Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password; Judge orders woman to...

Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password.

-- Tom

 

Re: Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password

How would they prove that she hadn't forgotten it? Being arrested is stressful. Maybe she had a minor stroke. Maybe ...

 

Re: Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password

If even the judge rules in their favor. The warrant doesn't extend to knowledge in her head. At best they could charge her with contempt of court and fine her.

 

Re: Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password

Perfect reason for either a dummy OS a' la' TC's Hidden OS, or better yet, a sacrificial one with no pre boot authentication at all. "I don't know what that second partition is, I used some Acronis secure something or other when I installed Windows"....through her lawyer, of course. Terrorism...bah! Hahaha.

P

 

Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_new...rders-woman-to-give-up-password-to-hard-drive

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

Yeah, just read it on TrueCrypt's forum. She has immunity, I don't know how this would have played out if she hadn't. Still not good though. Federal contempt is 18 months apparently. It was PGP, as reported on TC. A second poster there mentioned a time expiry option, where if you hadn't entered it in a week, lets say, on power up, it would wipe. Knowing that a copy would me made to work on, I don't know exactly how you could work that, but if it could be implemented to wipe no matter what (as in, there's nothing you could do about it, period) that would be neat.

PD

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

Overturned on appeal in 3-----2-----1. This will be overturned.

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

I would use what I term the 'Oliver North' approach: "Sorry your honor, I can't seem to recall my password."

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives.

-- Tom

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

It would require some hardware modifications, an internal power source, and quite a bit of work. A lot of PC cabinets have a tamper switch that detects when they're opened. If that switch was used to activate a small OS contained on an internal flash drive that ran something like D-Ban in an automatic mode....

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

On Private Keys and the Fifth Amendment - Aspen Monster

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

This example shows why people should use a Truecrypt hidden volume
http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

I have said this many times on the forums: DENY DENY DENY!

Judge: Give the password!
You: I don't know the password! It was very long and I forgot it.
Judge: Well... Darn it.

I for one can't see how this even got passed the judge any ways. The Fifth Amendment (as far as the supreme court is concerned) bars the court from your MIND. As the password is in your mind how can they possibly force you to turn it over?

I'm prepared for it though. I use a 100 Char. password with ~60 chars. memorized and the rest auto-typed in by a Yubi-Key. If a judge tells me to turn over the password I will say "sure here you go, oh and by the way the rest of it is on my yubi-key which I lost". No way to get it cause I don't know the remaining chars. Also a plus is I can destroy the yubikey in seconds rendering my data unrecoverable.

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

allways use your right to remain silent, that is way it is there

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

Defendant Ordered To Decrypt Laptop Claims She Had Forgotten Password.

-- Tom

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

Ugh. I hate the world >_>

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

"Innocent until proven guilty" is just a fantasy for USA.

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

So are our basic freedoms lol

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

agreed

 

Re: Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password

"Woman Ordered to Decrypt Laptop Claims She "Forgot" Key
Posted 02/06/2012 at 2:56pm

After being ordered to provide the decryption code for her laptop last month, a Colorado is claiming that she no-longer remembers the key. The laptop belonging to Ramona Fricosu was seized as part of a mortgage fraud case in 2010. The government has spent the last few years working to force her to decrypt the hard drive, claiming that doing so would not violate her 5th Amendment right not to incriminate herself.

“It’s very possible to forget passwords,” said Philip Dubois, attorney to Fricosu. “It’s not clear to me she was the one who set up the encryption on this drive. I don’t know if she will be able to decrypt it.” This case has been a complicated one, as the Supreme Court has never ruled on the status of digital encryption as it pertains to the 5th Amendment. Fricosu has until the end of the month to comply with the ruling, at which time she will be found in contempt if she does not."

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/woman_ordered_decrypt_laptop_claims_she_forgot_key

 

Re: Feds Want Judge to Force Suspect to Give Up Laptop Password

I have been following this case closely. This will provide an interesting twist to the legal mix. There is no way to prove/know if she is refusing to comply or if she would be willing to --- > except for the memory loss.

It seems obvious to us as to what she is doing. Legally though, can a person be held responsible for memory loss? Stay tuned on this case because its going to get interesting if she holds her ground.

I believe there may be some "show of power" from the bench but she'll never do the 18 months pure contempt of court would dictate. She may never see one day behind bars.

 

Re: Judge orders woman to give up password to hard drive

But can't they tell that you have been opening it?

 

On a WDE system disk (using TrueCrypt) there is no way to know when the machine was booted last or how often. Every sector of the drive is encrypted except for the small bootloader section.

This particular case involves PGP but the principle is the same.

By having the OS encrypted the "metadata" and system tracks cannot be viewed without the PBA access credentials.

In fact if you remove the bootloader (I am a TC long time user) and wipe/zero that small area on the disk you would not even know the disk wasn't just randomly wiped hardware.

This case is beyond that though. Her attorney told the judge she forgot the password. That means its encrypted with an OS but she forgot the access credentials.

 

Oh okay I see. That makes sense. Thanks.

 

While true, in theory if they had snapshots of your HDD over a period of time they could compare the random data to prove it had "changed". it wouldn't show what's on it, but would prove you know the password. Then again, no normal case would involve such measures.