On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:37:16 +0000, Jerome Baum <jer...@jeromebaum.com> wrote: > Part thought experiment, part practical usage. I was thinking more in > terms of a German court asking me to turn over evidence -- but then, > there still might be a lead pipe involved outside the scope of a court > case.
The amount of lead pipe a court can swing at you in many ways exceeds the amount of lead pipe organized crime can throw at you. Let's do this thought experiment again, but this time with a zealous prosecutor who is sincerely doing what she believes to be her job. Further, assume you have a deniable cryptosystem: you can't deny you received the message, but you can neither prove nor disprove having the ability to read it. Alice and Bob are plotting a heinous crime -- terrorism, narcotics trafficking, child exploitation, whatever. They know their communications are being monitored and they are using a deniable cryptosystem. They have also made plans for what to do if either of them ever gets arrested: they will do their best to incriminate someone else, so that the surviving conspirator will have time to go to ground and continue their plans of skulduggery. Alice gets picked up by the cops. Paula Prosecutor interrogates her. Alice says, "my co-conspirator was Jerome Baum." This is a lie, of course, but all Alice needs to do is give the police someone to chase after for a few days while Bob goes into hiding. Alice has sent you some innocuous messages through a deniable system in order to make you a good candidate for being made their patsy. Paula hauls you in. "Tell us all about your role in $nefarious_crime." You tell Paula that you don't have any role in it. "Prove it. Show me those messages." Um... well, you see, it's like this: it's a deniable system, which means there's no way I can prove or disprove ever having the ability to read it. Paula is *not* going to say, "oh, well then, I guess I'm out of luck." No, Paula is going to assume you're playing games and Paula's going to start playing hardball the way only a government prosecutor can. "Okay. In that case, we're going to have a forensic accountant crawl over your bank accounts and tax records, have a squad of detectives crawling over your personal life, we're going to talk to the media and name you as a subject of the investigation, and you're going to be racking up a thousand euros a day of legal fees. But you can make it stop any time. Just show me those messages." And when you scream, *I CAN'T DO WHAT YOU'RE ASKING ME TO DO!*, Paula will just look at you and say, "That's not my problem." Prosecutors play hardball. I would much rather face a gangster in an alleyway who wanted to get my secrets via a lead pipe than I would ever want to face a government prosecutor. I have better odds with the gangster. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
