On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:53:50 -0500 "Perry E. Metzger" <pe...@piermont.com> wrote:
> > Adam Fields <cryptography23094...@aquick.org> writes: > >> Well, it should be clear that any such scheme necessarily will > >> produce encrypted partitions with less storage capacity than one > >> with only one set of cleartext. You can't magically store 2N bytes > >> in an N byte drive -- something has to give. It should therefore > >> be reasonably obvious from partition sizes that there is something > >> hidden. > > > > I don't see how you could tell the difference between a virtual 40GB > > encrypted padded partition and 2 virtual 20GB ones. > > The judge doesn't "need" to know the difference to beyond any > doubt. If the judge thinks you're holding out, you go to jail for > contempt. > > Geeks expect, far too frequently, that courts operate like Turing > machines, literally interpreting the laws and accepting the slightest > legal "hack" unconditionally without human consideration of the impact > of the interpretation. This is not remotely the case. > > I'll repeat: the law is not like a computer program. Courts operate on > reasonableness standards and such, not on literal interpretation of > the law. If it is obvious to you and me that a disk has multiple > encrypted views, then you can't expect that a court will not be able > to understand this and take appropriate action, like putting you in a > cage. > Indeed. Let me point folks at http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/being-acquitted-versus-being-searched-yanal -- which was in fact written by a real lawyer, a former prosecutor who is now a law professor. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com