Judge Rules Man Cannot Be Forced To Decrypt HD 775
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In Vermont, US Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier has ruled that forcing someone to divulge the password to decrypt their hard drive violates the 5th Amendment. Border guards testify that they saw child pornography on the defendant's laptop when the PC was on, but they made the mistake of turning it off and were unable to access it again because the drive was protected by PGP. Although prosecutors offered many ways to get around the 5th Amendment protections, the Judge would have none of that and quashed the grand jury subpoena requesting the defendant's PGP passphrase. A conviction is still likely because prosecutors have the testimony of the two border guards who saw the drive while it was open." The article stresses the potential importance of this ruling (which was issued last November but went unnoticed until now): "Especially if this ruling is appealed, US v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach."
Update: 08/19 23:49 GMT by KD : Several readers have pointed out that this story in fact did not go unnoticed.
Update: 08/19 23:49 GMT by KD : Several readers have pointed out that this story in fact did not go unnoticed.
The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
"thousands of images of adult pornography and animation depicting adult and child pornography."
I know that TFA is about encryption and the rights to passwords but I think the phrase above is far more interesting. That quote could be misleading, but what if the Border Enforcers didn't find any photographs or videos(hell, any evidence at all)of real human child exploitation?
:)
If they are able to legally get the key and crack the drive, and all they found was animation, then maybe they should just give him a warning and and call him a "perv"...especially if he has "thousands" of files and not a single one is "real".
By the way, those of you who fantasize about your wife or girlfriend in a schoolgirl outfit are also pervs
People really are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Turn *off* your laptop before going through customs.
Turn off the GRUB menu and change the default key combination to have it come up.
Have a WinXP install to boot up into and set it as the default boot option.
Strong cryptography is lovely but it is not for idiots.
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, child pornography is such a witchhunt that even animated child pornography is illegal. That's right, child porn which never involved a child can still get you sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for a long time.
There are convoluted rationalizations for why this is so, but they are so insane that I will not bother to reproduce them here. Suffice it to say that society has collectively lost its mind when it comes to the idea of child pornography.
think about the children! (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, it is good to see judges in the US (or anywhere else) making into the news for taking the right stand regarding governmental search limits.
Uh-Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
The phrase "given the specific facts of this case" gives me chills in this context. As we all know, kiddie porn is, along with terrorism and drugs, one of the three Prime Evils of American jurisprudence and public opinion, the unholy trinity that justify any and all measures in their eradication.
In short: Why, why does our potential landmark 5th amendment case have to be a kiddie porn case? I'm no fan of child pornography; but it would be an absolute disaster if, thanks to the vociferous moral condemnation that such a case always involved, we end up setting a dangerous precedent concerning the 5th amendment and crypto keys/passwords.
I think it involves no hyperbole to say that the crypto key issue is probably the most important 5th amendment related question that technology has yet raised(mindreading tech will probably top it, when it becomes available). I'd hate to see this be yet another decision chiseling away at our constitution, just because some punk likes kiddie porn.
Dupe, noted in firehose, with link (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, are the editors asleep?
This story [slashdot.org] from last December had the exact same article. This was noted in the firehose entry [slashdot.org], and somehow this still got posted. I thought that kind of thing was a major purpose of the firehose?
WTF
Re:Uh-Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if your rights and freedoms do not stand up when applied to the worst of the worst then they most likely won't stand up when applied to you.
The good, bad, and the ugly. (Score:2, Insightful)
The good of this is obvious. In the US, we're guaranteed a certain set of rights, which often get trodden on in the name of justice under the noses of judges willing to look the other way (FBI wire-tapping, anyone?) This will allow for a more guaranteed level to the protection of privacy.
The bad to potentially come of this is when you *know* someone has done wrong, but their rights are protected to keep such things secret. I'm think terrorism, laundering of money, etc, falling into this group.
Last, there's the ugly. There's the pedophiles, rapists, etc, that are able to hide their wares and get away with it. I'm not implying they don't have the same rights, but you've gotta figure there's other potential ill-deeds going on.
Given all three, it's still a right I feel strongly about, and a right thousands of men and women are willing to give their life to protect (crazy looney at the helm, or not). What I'm curious about is whether this would have any affect on the legality of breaking into an encrypted file/filesystem when the owner has denied access.
Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
You're thinking of the fourth amendment. This is the fifth amendment, under which you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself.
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Naah. Society has lost it's mind when it comes to children, period. There's some sort of popular myth that started with the Baby Boomer generation that children need to be protected from everything. I'm not saying that sexual abuse of a child is ever right, but I'm saying that we have come to hold this purported "innocence" as sacrosanct, much to the detriment of society in general, as we have raised a generation of kids unable to deal with even getting a job on their own [msn.com]. The sooner we realize that kids don't need coddled, and need to be educated, this shit will go away by itself for a large part.
I'd love to post this signed in, but I'm afraid that in the current climate, people will start hunting me down as some kind of pedophile (which is the new version of the word "witch", "commie", or "fag", depending on what era you're from). An unassailable accusation that you have no hope in hell of defending yourself against, even if there is no truth to it.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Backdoors? (Score:5, Insightful)
or that they aren't open to people at that level
If someone like the NSA knew how, I doubt they would let that information leak without a really, really good reason. And "think of the children" doesn't count in that arena.
which is nice.
At least, it's good to know. :)
Re:People really are stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Warrant? (Score:2, Insightful)
With a locked trunk, you don't have to give them the key, they can break it open. This same applies to the encrypted data. It's their problem if their tools to break it aren't good enough.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding. Any decent defense attorney should be able to nullify these guards' testimony.
"So Officer Smith, you testified that the images you saw depicted children. Exactly how old were they? Oh you're not sure. (Display a picture of a model who's 18 and is made up to look 12.) How old is this model? Take a guess. Sorry, no, she's 18, and here's her birth certificate to prove it. Since you can't accurately identify the age of this model, why should the jury assume you could identify the age(s) of other models?"
Re:of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching kidde porn next to border guards (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a true anonymous coward. I'm perfectly happy saying that the entire system is completely screwed, and I'll be damned if I'm going to become anonymous.
An example of the absolutely screwed up laws in the UK : It is perfectly legal for anyone to screw a 16 year old girl, any way they want. However, if after they banged her every which way, they drew a picture of her naked and gave it to her, they can be done for distributing child pornography and put away for god knows how many years. I'm perfectly happy to say that this is fucked up legislation, and if you're not happy to come out and say that publically, then you're part of the problem.
Before you say this could never happen, something like this did happen somewhere in the US (I don't remember any exact details). It was a state where the age of consent was 16, and two 17 year old partners got busted for sending naked images of _themselves_ to each other. They got community service and put on the sexual offenders register for life. This is a farce, and the more people who say it is a farce, the quicker it will get fixed.
Re:good thing, bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the law is that the image must of of a 'real' child for it to be child-porn. But last year I was reading an article where prosecutors were switching from having experts go on the stand to 'prove' that the images are real, to just saying that the jury is competent to decide if the image is real or not [even though everyone knows that CG images can be so realistic that it can be difficult/impossible for an expert in digital imagery to determine if it's 'real' or not]. So, basically prosecutors are going for jury-sympathy, that the guy is a perv and should be locked away, whether or not the image is CG. Not that I have a problem with this, as this is the kind of distinction that makes the problem worse, but it can also wind up dragging in 'artistic' images as well.
Re:Exactly how? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:3, Insightful)
Well the question brings up what is the age of the cartoon character. It could be stated it is an adult representation of a child character or what is the represented age of the character. Really are lawyers going to go into fiction cannon to prove the age of a character. As well can you prove the viewer knows enough about cannon to realize it.
Re:People really are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's also realize that there is indeed a (quite significant) distinction between "pedophiles" and "child molesters". By definition, only one of those groups has actually acted on their generally-regarded-as-perverse desires; I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which one of the above labels is for that group. I'm not saying that there aren't there aren't people who fall into both groups (and I suppose if you're really screwed up in the head, you could end up as a child molester who isn't a pedophile... but that's unlikely to say the least), but the group to target with the slander is the one that actually does the damage.
I'll not make a statement about whether being a pedophile is "okay" as that's really a moral issue rather than a legal one (as far as I'm concerned, what you do in your own mind is your business so long as it stays there; legally, thoughtcrime doesn't yet exist). Obviously being a child molester is not okay, and I wholeheartedly agree that they should be locked up. I expect that quite a number of people would have consenting relations with a minor if the opportunity arose, but that whole "consenting" thing is key to the situation - they're generally not the people we need to keep an eye on.
By and large I agree with what you're saying... but let's be mindful of our terminology and not attack the wrong group. One is a very small subset of the other, not unlike traitors being a small subset of communists.
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't be so quick to judge someone simply because you are comfortable revealing your identity (Mr. Smauler? S. Mauler?) while they are not.
Re:Maybe you should look at the Protect Act? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should read the case finding that provision unconstitutional?
How about you find it for us. I bet you can't.
You're mixing up your "think of the children" laws. You're thinking of COPA.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, let's stop pretending that this has anything at all to do with "child pornography".
The justice department was just trying to get some case law saying an individual could be forced to relinquish his password, and by using "child pornography" they thought they could bully some judge into betraying the Constitution. It's a good sign that those sons of bitches lost, too.
And ultimately, torture doesn't work. Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall, and often (but not always) the perpetrators end up on the other end of the see-saw. Then, it becomes harder to find people who will obey orders to torture. We in America will eventually learn that it was a huge mistake to forsake our principles and become a torture regime. But, I can only hope that Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and others will face the music. There's no guarantee that justice moves quickly enough to give that kind of satisfaction. But move it does - and inexorably.
Re:Dupe, noted in firehose, with link (Score:1, Insightful)
kdawson. That's all I have to say
Slashdot crazies who know nothing about the law (Score:3, Insightful)
> I have a constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures once inside the United
> States, but not while entering it. The judges decision sounds nice, but I don't think it will stand.
It's worse. I fail to understand how a court can't order the asshole to produce the data. We have protection against unreasonable search. We have a right against self incrimination. But neither apply here. Nobody is going to argue that a judge can't issue an order for you to cough up documents whether on paper or a computer. Our whole system of law would collapse were law enforcement unable to obtain evidence, even with a court order.
Drop all the cyber bullshit and imagine this as a meatspace problem. Imagine you have a fortress of doom that it would be totally impractical for law enforcement to gain entrance to without the key. (perhaps you have crazed killbots inside, or whatever) If a judge issued a valid search warrant you would indeed be required to produce the key or be held in contempt. Why is it different because computers are involved?
Even better example. Judge issues warrant for you to produce paper files. You are the only one who knows where they are located. If you try saying that telling the court where they are would be self incrimination and thus you are invoking the 5th you should not be suprised to find yourself in a cell.
This case is going to come down to two sworn officers asserting they saw kiddie porn on exhibit A, the laptop. Almost any jury is going to be willing to accept that as proof beyond a reasonable doubt considering the defense could rebutt by simply unlocking the laptop and proving their innocence. This isn't a case of guilt until proven innoccent, this is two officers vs a suspect who refuses to allow anyone to see the evidence he claims would free him. Hell, I'd convict on that.
Mod parent up! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, not because he agrees with me. Because he knows something all these other people apparently don't; that the laws in the US have changed, and while it was true that it was not previously illegal, it has been since 2003.
I'll be man enough to admit that I thought it had been illegal for much longer, and so the various "you're wrong" responses to my post were also quite enlightening, but they seem to have missed this crucial change in American law.
Re:Both sides win (Score:2, Insightful)
>I guess it's merely pointless, then; you're saying, for example, that if I had a combination lock on my house, I wouldn't have to give it up even if
>there were a warrant, but then the police would just break down the door.
Yes, indeed.
Good luck with that 2048-bit Diffie Hellman thing though. If you have a warrant, you are certainly welcome to try, officer.
My attorney's name is (... ....), he is on the board of the Texas Bar Association and thus easily reached. I shall now invoke my right to remain silent.
Anti-free-speech cases are ALWAYS against scumbags (Score:5, Insightful)
In short: Why, why does our potential landmark 5th amendment case have to be a kiddie porn case?
Because the prosecutors ALWAYS go after the least-sympathetic scumbag they can find (or create the appearance of) when trying to establish a break-the-bill-of-rights precedent.
In the case of trying to clamp down on new forms of speech, press, or association this is USUALLY a child pornography or child molestation case.
Once they've got the precedent in place they can go after the real target: Anybody they don't like.
Re:Uh-Oh (Score:3, Insightful)
Reasonable question, I'll let people more eloquent than I answer:
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." - Abbie Hoffman
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." - Martin Niemoller, 1945 ( WW1 war hero & U Boat Captain, WW2 pastor who spent 7 years in Nazi prisons).
Re:Slashdot crazies who know nothing about the law (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to understand how a court can't order the asshole to produce the data.
Because the data is in his head, not on a physical document. If he had written it down the court could order him to hand over the hardcopy. But if they could order him to divulge the contents of his memory to be used as evidence against him they could do it, not just for passwords, but for anything else. (Like: "Did you kill Jane Doe?") The famous part of the 5th Amendment expressly prohibits that.
What would "enforcing" such an order consist of? Torture. That's WHY it's prohibited.
This case is going to come down to two sworn officers asserting they saw kiddie porn on exhibit A, the laptop. Almost any jury is going to be willing to accept that as proof beyond a reasonable doubt considering the defense could rebutt by simply unlocking the laptop and proving their innocence.
It's not up to the defendant in a criminal case to prove his innocence. It's up to the prosecution to prove his guilt. Are the officers such experts in video synthesis and manipulation that they can determine, at a glance, that the images were of actual children? No? Tough luck. If that's all they have I'd expect the judge to direct the verdict or throw it out for lack of evidence.
The Rhetoric (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, let's stop pretending that this has anything at all to do with "child pornography".
Thank you Pope Ratzo!
Any time the government wants to remove one more right from you, the test case will always be a charge of child pornography or terrorism. But it's not like the precdent will be "only for accused terrorists" - it will be used for anyone. Even if it were, accusing your political opponents of being pedophiles or terrorists in order to use the "special case" laws against them has been done throughout recorded history. It's not exactly hard to put encrypted child porn on a seized laptop after the fact, if you're willing to break a law to get a conviction!
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:3, Insightful)
we have raised a generation of kids unable to deal with even getting a job on their own
It's sad, but when we were last hiring interns we actually had a procedure defined in case an applicant showed up with parents in tow. We never needed it, but other companies on our street did actually have parents show up to the job interview. I can't even get my head around how messed up that is.
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
And this, in a nutshell, is why it is judges who set the punishment for offenders and not victims or relatives of victims.
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man, this is _so_ wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason to want to be anonymous is not cowardice. The reason is that the repercussions are not acceptable.
This myth was dispelled long ago, one example is gorilla warfare. Europeans thought it cowardly to hide from your opponents instead of facing them openly on a field of battle. It wasn't cowardly, it was tactically sound.
The same is true of avoiding prosecution by unjust government and preventing those whom you are criticizing from discovering your loved ones.
The difference between the AC and the non-AC? The AC legitimately believes there are people out there fear. The non-AC just likes to talk conspiracies.
Personally, I just think our government lacks the resources to track individual slashdot posters on a routine basis... so far.
Re:Sweet! (Score:1, Insightful)
And ultimately, torture doesn't work. Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall,
There isn't a single nation in this world, except potentially the US that respects the "sanctity" of computer passwords.
Also keep in mind most people don't have their data on their own disk, in which case every single country, including the US and every other country allows the prosecution to access their online (or otherwise, e.g. work) accounts.
So "torture doesn't work" and "will fall" seem a bit over-the-top, don't you think ? EVERY society allows this sort of "torture", including the US.
Never mind that your diluting the meaning of the word "torture" beyond measure. This is not torture at all, a much more accurate description would be "not respecting privacy of a criminal suspect". Causing direct and extreme physical or psychological pain in order to extract information is torture :
Obviously what this lawsuit would do if successful, imprison the suspect because he refuses to prove his innocence when serious and confirmed allegations are made against him by multiple witnesses, is quite a normal procedure, not torture, and practiced by every nation on this earth. If you're caught with your pants down in kindergarten, get seen by 2 police officers, and then "refuse to explain your lawful conduct" obviously you're going away for a long time (rightly). Despite being potentially innocent.
Of course it gets worse than that. Torture obviously does work, in that it gets subjects to say something. Not necessarily the truth, obviously, but it does extract confessions. So what use are confessions that you aren't sure are the truth ? At first sight they're worthless. Except, when you have 2 different perspectives extracted with torture, you can compare them, and "ask" who lied, work your way toward the truth.
Now that is very, very effective.
and often (but not always) the perpetrators end up on the other end of the see-saw.Then, it becomes harder to find people who will obey orders to torture.
Really ? Call me when Omar Al Bashir, or the president of China (two real torturing bastards, one in the name of islam, one in the name of communism) get aprehended. Guess this falls under your "not always". I'd say it's much closer to "never".
It also seems to me that both of these bastards are not exactly having problems finding either muslims to kill/torture/enslave/rape black people or chinese to kill/torture/abort other chinese. Now this too has a long history, and many, many, many regimes had no problem finding a most substantial amount of people willing to torture. Nor are many other regimes, such as, oh say every last islamic regime, having much trouble finding muslims to kill homosexuals.
In history it gets worse : clearly there were enough russians to keep slaughtering people until 30 MILLION people were dead. Mao found people to kill 100 MILLION, and muslims managed to kill (at least) 300 million hindus to create the asian muslim countries. In Sudan, said muslims are still killing to expand their territory.
The Russians that comitted that massacre didn't fell, at least not during their lifetime, neither did Mao, and the muslims murdered their way into the majority of some 67 (!) countries.
Is this what you call "failure", what you call for them to "fall" ?
Evil does not fall by itself, it takes a fight, weapons and most of all, sacrifices by people who try to do good (*AND* realise that 100% good is not a reasonable demand to make of someone, aspiring to do good, and never doing worse than the enemy, that perhaps).
We in America will eventually learn that it was a huge mistake to forsake our principles and become a torture regime.
I suppose all these other countries, all 296 of them will learn it sooner than America then. Heh. Some of them are older than America, and actually torture people.
But, I can only hope that Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and others will face the music. There'
Re:Slashdot crazies who know nothing about the law (Score:2, Insightful)
> What would "enforcing" such an order consist of? Torture. That's WHY it's prohibited.
Don't be an idiot. Enforcing would be done exactly as it is done in any other case of someone refusing to comply with an order issued by a court. You hold them in contempt of court and lock em up until they obey or they can get a higher court to reverse. No rubber hoses required.
> It's not up to the defendant in a criminal case to prove his innocence.
> It's up to the prosecution to prove his guilt.
Correct. The defense isn't required to put up any witnesses or even make a closing statement. But since the testimony of two sworn peace officers will almost certainly convict beyond a reasonable doubt in the absence of any defense, going that route is a sure fire path to a "pound me in the ass" federal prison.
Basically this guy is saying "That laptop over there doesn't have anything illegal on it. Those pigs are just lying ignorant bastards who wouldn't know a playboy bunny shot from japanese tentacle porn. But you guys on the jury are just going to have to trust me on that because I damned sure ain't going to let ANYBODY see my porn stash." That just doesn't sound like the sort of thing a jury is going to buy. I damned sure wouldn't. Those officers apparently had access to the machine for more than a few minutes. I'd believe them unless he produced some evidence, namely the files on the seized laptop.
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
You do not have a right against self-incrimination. You have a right to remain silent.
Re:Sweet! (Score:1, Insightful)
Word to the wise traveler - shut your laptop entirely off when passing through border checkpoints.
Re:of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds good, but I think the estimate was that there's at least 10,000 federal laws -- and so no single person could possibly know them all.
So while the police are combing through your hard drive, and while they don't find any child pornography, they DO find a picture of you holding a baby bird -- and it turns out that some 1856 law made illegal to handle this type of bird without a permit. And here's evidence of you violating the law.
Or, perhaps they don't find any child pornography ... until they scan every sector on the disk and find some thumbnail of some picture of a naked 8 year old girl that was deleted 18 months ago. If they'd dug deeper, they might have learned that that was from getting redirected to a child pornography site in Romania by some typo-squatter, which you immediately closed and never visited again -- but the DA is up for re-election, and he doesn't want to give up this new feather in his cap, the child pornographer he just took off the street. He doesn't care that you're innocent, only that you're helping prove that he's tough on child pornography.
No, cops and vampires are best not invited into your home, or your hard drives. Even if proving perjury is `priceless'. (And really, it wouldn't prove perjury. The cop would just say `I guess I was mistaken. My bad.' Though he probably wouldn't even say that.)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
However, on reflection, I have to say you probably have the correct distillation of what that means. Because criminals incriminate themselves all the time. Fingerprints, DNA, fiber traces...
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Make him an offer: Your balls or your PGP // (Score:2, Insightful)
No this has nothing to do with the 5th amendment. If you have a big safe in your basement and the police have reason to suspect you have cocaine in it, then they can order you to open it. If you have something in your car trunk, the police can demand you unlock it for a warrented search. This is NO DIFFERENT except that it is new and that while we can force open safes and car trunks, its harder to brute force decryption.
The 5th amendment says "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". That means you dont have to comply with the demand for an admission of guilt. It does NOT mean you dont have to provide the court with objects and/or information that is directly or indirectly related to the case. If you were really going to stand on that then you could refuse to be searched when you are under arrest because the gun in your pocket would be a "witness" against yourself.
Last I checked, a witness is a PERSON.
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Eventually, a society that violates basic human rights so blatantly will fall..."
Historically speaking, the societies that have violated basic human rights lasted far longer than those that did not.
A state run society may be bad for an individual, but it's often pretty good for the stability of the society as a whole.
Re:Man, this is _so_ wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
The president of what?
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Historically speaking, the societies that have violated basic human hygiene lasted far longer than those that did not. Does that mean we should all stop bathing?
Re:Uh-Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you really think it would be about anything else? The "justice" machine has been looking for decades for precedent setting cases to overturn or sidestep the constitutional protections we have. One at a time, they fall like dominoes.
Our nation's preoccupation with child pornography is greater, perhaps, then even our irrational fear of terrorists. Of course it's going to be child pornography. If not this guy, then someone else, truth of the matter not withstanding.
Those of us who can think, who read, understand that most child sexual abuse comes from the people they know and trust (family, family friends, etc.), not kiddy porn rings or myspace predators. This is about power, pure unadulterated power, and nothing else.
It's getting to the point, at least for me, where I automatically disbelieve and distrust every law enforcement official on every single statement they make. I view them all as worthless scum first, and leave it up to them to prove otherwise. Some of them even have.
If any of you out there are or have been police officers, and feel insulted, let me ask you: How many people have you pulled over and issued tickets (sometimes in the hundreds of dollars)? And how many times have you let another police cruiser get away with speeding, reckless driving, rolling stops, failure to signal, etc.? I'm not talking about when they are going lights-and-sirens, I mean when they're out 'cruising'. Yeah, thought so. Until the legal system actually starts policing itself (hah!) we're just going to see them continue hand in hand, doing the government's dirty work and getting away with whatever the fuck they want to.
Re:Slashdot crazies who know nothing about the law (Score:3, Insightful)
>> Hell, I'd convict on that.
And that's why, thank christ, you aren't a judge. At least, I hope not.
Re:so how did they see it the first time? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it sad that most everyone discussing this topic feels compelled to add in a condemnation the pornographers as if otherwise people would suspect them of being one. We can discuss murder and other heinous crimes without needing a disclaimer.
Not that I'm defending child pornographers in any way.
I am responding to your post. Not the article. (Score:4, Insightful)
Security is irrelevant. Citizenship is irrelevant. The only thing relevant here is "shall not", and for the Government those words drown out every other concern under the sun until they are rubbed out.
You say the border should be under the sole jurisdiction of Congress. That's all well and good. But Congress is under the jurisdiction of the people of the United States of America, who have set its boundary conditions, which include those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. It is thus impossible for Congress to have jurisdiction of anything without the Constitution as amended having jurisdiction of it; the Constitution as amended has jurisdiction over Congress. Since always.
Or do you argue that the border is outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Government entire? If so, I can accept that the rights as enumerated in the Constitution may not be protected by the anarchy present there. But then, at that moment of dissolution of the Federal Government's power, the laws of Congress cease to matter either, and your measures of security must be enforced by the barrel of a gun. At that moment, any action by the Government would be unilateral and outside its charter, and thus cease to be an act of the Government as instantiated and legitimized by the will of its citizens. At that moment, rights have nothing to do with it. Only might.
A is A. Either something is a right or it is not. And no-one should expect less privacy from an organization than the leader of that organization has deemed the minimum. Until that leader - until the people themselves - change their minds and in doing so change the charter, the Government is incapable of exceeding the boundary conditions specified there without ceasing to be the Government, ceasing to be legitimate, and sublimating back into the form of some thugs on the border, acting on their own whims, who'll let you through if you do as they tell you.
And if we find that this leaves a legitimate instantiation of the Government with insufficient power to protect us from our enemies, we must decide whether we value that protection over a bit of extra liberty on the border, and change the charter accordingly. Until then, we'll be protected only by an illegitimate Government, or illegitimate agents of the Government - and I'd rather be unsafe from outside than be guarded by false guards.
Sorry for making you read all of that. I'll shut up now. >_>
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:2, Insightful)
\0/
| * Underage and naked (!)
/ \
How retarded would it be to discuss sex between cartoon characters in a courtroom?
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:4, Insightful)
A system remains free as long as anonymity and privacy are considered sacrosanct. Anonymity itself is quite useful in a society. Voting, juries, and whistleblowing are examples of legitimate uses of anonymity in a society. Privacy, although you did not bring it up, is also quite important.
There is a difference between free expression of ideas and the legitimate fear of reprisal by those more powerful. You are conflating the legal protections governing free expression with the liabilities of expressing some truth or opinion that have nothing to do with any legal systems. A system can have strong legal guarantees of free expression. Such a system could be considered to have more freedoms than others. However, in such a "free" system that also has no provisions for anonymity (or specifically against anonymity), there could be serious risks depending on just what you are expressing. These risks are demonstrably detrimental to a society when they suppress the dissemination of information that may be conflict with the interests of those in positions of power.
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Try getting a professional to do it. I guarantee you'll change your opinion.
Especially if the professional wants to hear to something "Hubbel" doesn't know or believes isn't true.
Not only will he change his opinion, he'll probably being making stuff up to get the torturer to stop.
Which is why torture is not an effective means of interrogation - you can't trust the information you get from it.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Waterboarding's not so fucking bad, eh? Then why is the US even using it? And if amateur/non-hardened terrorist types like you and your buddies are able to easily withstand it, then what good is it as a form of torture? (Note that John McCain flip-flopped and voted *for* waterboarding [aol.com] even after he denounced it.)
Regardless, torture is considered a lossy means of extracting information from interrogation subjects. Because with the threat of imminent death (e.g. repeated waterboardings, with the drowning response telling your body that you're about to die), you'll do anything to save your life, won't you? Like making shit up. (Of course, making shit up is just what the US did to get us into the Iraq war [ronsuskind.com] in the first place.)
I'd be unsurprised to learn that waterboarding is a kind of red herring - there are many far more simple, painful and damaging techniques that our rendition and torture outsource partners (and let us not forget contractors) are all too willing to employ. That's what you can do when you partner with dictatorships in a war on terror.
Re:Slashdot crazies who know nothing about the law (Score:5, Insightful)
They can and they did. They have physical custody of the hard disk on the laptop, and it's been examined with a fine-toothed comb. They've had the data to do whatever they want with it. The fact that the data is not in a form useful to the government's case is not the defendant's problem. Compelling the defendant to provide testimony to *make* it useful to the government is a breach of his Fifth Amendment rights.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not the point of the fith ammendment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Insightful)
Here in the U.S., we don't have to prove our innocence, the cops have to prove that we are guilty.
You're thinking of the U.S. as it was decades ago. Things have changed lately.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait, you were talking about the US, not the UK. I'm sure that your law enforcement agencies are far more responsible and less petty than ours. I mean we can't both be ruled by security services that act like playground bullies can we?
Re:Conspiracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the prosecutors who are trying to force a legal precedent to require citizens to relinquish their password are the conspiratorial sacks of shit.
The child porn case was just a convenient tool for them to attack the Constitution.
Re:That is not the point of the fith ammendment (Score:3, Insightful)
Judge is an idiot, not the point of the fith amendment. To protect you from FORCED FALSE testimony, that is why we have the fith ammendment. Testimony under duress was not to be trusted, and people could be forced (or even signatures forged) to sign confession documents that are false. When FALSE testimony can be ruled out, for example if the encryption key works or not,the fith ammendment should not apply. The Judicial branch is lucky the executive and legislative branch have not used a creative interpetation of "treason" to target activist judges.
Good lord, I hope you are too young to vote. Since you dislike "activist judges" I assume you prefer judges who are strict constructionalists. How in the hell would you interpret this in any other way than a defendant doesn't have testify in his own trial?
Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like saying you locked your buddy alone in a room for a while and he came out fine, so solitary confinement isn't so bad.
I suspect you probably didn't do it right (where did you learn torture techniques?) but even if you did, there is a world of difference between what you did -- or what soldiers do when they train each other in how to resist torture by doing this to each other -- and a real torture situation. In your case, or in training, you did this with close, trusted buddies, you did it once, and you were certain that your buddies were not in fact trying to kill you. In real torture, people are tortured by sworn and brutal enemies, repeatedly and unendingly in many different ways, with plenty of softening-up beforehand, and most importantly, they know that they could in fact be killed at any moment and no-one in the outside world would know. The victim of waterboarding both knows that he could die at any moment, and feels as if he is about to die.
Re:Maybe you can educate me, too ... (Score:1, Insightful)
You seem willing to give the accused the benefit of the doubt
Uhm. I thought that giving the accused the benefit of the doubt was the cornerstone of our entire fucking criminal justice system.
Maybe you would prefer to change that?