Hand Over Your Keys Or Else.

phreaks wrote:


Hmm, you seem to be awfully aware of the various methods, are you one of those hardened criminals the article was speaking about that this law will protect us from?

No. What I want to point out is they're wasting taxpayer's money to create law that is not technically enforcible.

Think of the safe example, what if the owner give the police the safe's key, but refuse to tell you where the safe is hiding in? Granted the safe could be found with the aid of trained dogs and enough manforce, they might eventally find the safe. But for encrypted documents, there are thousands different method to do encryption (including those low-tech tricks like throwing lots of meaningless characters in the passage then do ROT-whatever on extended-ASCII code bases after encrypting it). And for each known encryption methods, slightly tweaking/adding additional parameter would create different encryption/decryption result, so God knows how many ways exist for encrypting things. If the criminal/suspect remain silence about the encryption method, I don't think the police can find enough people/resources to find out how to decrypt it.

I don't think I can outsmart those people, if I can think of these, I bet they also can.

dahat,

I'm saying though that even before those amendments were passed, Constitutionally, you needed a legally permissible ground to prevent someone to stop voting.

Go beyond thinking of the "white male landowners" that wrote the Constitution, and start thinking of the social and legal framework that existed when the Constitution was written. It would be irrational to expect the framers to act outside the legal framework of the society they lived in.

As I tried to describe, in each case someone was not included in the vote, there was a specific legal reason. Whether being indentured, or something else. (a woman as I said was the legal responsibility of the husband)

The constitutional amendments that passed later basically codified this to mean what we now term "universal suffrage"

cheong wrote:



phreaks wrote:  Hmm, you seem to be awfully aware of the various methods, are you one of those hardened criminals the article was speaking about that this law will protect us from?

No. What I want to point out is they're wasting taxpayer's money to create law that is not technically enforcible.

Think of the safe example, what if the owner give the police the safe's key, but refuse to tell you where the safe is hiding in? Granted the safe could be found with the aid of trained dogs and enough manforce, they might eventally find the safe. But for encrypted documents, there are thousands different method to do encryption (including those low-tech tricks like throwing lots of meaningless characters in the passage then do ROT-whatever on extended-ASCII code bases after encrypting it). And for each known encryption methods, slightly tweaking/adding additional parameter would create different encryption/decryption result, so God knows how many ways exist for encrypting things. If the criminal/suspect remain silence about the encryption method, I don't think the police can find enough people/resources to find out how to decrypt it.

I don't think I can outsmart those people, if I can think of these, I bet they also can.

I was only kidding around with you. I mostly agree with your sentiment.

brian.shapiro wrote:

dahat,

I'm saying though that even before those amendments were passed, Constitutionally, you needed a legally permissible ground to prevent someone to stop voting.

Go beyond thinking of the "white male landowners" that wrote the Constitution, and start thinking of the social and legal framework that existed when the Constitution was written. It would be irrational to expect the framers to act outside the legal framework of the society they lived in.

As I tried to describe, in each case someone was not included in the vote, there was a specific legal reason. Whether being indentured, or something else.

The constitutional amendments that passed later basically codified this to mean what we now term "universal suffrage"

Yup, hence the Bill of Rights, et al.

I take offense to Dahat implying that I read up on the founding fathers, when he can't even put their fundamental intentions into context.

phreaks wrote:



brian.shapiro wrote: dahat, I'm saying though that even before those amendments were passed, Constitutionally, you needed a legally permissible ground to prevent someone to stop voting. Go beyond thinking of the "white male landowners" that wrote the Constitution, and start thinking of the social and legal framework that existed when the Constitution was written. It would be irrational to expect the framers to act outside the legal framework of the society they lived in. As I tried to describe, in each case someone was not included in the vote, there was a specific legal reason. Whether being indentured, or something else. The constitutional amendments that passed later basically codified this to mean what we now term "universal suffrage"

Yup, hence the Bill of Rights, et al.

I take offense to Dahat implying that I read up on the founding fathers, when he can't even put their intentions into context.

But context isn't law.  We can debate all day about what they were thinking, but when it comes to getting arrested, or being able to vote, it is only the law that matters.

ScanIAm wrote:



But context isn't law.  We can debate all day about what they were thinking, but when it comes to getting arrested, or being able to vote, it is only the law that matters.

Intent is taken into consideration by judges when they interpret law.

brian.shapiro wrote:



ScanIAm wrote:  But context isn't law.  We can debate all day about what they were thinking, but when it comes to getting arrested, or being able to vote, it is only the law that matters.

Intent is taken into consideration by judges when they interpret law.

And that's why we can debate it.  It's also why we have various courts that do the same.  But you're going to be very disappointed if you try argue the nuances of, for example, DUI law with the officer that arrests you.  Even worse, if you are turned away at the voting booth, you have very little recourse.

Judges take into account matters that might affect the livelyhood of the accused (or the accuser), but in the case of voting issues, it takes something similar to a civil suit to get your point across.

No?

ScanIAm wrote:



phreaks wrote:  brian.shapiro wrote: dahat, I'm saying though that even before those amendments were passed, Constitutionally, you needed a legally permissible ground to prevent someone to stop voting. Go beyond thinking of the "white male landowners" that wrote the Constitution, and start thinking of the social and legal framework that existed when the Constitution was written. It would be irrational to expect the framers to act outside the legal framework of the society they lived in. As I tried to describe, in each case someone was not included in the vote, there was a specific legal reason. Whether being indentured, or something else. The constitutional amendments that passed later basically codified this to mean what we now term "universal suffrage" Yup, hence the Bill of Rights, et al. I take offense to Dahat implying that I read up on the founding fathers, when he can't even put their intentions into context.

But context isn't law.  We can debate all day about what they were thinking, but when it comes to getting arrested, or being able to vote, it is only the law that matters.

It is in the constitution and original intent is a consideration (if it can be deduced) in all Constitutional challenges.

See the Constitution Article 1 Sections 1 through 3.

Why do you think we have a consensus every ten years? Because it's mandated by the Constitution for reasons of apportioning representatives.

ScanIAm wrote:



And that's why we can debate it.  It's also why we have various courts that do the same.  But you're going to be very disappointed if you try argue the nuances of, for example, DUI law with the officer that arrests you.  Even worse, if you are turned away at the voting booth, you have very little recourse.

Judges take into account matters that might affect the livelyhood of the accused (or the accuser), but in the case of voting issues, it takes something similar to a civil suit to get your point across.

No?

And officers could also do something which has nothing to do with the written law and it would have the same effect and result.

We're agreed that it takes people protecting the legal intent of the Constitution for it to work.

But I think its harder for this to be overturned without the consent of the public than some will assume.

A lot of libertarians here might say thats exactly whats happened, but I would disagree with them, and thats another discussion.

Although it has become off-topic by now, allow me to go back to the problem of the forgotten decryption key.
I came very close to that a few weeks ago. We have to put a password on the harddisk in the BIOS. It didn´t give any warning about the password being wrong. When using it, it failed.
Turned out the format I used wasn´t correct.
It was thus:
I typed: Abcd12.Efgh34 (not really, but you get the picture).
However, as I found later, I could not use punctuation and 7 characters max. It was accepted and without any warning changed into dEfgh34. It took me some time to figure that out, going through all possibilities there were, especially because no one knew what the rules were, not even the maximum size.
I can imagine there might be people who would never come up with it and have their harddisk locked forever (over here, if you have this problem, they give you a new disk and put the old one out of use). They´d have to hope they get a judge or jury that understand the situation (I´d never gamble on that happening).

eblonk wrote:

Although it has become off-topic by now, allow me to go back to the problem of the forgotten decryption key.
I came very close to that a few weeks ago. We have to put a password on the harddisk in the BIOS. It didn´t give any warning about the password being wrong. When using it, it failed.
Turned out the format I used wasn´t correct.
It was thus:
I typed: Abcd12.Efgh34 (not really, but you get the picture).
However, as I found later, I could not use punctuation and 7 characters max. It was accepted and without any warning changed into dEfgh34. It took me some time to figure that out, going through all possibilities there were, especially because no one knew what the rules were, not even the maximum size.
I can imagine there might be people who would never come up with it and have their harddisk locked forever (over here, if you have this problem, they give you a new disk and put the old one out of use). They´d have to hope they get a judge or jury that understand the situation (I´d never gamble on that happening).

I've seen that happen before, too.  You should never be sloppy in your string manipulation coding, but it's especially important that you do things right when dealing with passcodes

I've never understood why a program would even limit the type of characters available for use as a passcode.  Some sites require numbers, others require special characters, or don't.  Just let your users use whatever characters they can type.  If you must limit them, limit it by the number of characters.

I wonder what happens if you lock up your stuff and throw away the key (literally or metaphorically) and wind up being asked to hand over the key. [Stupid as it sounds, bare with me as a theoretical exercise.]

Is it merely assumed that you have the key unless you can prove you don't? And how would you ever prove that you didn't have the key? "I forgot it"? [I realize this may be judged differently across countries, but anyway...]

There might be copies of the key (physical or virtual (even remembered)) and those copies might be spread on locations you know about (or not) - but how'd you prove unawareness of a fact? Polygraph or other lie detection mechanisms?

I suppose it becomes a somewhat generic legal question.

I have a question:

Suppose someone unknown email encrypted files to you through public relay, and said you can use the key that he told you previously to open it (but in fact you don't know the sender at all), then unfortunately some police happens to be authorized to search your house/company, and they found that email... of course you don't have the key, will you get into trouble?

Somehow I was thinking of the possibilities of this law to be used to get other company in trouble...

blowdart wrote:



cheong wrote: I have a question: Suppose someone unknown email encrypted files to you through public relay, and said you can use the key that he told you previously to open it (but in fact you don't know the sender at all), then unfortunately some police happens to be authorized to search your house/company, and they found that email... of course you don't have the key, will you get into trouble? Somehow I was thinking of the possibilities of this law to be used to get other company in trouble...

I know; that was one of the arguments against. One of the campaigners sent encrypted messages to a bunch of MPs then pointed out how liable they now were.

Why would a terrorist be compelled to hand over their keys anyway?
They are willing to cause mass destruction and accept whatever consequences... and ppl expect them to hand over their keys on threat of 5 years jail?

Terrorism as a term is being used as a tool to implement these types of legistlations, when really they will never be used against 'terrrorism'.

phreaks wrote:



blowdart wrote:  cheong wrote: I have a question: Suppose someone unknown email encrypted files to you through public relay, and said you can use the key that he told you previously to open it (but in fact you don't know the sender at all), then unfortunately some police happens to be authorized to search your house/company, and they found that email... of course you don't have the key, will you get into trouble? Somehow I was thinking of the possibilities of this law to be used to get other company in trouble... I know; that was one of the arguments against. One of the campaigners sent encrypted messages to a bunch of MPs then pointed out how liable they now were.

Why would a terrorist be compelled to hand over their keys anyway?
They are willing to cause mass destruction and accept whatever consequences... and ppl expect them to hand over their keys on threat of 5 years jail?

Terrorism as a term is being used as a tool to implement these types of legistlations, when really they will never be used against 'terrrorism'.

And the 'war on terrorism' is as likely to be won as the 'war on poverty' and the 'war on drugs'.

The interview, today, on Fresh Air (NPR) was with a lawyer defending prisoners in Gitmo as well as the lead counsel for the prosecution, Lt. McCarthy (??).  Anyway, between repeated mentions of 9/11, the Lt. made a point that "We didn't start the war, they did, and until they give up, it won't be over". 

Which is to say, it will never be over.

Now Antimal Rights activists are being asked to hand over their encryption keys.

Animal rights activist hit with RIPA key decrypt demand

:O

Nice of the trash rag of a tech journal site to not provide the details on why they want her keys.

You should know better than to read that pseudo-news site.