UK Court Rejects Encryption Key Disclosure Defense 708
truthsearch writes "Defendants can't deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled. The case marked an interesting challenge to the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which in part compels someone served under the act to divulge an encryption key used to scramble data on a PC's hard drive. The appeals court heard a case in which two suspects refused to give up encryption keys, arguing that disclosure was incompatible with the privilege against self incrimination. In its ruling, the appeals court said an encryption key is no different than a physical key and exists separately from a person's will."
I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart.
Protection from self incrimination was to prevent confesions under duress or torture.
I don't see the difference between refusing to turn over an encryption key and refusing to let the police in your house when they have a valid search warrant.
Oh noes! You police can't come into my meth lab. Me letting you in would be self incrimination!
willpower (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Memorised encryption keys exist outside of your will?
I'm sure the number exists somewhere out there, good luck finding it by brute force.
Why these jokers didn't say i forgot.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why these jokers didn't say i forgot i will never know.
I mean how hard is it to NOT self-incriminate oneself: Say you forgot. Just like every other government official says after losing a laptop full of Witness Protection persons or intelligence officers, etc.
They can't compel you to recall something you don't remember.
Simply say "iam sorry i can't remember: my memory is a bit hazy from all the manhandling the cops did, your honor."
What's the worst? Gitmo? I don't think so (although Britain has a track record of renditioning suspects to US).
At a time when courts and the government make a combined assault on our privacy and rights, while being more secretive themselves, it is up to us protect ourselves. Call me paranoid, but am the Burt Gummer type.
The Government has NO right to force me to divulge my self-secrets just like i can't force a government of the people, by the people and for the people to divulge its dirty secrets.
I can't be transparent when the Government wants to be opaque.
After all it has been proven that the Government cannot be trusted even with the most basic secrets.
What is the criminal penalty for jokers who lost various laptops holding government secrets and OUR data? NONE.
What is the financial and criminal penalty the Government will pay if it causes me harm by leaking my secrets? NONE.
Until the Government pays for its mistakes(and heavily), am not going to divulge anything more to it. After all the Government am not trusty enough to know about its secrets, so why should i trust Government.
Ben Franklin, Hamilton and Mark Twain were absolutely right: You CANNOT and SHOULD NOT trust the government, if it doesn't trust you.
You can take my keys from my cold dead hands.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
How is locking somebody up for a full year in a prison cell because they do not give up the encryption key, claiming they don't know it, other than torture?
In short, how is it different?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has already ruled you can't be forced to give out an encryption key.
It's nice having a Bill of Rights, ain't it?
Laugh at all the British who say such a thing is unnecessary.
Two things to bear in mind... (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, this doesn't mean that the police can come and demand your encryption keys at any time. This isn't the US, where the police can kick your door in at any time for any reason, just because they feel like having a look at your stuff and maybe relieving you of a few high-value items. If they're looking for an encryption key, it's pretty much going to be because they've already had a warrant to search your property. It really *is* no different to being forced to hand over the key to the basement dungeon where you keep your step-daughter - chances are that they already know what they're looking for and where to look for it.
Of course, if you don't feel like handing it over, you can always say you left it on a bus, or in a taxi, or you posted it somewhere and it was never seen again...
So what's worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I'm the defendant, I'm simply going to assess which is worse:
1. The punishment you'll get for not divulging your encryption key
2. The punishment you'll get when you divulge your encryption key and they find 18 gigs of child porn on your computer
Depending on the encrypte data in question, the decision whether to divulge your key could an easy one.
Re:Fuck the British equivalent of Homeland securit (Score:5, Insightful)
Our country doesn't make the same promises about liberty in a single document which all our countrymen regard as some kind of holy scripture. It is the American attitude of how you are all in the "land of freedom, better than all other nations in every way" that makes your massive overreaction to one terrorist attack so ironic. It's like a kid vowing to never go back to school again because a bully once stole his lunch money.
I don't mean any disrespect to those who died in 9/11, but people are dying all the time from accidents, disease and natural disaster. Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb. If you go around spending billions attacking everyone that you feel slightly threatened by, you'll end up in financial meltdown... oh, wait...
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
A warranted police search of your meth lab does not require any consent on your side - that's what the warrant is for. they will just break down the door and go on with the search.
same with the safe in your lab: you can either give the police the code for your safe, or refuse and watch them breaking it.
Why is your encryption key any different from the safe/door you have?
Physical = digital? (Score:5, Insightful)
An encryption key is separate from a physical key, because no one can reliably prove if I still have it or not. Physical keys I may have hidden or swallowed can be found or the locks picked open. But for strong encryption, this is not feasible and the defendant might very well have forgotten the passphrase and never remember it.
What will They do when the defendant claims to have forgotten their key? (capital "They" intentional for Them being Orwellian monsters) - No one can ever prove or disprove that the passphrase still exists in the defendants brain cells, not the accuser and not the accused.
And then? Sleep deprivation? Torture? Guilty unless proven innocent? In dubio contra reo?
Releasing the defendant is under this view obviously unfeasible, because otherwise EVERY defendant would claim to have forgotten the passphrase, which would render this judicial scheme moot. But NOT releasing a possibly innocent defendant because they really have forgotten their passphrase - and no one knows whats inside the encrypted files - is a serious crime in itself.
I doubt there's a possible solution to this problem. Keeping people in prison for even one day because of abstract words that *possibly* exist in their minds (and only there) is pretty laughable - and pretty dangerous.
Something that no human and no machine can reliably prove or disprove cannot be the basis of a prison sentence. In the Western civilized society after the Renaissance era anyway.
Also, this is stuff from the darkest dystopian novels and can be misused in thousands of ways. We've all heard rumors about cops who place contraband in a defendants pocket or house. But that takes at least physical access to a contraband item.
But encryption keys that may not even exist anywhere? It is ridiculously easy to incriminate people that way, say for example to create a file containing several megabytes from /dev/random. Name it "pre-teen_volume_320.7z" and send it via mail to the defendant with a fake note "here's the 320th delivery of your stuff, you pervert and the password is the same as last time. the photos of your kids were nice, too".
And then? No one can distinguish between random data and well-encrypted data. No one can prove the defendant does NOT know the "password" to this "encrypted" file. Will They let them go or will they be imprisoned and tortured forever until they "remember" the nonexisting password or simply confess to having had intercourse with the devil?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
*cough*Gitmo*cough*
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we'll laugh at them as soon as we're through laughing at the US for letting their bill of rights be trampled in the name of security.
Freedom must not only be won, it must be protected. Fail to do so and what's coming to you is solely your own fault.
Re:a difference (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't worry, I made backups for you, just like everyone else on the internet.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
You think nobody's ever confessed to something they didn't do under torture?
I'd say a false confession qualifies as "making up sh*t"
Don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Your logic is flawed, my locking/hiding the door to my dungeon where I keep my daughter is to stop me incrimincating myself by her being found. ALL criminals hide data from the sight of others to stop them from showing their criminal activities.
If you accept that the police under the rules of law can demand access to things then this includes digital data. I have always been loath to see the internet and computers in general as some kind of new world where we can have a different set of rules. If I can be ordered to hand over my swiss bank account number (just a number for a service) then so can I be ordered to hand over the key to my encrypted files.
If you want to change it, chance ALL the laws related to the gathering of evidence. No cyber laws, just laws.
Re:Physical = digital? (Score:3, Insightful)
Self-incrimination defence - not the brightest? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps this was the crux of the problem, they used a defence of suggesting if they hand it over it would be self-incriminating?
Wouldn't a better defence have been to suggest that the data encrypted was entirely irrelevant to the case. Wouldn't it then be up to the police to actually do some police work and prove otherwise?
By using a self-incrimination defence it's effectively admitting, yeah you've got some data that's evidence locked up but you're not handing it over. Surely it's better to simply just deny the encrypted data is relevant to the case or even that you've no idea what that encrypted data is. Hell, claim it's your own personal copyrighted works or some trade secrets and get them to prove to a court either that it's not or that they need access to said private content. I'd have thought both of these would put the burden on the police to do police work in an ideal scenario.
That said, Labour's totalitarian regime doesn't follow the ideal scenario mindset and innocent until proven guilty means nothing anymore so I guess either way these people were screwed.
If the people are guilty then it's great they've been caught, but the way they go about reach the goal is entirely unacceptable and comes down to one thing - the police are too damn lazy to actually do any police work nowadays. It's all about abusing various laws and technologies Labour has handed them which they really shouldn't have.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, I'm A UK citizen and on my last visit to the US (september 2007) I had my fingerprint scanned. So the US is also using biometric scanning of visitors.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone sent encrypted files to the Home Secretary once, which included details of a crime (reported by someone outside the UK). I expect it was driving over the speed limit or littering or something minor, but even so they could then genuinely inform the police that he home secretary had an encrypted email detailing a crime.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm, you must be American or you have never travelled to America. "Mandatory biometric scanning" would include taking your fingerprints or a photograph? Both have been in place for visitors to America for years now: "US-VISIT".
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice having a Bill of Rights, ain't it?
Laugh at all the British who say such a thing is unnecessary.
Who are all these British who say such a thing?
Britain has got a 'Bill of Rights': the Human Rights Act [opsi.gov.uk], which guarantees free speech, right to a fair trial (including the right not to incriminate oneself), etc, etc. This act formally enshrines rights that we've had under common law for centuries (eg, Habeas Corpus).
The fact that this court (not the highest in the land, mind) has chosen to interpret an encryption key as not covered under the right not to self-incriminate does not alter the fact that we also have constitutional rights.
So laugh away at your mythical British who say they don't need anything like the Bill of Rights.
Disclaimer: I think Britain is royally fucked anyway.
add Obstruction of Justice to the charges then (Score:2, Insightful)
"A warranted police search of your meth lab does not require any consent on your side - that's what the warrant is for. they will just break down the door and go on with the search."
That's true, but....
If my door was two inches thick steel and required an hour or so with a cutting torch to open...
Then you'd be looking at obstruction of justice, disobeying a lawful order, and destruction of evidence because they ain't finding a damn thing after two hours.
Re:So what's worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a genuine distinction between passphrases and other information they might want you to reveal.
This is not a distinction that should ever come into play however. Punishing a person for not doing something that might be completely impossible for them to do is wrong.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:1, Insightful)
*cough* not citizens *cough*
Re:Fingerprint (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is safe to assume they will make a copy of your HD. Your thumb 'trick' is a great way to get screwed for attempting to destroy evidence or something like that.
Lords will overrule (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how many of the draconian, rights-reducing laws drawn up by democratically elected representatives get knocked back by the House of Lords, an un-elected body.
The Lords can alter Bills before Parliament, but are also the last appeal court (before going to the European Court of Human Rights).
Let's hear it for a benevolent oligarchy!
Re:Fingerprint (Score:3, Insightful)
The first thing a computer forensics person would do is take one or more copies of your hard drive and work from that - for the very reason you were talking about, in case there's some logic bomb they don't defuse.
So you wipe the files, they make another copy from their backup, waterboard you for a while, and try again :)
Re:Fuck the British equivalent of Homeland securit (Score:5, Insightful)
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
anyways don't more people die every year due to NUTS than terrorism?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Something you know" isn't what counts when it comes to protecting you from self incrimination; it is whether the "something you know" is incriminating you.
This leads to an interesting idea. Claim that you passphrase is a confession. If you plan ahead, you can even make that claim true. Encrypt your plan to assassinate the president with "I plan to assassinate the president OV:}A7MC".
In every country ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately most people fail to see the connection between lists and any danger. The lists are being made to influence people who speaking out against the ones in power. But most people fail to see the danger of giving the power seekers ever more data to mine on everyone. Knowledge is power and the ones in power seek the use that knowledge to prevent people standing against their point of view.
With ever more detailed lists on peoples views, soon we end up with people fearful of what they say on the phone and in emails, for fear of their views could even just risk being taken out of context and in any way critical of the people in power. At that point, the ones in power are influencing people directly.
At that point, we live in a police state, where freedom is gone and replaced by fear of the ones in power. Problem is, we are getting there now, and from here on out, its simply a matter of consolidation of ever more detailed data mining. The central reason why centuries ago votes were made in secret, was to prevent the ones in power, from seeking to influence the voters. Yet the power seekers are forever seeking to game the system to gain ever more information on peoples opinions. Now the ones in power are building automated systems to influence people.
Throughout history its been shown time and time again that the ones in power become ever more corrupt over time without any feedback on how they are behaving. Its been show so many times through history.
Most people don't realise the game people in power are playing. People in power are not so interested in individuals. The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
The lessons of history have not been learned by enough people. Looks like the world is seeking to repeat the mistakes of the past. Freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain. Its just a matter of time and how far we are going to let them all game the system to push the excesses ever more unfairly in their favour. After all, its not as if they are robbing hundreds of billions of tax payers money to keep their rich lifestyles while millions risk loosing everything.
Anyway, if the millions of people can't buy bread, then let them eat cake.
The world will never change until everyone worldwide realises that people who constantly seek power over others have a recognisable cluster B personality disorder. All cluster B personality disorders are ultimately driven by fear. And the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear. (There are multiple fears, two examples are lack of a
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the difference between refusing to turn over an encryption key and refusing to let the police in your house when they have a valid search warrant.
It is much more like refusing to tell the police where in your house the contraband is hidden, or if there is contraband at all, and being put in jail because of your refusal.
Re:a difference (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh dear, did AC insult your invisible girlfriend?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
I gotta disagree there. In the article it states:
>>>In its ruling, the appeals court said an encryption key is no different than a physical key and exists separately from a person's will.
If a presumed-innocent person drops an actual key into a hole-in-the-ground, and refuses to divulge its location, the police can't incarcerate him simply because he refuses to say where it's located. That's loss of liberty without due process. They have to let him go.
And they can't use torture to try to force the hidden location out of him either. The man might be completely innocent and have no clue where a key exists, and therefore unable to reveal the location, even under threat of one year imprisonment.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to grossly miss a point: a password might easily be really forgotten. Ever happened to you?
How would you, as a lawmaker, fairly address this situation?
Put everyone in jail, just to be sure to catch the deceitful villain, too?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can be forced to testify to things that indicate you committed a crime, you just can't be made to incriminate yourself.
The difference is subtle but one part of it is that a judge can give you immunity for your testimony, e.g., tell us X and we promise not to use it to prosecute you, and then you can no longer refuse on 5th ammendment grounds since it would no longer incriminate you.
Thus while this is a neat idea it wouldn't work. The prosecution would just offer you immunity for the contents of your passphrase but not the data it unlocks. Well in the US, but in the US you might not have to reveal the passphrase anyway.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
It's just a power grab.
1:Encrypted data can be hidden within random data.
2:Encrypted data can be hidden within normal data such as the least significant bit of your family photos.
3:Encrypted data can be hidden on a seemingly "empty" drive.
4:It is impossible to prove with certainty any of the above situations as opposed to 1:the data actually being random, 2:there being no data hidden within the normal data, 3: a drive really bing empty.
5:If the police think you have encrypted data you must give up the key or go to jail.
Result:If you live in the UK and own any form of electronic storage you can be jailed at at time.
Re:In every country ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I've had some more time to think about this news, (and adding this password news to the news about them wanting access to every phone call and email etc..., then its occured to me, how long will it be, before we have to send our passwords to the government, whenever we send an email containing a password protected file?
(You can probably guess today, I've finally sadly had enough of living in a growing police state, I once knew as England).
Afghanistan in Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan openly supported Al Queda training camps used to prepare for the 9/11 attacks. The original Bush Doctrine (you know, before there were 30 of them [wikipedia.org]) stated (more or less) that a government that supported a terrorist organization is as illegitimate at the terrorist organization itself. This was a Good Reason for removing the Taliban, and indeed we did so with strong support [wikipedia.org] from the civilized world. (After 2001, of course, we threw logic out the window, but that's a different tale.)
By your logic, spending money to find a cure for a rare disease is "pretty dumb", since a lot more people die from other causes. I believe that your logic is faulty. It makes sense to address all of the causes of harm, as cash permits. To a person of my Libertarianesque perspective, that means the causes for which people are willing to spend their own cash, of course - including cash taken in taxes - but not my grandchildren's cash. A government that is trillions of dollars in debt ought to be horsewhipped and put on a very tight budget until they pay their debts - but again, that's a different tale.
Re:Too bad you can't resist. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be ridiculous. The problem isn't that people can't resist, the problem is that they don't. They don't care. Giving every person in the UK a gun is not going to change anything.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
"New" Labour, Old Communist party
Yes, keep on using this term "communist" willy nilly. It lets you tar any lefties at the same time as you tar the repressive policies of Labour. New labour are in social and economic policies a centrist-right party, very far from "socialist" or "communist".
Their policies on detention, warrantless searches, etc. are, however, quite repressive.
Since they protect the status quo and the interest of the wealthy, they are far more facist than communist.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the passphrase is the incriminating data.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
This equation is true all over the world.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:1, Insightful)
A subpoena ad testificandum orders a person to testify before the ordering authority or face punishment.
... unless such testimony would incriminate them.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah it is. We've had one since 1689 and we've had the Magna Carta since 1215.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also about avoiding catch-22s. The problem with requiring self incrimination is it can lead to a situation where they can lock people up for no reason. They charge you with a crime and say "Confess to this crime," you say "I didn't do it," they say "Refusal to testify against yourself is against the law, we are going to lock you up until you confess." So that is one important reason for the 5th amendment, it avoids situations like that.
Well encryption keys fall in that category. There are three important cases I can think of:
1) You forgot the password. This happens. I deal with many password reset requests a year and this is for computer/e-mail accounts that people use on a regular basis. If these people can't remember that, I find it extremely reasonable to assume they'd forget the password to an encryption volume they don't often use. Well, if you can go to jail for refusing to disclose your key, then you can go to jail for being forgetful.
2) A file that isn't yours. Your computer gets hacked, or someone you know uses it without your permission. Whatever the case, an encrypted file gets stuck on your computer that isn't yours. You can't had over the key, you don't know it. However there's no way to prove that so you go to jail.
3) Random data. Good crypto is nice and random. You can't distinguish it from other random or pseudo random noise. So you have a random file on your computer, or maybe just random data that there is a deleted file record for (as in there was a legit file there, it got deleted, it's space has now been overwritten by garbage). You can't prove it isn't encrypted data so you go to jail.
So I see encryption keys as very relevant under 5th amendment protection. We do not want a catch-22 situation where police can lock you up indefinitely just because they find something that looks encrypted.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of things were lost when the use of the SSN was required in order to participate in the financial system. Interestingly enough, when the system was brought about, people protested that very thing and it was written into law that the SSN could only be used for the purposes of tracking your social security account. The IRS ignored it (though you can request a tax ID) employers ignore it, banks ignore it, the whole system ignores it.
This isn't technology at play. It's something else.
Now you can't have a normal life without participating in this system; without allowing your transactions to be tracked.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah right, its all the victims fault. (Score:0, Insightful)
"Fail to do so and what's coming to you is solely your own fault."
Really? You don't think its the fault of the person who goes on to commit what ever injustice against the victim?
So you're saying, for example, a robbery is the house owners fault for not locking his door? The robber is some sort of force of nature that bares no responsibility?
Is that really what you mean or have you just not thought you statement through.
Plausible deniability (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why it's far better to create hidden, encrypted containers, using Truecrypt's plausible deniability. If the cops see your whole HD is encrypted, it's pretty obvious, and they will want to see what's on it because then they start suspecting you have something to hide. But if you have a file called C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\kb2357334.dat which is in fact a hidden Truecrypt volume, first they'd have to find the file, and then think that it may be encrypted, which is a chance in a million, so you're so much safer.
Well, there's just this one tiny detail ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people don't realise the game people in power are playing. People in power are not so interested in individuals. The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
Now replace "the people in power" with "everyone". Give a few days thought for the very obvious but highly non-trivial fact that you yourself are part of "the people in power", and how you, nor anyone else, will do better.
Because let's not kid ourselves. The more "progressive" a government, the more it progressed in the UK in placing surveillance. This is not to say the tories did not do it too.
They did it less, and that's all we can hope for in the real world.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lords will overrule (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing how many of the draconian, rights-reducing laws drawn up by democratically elected representatives get knocked back by the House of Lords, an un-elected body.
The reason the elected people are more problem is because quite frankly most people aren't educated enough to vote properly. The house of Lords don't have to answer to half-wits who believe in the "if you have nothing to hide" ideology.
Sure they could abuse that power but luckily they've proven to generally be a sensible bunch and I think that's why the government has been trying to destroy the house of Lords and make their positions electable by the public as well.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Afghanistan in Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Your suggestion that the war in afghanistan is popular worldwide is ridiculous. It's unfortunate, but that's the truth.
Yes it's given lip-service of supposedly being more "just" (what does just mean in this age of postmodernism ? In "modern" times it meant that Christianity was in a better position after the war, which is the doctrine (wars for ideology) that built the world we live in. What does a "just" war mean in a world without meaning (=postmodernism) ? Nothing. All wars are just. All wars are unjust. It's just a fashion, a feeling, nothing more, which boils down to "wars that benefit me financially or politically are just, the rest are unjust"). But support ? It has no support.
Not a single "American" war has any real support in Europe (outside of, ironically, Turkey and the ex-USSR states, even though both have radically different reasons for the popular support)
The sad thing is, if the USSR had lasted 10 more years (perhaps even a mere 2 years), the taliban would have been exterminated to the last man. As soon as the Russians realize this trivial truth, the USSR will (I think) resurrect itself.
The real problem is deeper for the American republic. Just like the problem was deeper for the Roman republic before it. Obama, imho, plays the role of Catiline [wikipedia.org].
Europe hates America because America is living proof that the "democrat-social" states of Western Europe are at best suboptimal, and probably doomed to succomb to the social part of their states, and America appears not to be. An essential part of the "social" ideology is that everybody is a socialist, and those that aren't are really criminals. Therefore America, and any war they're involved in, is criminal.
Obama's popularity in Europe comes from his promise to change America into an equally doomed "social" "democracy" (which will obviously neither be social, nor democratic).
It has nothing whatsoever to do with who attacked who and who is "guilty".
Re:Afghanistan in Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
You advocate waiting them out, and that has worked thus far with a pretty darned significant list of anti-democracy types. Not with Libya, though - they settled down only after a bombing run that killed Khadafi's daughter (among 45 military and 15 civilian casualties) - similar to option 2 above. It also failed most notably in the prelude to WWII, as has been endlessly rehashed over the past 7 years, so there are no guarantees.
You call the cold war "waiting out" the USSR ? I want what you're smoking. I suppose it looked more like waiting from a large distance. The US wasn't "waiting" on the USSR at all, but constantly fighting, and winning most (but not all) fights.
Sometimes with dubious allies, constant battles, some won, some lost (even though it's a lie that the US ever supported Bin Laden, it is true that the US supported the once-existing "secular" wing of the taliban, which wasn't all that secular, but at least opposed to islam's jihad. They were massacred by the rest (as islam dictates, muslims who refuse to "fight, kill and die" for jihad are to be executed), and only the terrorists remain, having killed all the others)
The ain't no escape from a hole in the ground (Score:3, Insightful)
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No they don't.
The procedure is the same:
The judge will decide whether the demand for the key is legitimate. The judge will decide whether it is reasonable to believe you can produce it.
That is "due process."
If his answer to both questions is "Yes" then you can either cough up the key or reconsider your options from inside a 6x8 cell.
Re:Well, there's just this one tiny detail ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The word "progressive" is a PR way of implying improvement and governments are getting very good at using PR to manipulate perceptions. The goal of any "improvement" is simply an improvement for the ones in power, to gain a greater control over the ones they seek to lead. They consider more control an improvement. Ultimately its about Cluster B Personality Disorders and how they behave. They relentlessly seek power over others. Normal people do not seek power so relentlessly, not matter what the people who seek power say or even think. Because people who seek power, think others are like them and so assume they think the same way as them. People who seek power fear the loss of power and constantly seek to gain ever more power. Over time, they bias things ever further in their faviour. This pattern of behaviour has been shown throughout history.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't announce properly they have a search warrant, you can shoot them. You also have a right to refuse to unlock doors. They have a right to get a locksmith. The problem with encrypted data is almost no entity (unless you're the NSA) has a locksmith.
Re:Fuck the British equivalent of Homeland securit (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah right, because french people are so open minded when it comes to influences themself?
The French have a cultural inferiority complex regarding anything from the Anglosphere. They feel that the French language and culture deserve the same recognition on the World stage as the Anglo-Saxon language and culture. They can be amazingly hypocritical at times -- our actions as the "world cop" don't even come close to the atrocities committed by the French in Algeria or Vietnam. I do always find it amusing that they accuse us of imperialism while forgetting about their own history though.
Oh, and they talked about how Europe, china (?) and especially japan needed the oil from the middle east region much more than USA but didn't helped to keep it political stable and keep the oil flowing.
This is the part that amuses me the most. We get most of our oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Keeping the Middle East stable is less for our benefit and more for the benefit of the countries that you mentioned. Funny how people never that.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether this is good or bad will depend on your viewpoint, but there's nothing inherently ludicrous about legally requiring people to remember things, or to make sure they have the relevant information stored somewhere should they be asked to produce it.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now days if, for example, the entire population of new york fought against the US army the whole place could be turned into a blackened crater in the space of a few hours
What makes you think the US Army would go along with turning an American state into a 'blackened crater'?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a regular protester at any events or anything like that, but I'd rather be shot for defending my freedom than live to see it gone.
But that's not how it works nowadays, is it? By and large you're not going to be given the chance to martyr yourself for liberty. You just get to watch basic freedoms slowly erode away while most people don't give a damn. Your options are either to try to effect change through the political system (good luck with that, you godless nihilist), to start an outright armed revolt (good luck with that, you godless terrorist) or to simply quietly secede and disregard the authority of "your" government to rule you. The last option will pretty much inevitably lead you into conflict with law enforcement, and ultimately you'll be faced with either giving up or taking up arms (good luck with that, you godless nutcase).
So either you're quiet and no-one notices or you're loud and your actions are used to further justify the need for increasingly draconian law enforcement.
Re:Plausible deniability (Score:1, Insightful)
Not really, as a reasonably intelligent person would do one of two things first or both: search for recently modified files or produce a list of files sorted by size. Unless you do take the time to split encrypted volumes across files and afterwards set artificial timestamps, you're going to get tagged. Another thing I would do is produced a list of files sorted by full path and filenames and just filenames, because a person will need a system to easily remember where they left the volume files, if they split them. There are still ways to make this a little more difficult but for someone who is used to looking for such things, you would leave clues, even in the applications you use. You have to have decryption software installed or on external storage. After which I will ask first politely for the encryption key. Don't want to talk? Let's just say you would want to.
The way to hide encrypted information is in a "free" area of the disk, using a partition and filesystem that is laid out much different than others (like putting partition/filesytem information at the end of the area). But when the investigator sees a "huge" area of unallocated disk, he's going to wonder still. But you will still need software to access the information. There's a lot here to unpack. Maybe using a website to temporarily pulling down the software (like a java app), then securely clear your cache, cookie, etc.
The point is your method would leave breadcrumbs, and if I needed access to secure information for some reason and wanted to waste my time with you, you would give up the access. Ruthless, yes. But you shouldn't try to play with the big boys unless you are one. It's like some punk gang member trying to steal drugs from the mob; he just thinks he's a badass.
Me personally, I would secure my information as best I could conviently and leave it at that. I have nothing to hide that the government couldn't find out on it's own.
Re:In every country ... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, not all people in power, but there is a disproportionate amount of them, that seek higher levels of power. Politics acts a natural selection process, acting on the ones seeking to fight for power over others.
"2. We can never trust those in power because to get there they had to have this disorder and became corrupt as a part of the process."
No, but many of them do bias power in their favor at the expense of fairness. The process of seeking power over someone else, in other words, the power to dictate terms to someone else, means that person seeks to push others lower than them.
You show very extreme thinking. Taking things to extremes and then thinking the extreme must be wrong. Its not so extreme. Its far more subtle.
"Where do you people come from? I'll tell me what makes me sick. It's the people like yourself who see ghosts around every corner"
Its blind fools like you, who let these people get away with it all, for so long that, when its finally bad enough for even you to see, then by that time, its too late to stop them. The harm by then, is already done. Try reading some history, if you fail to see the nature of power seeking. I can assure you many of the most successful politicians definitely study political history. They study for years to learn how to gain power and influence over others.
"Face the facts, there will always be corruption and abuse of power. But there will ALSO always be those who don't, or simply through checks and balances mitigate the abuse of power."
Yes there will always be corruption and abuse of power. Thats why people need to defend democracy and stop these people undermining it for their own gain. Also who writes the laws?
"As a people it's our responsibility to speak out (wow amazing that you can even post like this in such a corrupt abusive country isn't it?)"
We can post now, yes. But not in the future, the way its heading, not without repercussions. Freedom and democracy are getting undermined almost continously these days.
"imaginary vast conspiracies"
Be a fool, you'll only have yourself to blame, in the long run. Or try learning about Cluster B disorders and history before you stick your head in the sand and say nothings is happening. If nothing is happening, then what do you call this Slashdot news article?. If this was 50 years ago, people would have been utterly shocked at this news. Now we are suppose to just accept it?
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
So your solution to this is to force everyone use easy-to-remember passwords or it's go straight to jail.
That's thoughtcrime.
Re:Afghanistan in Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like you to consider that the UK and France both at one time in their history went around the world "fixing" problems with guns the way the Americans do now, and have a broader and more experienced historical view of the results. Think "Africa".
Also, looking at American life from the outside, I don't believe jealousy really covers how I feel about the racism, segregation, social apathy and wealth disparity I see. If anything, looking at how America has turned out as a global experiment probably makes most countries want to be more socialist, not less.
Re:Fuck the British equivalent of Homeland securit (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb.
That is blatantly unfair. We are not wasting all the money we have. We don't have nearly that much money - We're wasting money we don't have.
Re:So anyone want to do this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
How does the OS know which blocks are not okay to write to?
Re:Plausible deniability (Score:1, Insightful)
Unless they can compel blizzard to provide the full source to the program, they cant prove which files are or are not part of the program's resources.
Ah, one of the few benefits of proprietary software lockdown.
Obviously you've never heard of File Advisor [bit9.com] nor of the National Software Reference Library [nist.gov] They may not have it today, but check back tomorrow.
Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? Did they have access to the US counts if they wished to prove they were, in fact, citizens?
The minute there exists a subclass of people who do not have the constitutional right of access to a court, all the government has to do is assert that you are a member of that subclass and you have no way to prove you're not, because, hey, no access to the courts.
Are people really so stupid to let people be imprisoned without any sort of judicial oversight, just because of a government-claimed attribute?
Of course, there's actually nothing in the bill of rights about it apply to citizens only. The bill of rights actually applies to the government and restricts it from doing things.