First Use of RIPA to Demand Encryption Keys 645
kylehase writes "The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) is being used for the first time to force an animal activist to reveal encryption keys for encrypted files she claims to have no knowledge of. According to the article, she could face up to two years if she doesn't comply."
Heh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Virus encrypts hard drive with unknown key.
Virus forwards CP to authorities.
Authorities bust you for having CP, for not revealing those encrypted files, AND for probably having more CP. Most likely will be averaged..say..15k is a picture..you have 200GB. The media will say that you were arrested with 100k+ pieces of child pornography.
Five years later, turns out that it really was a virus. Sorry about that..here's your freedom again.
What if she doesn't actually know? (Score:3, Interesting)
So lemme get this straight (Score:5, Interesting)
This gives me an idea!
Either way, if you need to you can get around this with TrueCrypt by taking some precautions such as:
1) Not naming it with the default extension (.tc)
2) Put it somewhere inconspicuous and name it appropriately
3) Making sure that it's a hidden encrypted volume
4) Open it through TrueCrypt and don't save the history, or passwords, or as automount, or similar
Shit, that was a typo, I meant to type FIRST POST!!!
They could totally nail me (Score:2, Interesting)
If there's some password for some WordPerfect file I created in 1997, I'm sorry but I couldn't remember it if I tried really hard. I guess that in GB, that would send me to jail for a couple of years.
My gut reaction to this law is really really rude and I won't slime you with it. If I call the authorities facist pigs, you can fill in the blanks.
My ancestors gave their lives to protect me from what my political masters are doing to me now. Let's just say that I deeply resent it.
I often find that the captcha is strangely appropriate for my posts. In this case it is 'queasy'
I guess torture is will be next... oh wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
FOOLPROOF SOLUTION (Score:4, Interesting)
2) Reverse-engineer a one-time pad using this file and the encrypted file.
3) Supply the one-time pad to authorities with instructions on how to use it.
Ta dah!
Re:solution (Score:3, Interesting)
~S
Reasonable Search & Seizure (Score:4, Interesting)
2) I am not familiar with the details of this case.
That said, I believe that there *is* a time and place where this sort of activity counts as reasonable search & seizure. Say the cops get a warrant to search your house, and you have a safe, and you say, "gee, officer, I have *no* idea how that safe got mounted behind that picture," nobody will believe you and you'll get subpoena'd for the combo. Encryption keys shouldn't be treated any differently from a combination to a safe. If there's a reasonable suspicion for evidence to be hidden somewhere, the cops have a duty to search it.
enryption keys = keys? (Score:4, Interesting)
Better solution (Score:5, Interesting)
One password gives your uber-secret-plans-for-world-conquest, the other password gives a few hundred meg of soft porn (or whatever).
That way, you appear to not be resisting their demands.
Re:Reasonable Search & Seizure (Score:4, Interesting)
information is different (Score:3, Interesting)
With encryption, you can't even tell whether there is a safe there. I might well keep big files of random numbers on my machine, and just because a UK cop with a two digit IQ is incapable of figuring out why and suspects some nefarious purpose, that shouldn't be illegal. Furthermore, with encryption, the government simply cannot force the issue: in general, they just can't decrypt the data.
Re:Better solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Better solution (Score:2, Interesting)
AFAIK, it's still vulnerable to an attack which compares the differential history of the encrypted partition over time, but in most reasonable scenarios, in order to launch that attack you need to "own" the computer anyway, which means that the minute the user enters the passwords everything is compromised.
The only scenario where it is a possibly useful attack is when:
(1) You can gain surreptitious periodic physical access to the computer via break-in
(2) You can gain surreptitious periodic remote access to the computer via some kind of repetitive ephemeral backdoor
In both of these scenarios, most attackers would (attempt to) install keyloggers or otherwise "own" the computer anyway.
Re:Fortunately in the US... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, I wouldn't be so sure that the 5th amendment protects you.
TrueCrypt: Open Source and Free. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget to donate if you use TrueCrypt extensively.
The present government corruption in both the U.S. and U.K. started when secret violence was authorized as a way of protecting oil investments of British and U.S. investors. Tending toward outlawing privacy is a way of continuing that corruption. Any government that can act in secret cannot be a democracy, because citizens cannot participate in things that are unknown to them.
This is a good site to read about the corruption, and to contribute links: U.S. Government corruption TimeLines [cooperativeresearch.org]. Example: Complete 911 Timeline, 3895 events.
If you read to the bottom... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reasonable Search & Seizure (Score:2, Interesting)
This is the very thing that makes encryption+law so interesting.
In the "real world" the safe in the wall can be opened by brute force.
A diamond tipped circular saw / giant freakin laser beam would make short work of the physical safe.
In the "math world", intractable is intractable. You can't reversse a %mod operation, and factoring is Hard.
So what are the implications?
Scenarios:
Genuinely innocent individual downloads PGP after reading interesting internet article about encryption on the internet.
Individual encrypts mundane files "just to play" with some software, and forgets the key/passphrase
Individual's computer gets confiscated by the police because of an RIAA complaint (or terrorism investigations, whatever)
Genuinely guilty evil doer downloads PGP after reading interesting internet article about encryption on the internet.
Evil doer encrypts genuinely incriminating files for the purposes of not letting the powers that be see the evidence.
Individual's computer gets confiscated by the police because of an RIAA complaint (or terrorism investigations, whatever)
What now?
The safe analogy and any self incrimination vs plausible deniability arguments become blurred because of circumstance. The safe cannot be opened.
Circumstance is now in play...
10 gigs of encrypted files with time stamps relevant to the accused infraction would indicate "something to hide"... but you can never be sure.
This should be interesting to watch play out.
-s
Re:solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TrueCrypt is the best for Windows and Linux. (Score:2, Interesting)
You can send them the installer, help them build an encrypted volume and show them how to use it in less than half an hour.
The only problem is explaining that if (ok, when) they lose the password, you won't be able to crack it. Ever.
Re:What if she doesn't actually know? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a difference though. In the US, the police can get the possible evidence, ie. the hard drive. However you cannot be forced to reveal to them how that drive could possibly be used testify against you, or even if it contains the evidence against you they are seeking. Until it is decrypted, they cannot even KNOW whether it even contains any evidence at all. Just because they suspect that it may, doesn't mean they can force you to supply the key to enable them to determine whether it really does. Suppose the accused writes things down on paper in an unknown language. Could she/he be forced to translate that?
If testifying against yourself means giving evidence toward your conviction, that is not allowed in the US by the 5th amendment. Shredding the hardcopy just before the cops show up is not the same as using encryption as a matter of course all the time. The cops are free to try to brute force the encryption and they may also try to reassemble the shredded paper. However, deliberately shredding paper is different than using encryption for all data at all times.
Re:solution (Score:1, Interesting)
__
Additionally to encryption, hardware can help too. I have a paranoid friend who has his storage disks in a little cabinet with an electromagnet, where the HDs are electromagnetized when the door is opened without pushing the hidden button first.
So when the cops come to collect the hardware and you're not in the room to warn them that your data is protected from thieves that way....
Re:solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless they've had a complete turnover of personnel throughout the department in the last 2 years, they're not competent from top to bottom in any of the 4 state's offices I had to deal with then.
They are, however, terrorists... (Score:5, Interesting)
They use threats of force to induce fear in people at HLS;
They have used actual violent force, at the work and at the homes, of people who work at HLS;
They threaten anyone involved with HLS, their suppliers, etc, with the same degree of violence;
They have placed bombs, which exploded, under the cars of people who work at HLS or are involvd with HLS;
They claim their actions are justifiable, that they are engaged in a violent struggle, that their violence is justified because they must achieve their aims by any means possible.
These are not nice people we are talking about. They are not the innocent defenders of the fluffy bunnies. They are aggressive, violent people and they are familiar with the tools and techniques of covert violence. Curiously they fail to mention their devotion to violence in their own article about this case.
RIPA, like any other "anti-terrorism law", will one day be used against people who have nothing to do with terrorism.
Today is not that day.
Re:What if she doesn't actually know? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They are, however, terrorists... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyhow, after we reported it I was talking to an officer and he gave me the number of the computer crimes division, because according to him the beat cops (we just called the precinct) were notorious for screwing around with computers and rendering the evidence inadmissible in court because it had been tampered with.
I digress. The point being they just don't know any better. It's just another piece of evidence to them, and they don't understand that just by turning it on they are modifying it. Data on an HD is not static like a gun on the floor or a finger print. Even just looking at it can change it, and the average person just doesn't understand that yet.
Re:What if she doesn't actually know? (Score:4, Interesting)
It shows an all-too-common pattern of behavior among the former-and-still bullies disposed to the job.
completely different set of circumstances.
You mean, "walking while non-white"? Yeah, clearly asking for it, the bastard!
Oh i understand, you one of these moronic cop haters
I would hardly call it "moronic" to despise the single most dangerous element of modern society. And while good ones certainly exist (perhaps even the majority of them), far, far too many bad ones exist to just trust them by default, as a whole.
who will cry like a bitch for the cops he despises to come save him at the first sign of danger.
Have you ever actually called the police to report a crime?
I have (and won't bother ever again), and I've known others who have. And they do jack shit. About half the time they bother to show up. When they do, they write down random observations and you never hear from them again. But, god help you if you drive 46 in a 45 zone near the end of the month...
Re:Better solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I have some disks I wiped with crypto-generated randomness. Indistinguishable from encrypted disks without metadata (as linux dm-crypt can do for example). I cannot prove that there is no data on them. Completely impossible. Am I a criminal according to this law? Or do they need to have some proof that there is data on the disk?
Re:Better solution (Score:3, Interesting)
There again, the former British Home Secretary changed the UK law to allow plausible denial when he got bombarded with encrypted files, followed by demands he turn over the decryption key.
Do you have a source to support that claim? Obviously many people suggested that stunt, but I've never seen any indication that it was actually attempted, and certainly no indication that it succeeded in motivating a change in the law. It would be a delicious irony if it had worked, but since only certain officials can require the production of decryption keys, it's hard to see how it could do anything other than make a point, and surely that point had been considered before the draconian law was passed in the first place.
Re:TrueCrypt: Open Source and Free. (Score:3, Interesting)
'What is the key for this volume?'
'12345'
'Disk Utility doesn't recognise it, try again.'
'Oh, you have to mount that one with TrueCrypt.'
'Why are you using TrueCrypt?'
'Uh, certainly not to conceal a second volume in that disk image...'
Security by obscurity doesn't work when you tell everyone about it.
Re:TrueCrypt's method is not detectable (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually pretty much a stretch. Your 'decent' lawyer would have to give some sort of proof that there was a second partition there. Something that TrueCrypt is pretty much designed to prevent. You can easily show the existence of the first truecrypt partition - it's there in the open. You can't prove the existence of the second partition.
I'm not sure a judge will buy 'because we didn't find what we were looking for' as a reasonable showing of proof that a second partition exists, and unfortunately, that's all the proof that exists. The formatting method and the processing method result in random data covering the entire partition block, as data is written to both the shown & hidden partitions, that data changes from random to encrypted. However the whole goal of the crypto data is to make it look random.
So you have potentially 3 blocks of random data each constructed with the same randomizing algorythm. How exactly do you show where one begins & one ends? How do you even show that the 3rd block exists? The whole purpose of the hidden block is to make it almost impossible to prove the existence of that third block. You literally are more likely to brute force the key than you are to prove the existence of the hidden partition.
Bad Memory (Score:3, Interesting)