly opinion, that the government will prevail. *But* -- I predict that the ruling will be narrow. It will not (I suspect and hope) result in a ruling that the government can always compel the production of keys. (Philosophical aside: I've never been happy with the way the Fifth Amendment has been interpreted. To me, it's about freedom of conscience, rather than freedom from bringing punishment upon oneself. The law supports that in other situations -- the spousal exemption, the priest-penitent privilege, etc. This is why grants of immunity and especially use immunity have always troubled me. I recognize, though, that this is not the way the law works.) So -- I suspect that Boucher is going to lose. The real question is whether the ruling will be narrow, based on these facts, or whether some judge will issue a broad ruling on witholding keys. --Steve
