TotallyOz Posted January 24, 2012 Posted January 24, 2012 American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case. Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21--or face the consequences including contempt of court. Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination. "I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer," Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well. Ramona Fricosu, who is accused of being involved in a mortgage scam, has declined to decrypt a laptop encrypted with Symantec's PGP Desktop that the FBI found in her bedroom during a raid of a home she shared with her mother and children (and whether she's even able to do so is not yet clear). See here for Full Article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57364330-281/judge-americans-can-be-forced-to-decrypt-their-laptops/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 Quote
Members Lucky Posted January 24, 2012 Members Posted January 24, 2012 People need to remember that the president appoints federal judges. My reaction t this story was that it would be easily overturned by an appellate court, but you can't count on that since the politicalization of the courts. Quote
Guest EXPAT Posted January 24, 2012 Posted January 24, 2012 And yet the Supreme Court today said that using GPS data to locate a person violates their right to privacy so the police must get a warrant to use GPS data. Here is the article for that one: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46101025/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/supreme-court-rules-warrant-needed-gps-tracking/#.Tx4OdWNSTEU Quote
Members TampaYankee Posted January 24, 2012 Members Posted January 24, 2012 I hope this goes to appeal. Quote
Members JKane Posted January 24, 2012 Members Posted January 24, 2012 I hope this goes to appeal. I hope so too! Hopefully the EFF and others like them are drafting the appeals right now. On the other hand, this isn't as bad as customs or a routine police stop requiring she grant access, there is reason to believe she used the computer in commission of crimes and now has a court order/warrant... so it's not 'unreasonable' as in those cases... But "tell the court the password so we can use your personal files to incriminate you" does sound like 5th amendment. Then again, the judge may have drawn the wrong parallel: what is the legal position on safes or safe deposit boxes which may contain incriminating evidence? I'd assume that (with a warrant) the police routinely break in, am I right? I wonder if there is a legal precedent, perhaps involving the kind of safe that would destroy the contents if forcibly opened? Quote
Members lookin Posted January 24, 2012 Members Posted January 24, 2012 About a decade ago, soon after 9/11, I read an article in the New Yorker called "Private Lives". It highlighted the differences between Germany and the U. S. around the issue of transparency between the government and its citizens. In Germany, partially as a result of its Third Reich experience, things were set up specifically so that the government was to be as transparent as possible to its citizens, while the lives of its citizens were to be as opaque as possible to the government. The Germans were quite clear that, while the government should not have any secrets from its citizens, its citizens should be perfectly free to have secrets from the government. One result of this philosophy was that Germany's spy agencies were deliberately set up so that they were in separate parts of the country and communications among them were intentionally made quite difficult. Since one of the terrorist cells responsible for 9/11 was based in Hamburg, the article highlights the frustration that the U. S. expressed with the German philosophy and the carrots and sticks used to change it. In my opinion, 9/11 was a major factor in the latest wave of privacy erosion in the U. S., spawned by a desire to make sure the 'bad guys' can't hide anything from the government. Unfortunately, the 'good guys' also get swept up in these changes to our laws and challenges to our Constitution. Even worse, I think, is that the line between 'good guys' and 'bad guys' can be blurry at best and, at worst, can be pretty easily shifted based on political and financial interests. Whose political and financial interests, you ask? Good question. Quote
Members JKane Posted January 25, 2012 Members Posted January 25, 2012 The German censorship of video games and political/religious views always seemed a bit invasive to me... Though I can understand their desire to keep neo-nazis from coming together and 100% agree with them on Scientology... Quote
Members JKane Posted March 2, 2012 Members Posted March 2, 2012 Story is back in the news, semi-good news at that: Constitutional showdown voided: Feds decrypt laptop without defendant’s help Quote
