Encryption in Court

Apuleius writes "Adam Penenberg's current column in Forbes uses the Mitnick case to show the risks of letting technology case law be written by clueless judges. Raises some good points aboute CESA. "

The point I like most in the article concerns encryption. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the State from forcing an individual to testify against himself; this should include the right to keep your encryption keys secret (assuming that you've memorized them - if you've written them down somewhere and the prosecution finds them, you're out of luck). In Mitnick's case the prosecution justified withholding evidence from the defense on the grounds that they, the prosecution, couldn't understand what it said, and the Judge bought that story. (Of course, the Judge was a clueless fool who bought ALL of the prosecution's stories, including that Mitnick could hack his way out of prison if provided with a modemless computer, but we won't go into that here.)

The Question of Encryption, as it were, remains to be decided. Will defendants be forced to divulge their encryption keys? Will the FBI be granted the ability to break into your house and install trojan programs on your computer (as the CESA bill would allow them), so the Feds will already have your keys in hand? Or is there some other solution?

I'd bet on CESA

[Seth Finkelstein]

Even if you could legally be compelled to disclose your key, I suspect law enforcement will still have a politically winning argument for PC-tapping. The pitch will be that they need the tapping ability because people seem to develop sudden memory loss from the stress of being caught.

- The Boston Lunatic

keys

[darklink]

well lets just say if the crypto keys are inserure as my house keys are then we have a big problem .
i know working with coke machines to large scale home sercerity installs that no matter how hard it is ppl will find a way around it. ahh well , i dont enjoy ppl talking about how other ppl should plan ther sercurity . personly as some one that has nothing to hide i still would like to know that all my info isnt so easy to get a handle on.
the dmv in NC atleast was easy to get into and used by many PIs the problem is that most of this info can be used to hurt your info. i have to say that i dont want to know i can be hurt by a simple and easy to get info. this is just one , i encrypt my credit cards just cause i dont want them out there. but yes i would say haveing to hand out my keys would be deffenatly a pc intrapment .

locks are to keep law abiding ppl out.